Unlike sugar or bananas, coffee is not marketed as generic. The same range of choice is available to institutional purchasers. Secondly, the variation in the social and environmental conditions under which coffee is produced and processed makes for interesting analysis and awareness-raising. If cultivated with high inputs of manual labor and human attention and low inputs of commercial fertilizers and pesticides, such coffee acreage will support as much biodiversity as a natural forest would in its place. Research suggests that coffee will support even more biodiversity than the forest in certain life forms and less in others.
Insects do better than reptiles, migratory birds better than resident ones.
Most indigenous and campesino farmers are used to visiting their crops regularly, are likely to understand the soils and climate of their particular site, and are able to alter labor input flexibly by drawing on family members. Unlike sugar or cotton, coffee is a crop that benefits from close attention, quick response to changing conditions, and hand harvesting and pruning. Here the result is wildlife destruction, health risks for workers and their families, and soil, river and aquifer contamination. In Mexico, Central America and Colombia, half the land devoted to coffee has moved toward this end of the continuum over recent decades, and the trend shows no sign of abating. Pests and weeds are controlled with human oversight and labor or with large amounts of toxic chemicals.