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fairly traded, shade grown, organic coffee >>

Thank you for your interest in Café Humana and our partner farmers. By supplying some of Costa Rica's finest, 100% Organic, Shade Grown and Fair Wage coffee, it is our goal as a non-profit organization to promote sustainability in every aspect of what we do and to foster it in others. In doing so, our program focuses as much on quality and customer service as we do our core values of, conservation, education, equality, and philanthropy.

Sustainability
Organic Coffee had always been a shade grown, organically cultivated plant in its 16 century history until, in the last 25 years, artificial methods of production boosted the output of regular farms to nearly four times what they could have done naturally. Accomplished by intensive pesticide and fertilizer use combined with new breeds of plants cross-bred to tolerate full-sun production, the impacts on farming communities have become unfortunately clear. Things such as polluted water systems, spikes in cancer rates, accidental poisonings, chemical burns, and the toxic runoff that pollutes down-stream communities, water supplies, animal habitat and, ultimately, our oceans are all results of persticide-intensive farming.

Perhaps most tragically, the impact on children who accompany family members into the fields during harvest is most severe as their rapidly developing bodies are much more quickly and permanently affected by such direct exposures.
Even with all of this, we have not even made mention of the often poor and democratically under-represented communities around the world that are located near the facilities that produce and profit from the sale of these environmental toxins.

In a word, this method of farming is un-sustainable. Eventually it will lead to a collapse of the systems it relies on to sustain it. Organic farming means and end to all of these local impacts and a drastic reduction of the global ones - a return to the way coffee was meant to grow. It also means a higher price to farmers who are currently dealing with the lowest prices in the history of the recorded coffee trade. More on this under Fair Wage

Shade Grown Coffee
With the relatively recent new strains of coffee plants being created to tolerate full sun, massive amounts of the Earth's rainforests have been clear-cut to make way for coffee plantations. Already under heavy stress from many other industries, these forests continue to disappear at an alarming rate. Not only did these vast forests once do a much better job of naturally cleansing our atmosphere, they once were homes to many now-extinct and endangered species.

Shade Grown coffee became popular in the mid 80's when birders in North America first noticed the rapidly disappearing songbirds in their own back yards. It turns out that many of those birds winter in Central and South America and because their food supplies and habitats were disappearing, so were they.

Shade Grown farms not only have 95% more wildlife than their sunny counterparts but they also contribute to successful organic farming by providing natural mulching and fertilization of the soil as well as creating a healthy ecosystem that keeps the infamous Coffee Borer Beetle — enemy #1 for the coffee cherries - in check through natural predation. Because shade grown coffee ripens more slowly, it is also widely held that it has a superior flavor than full sun varieties.

Fairly Traded Coffee
Coffee is one of the many products that is produced almost exclusively in Third World countries and consumed almost exclusively in developed nations. Cultivated only in the sensitive areas between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, very little coffee remains in the producer countries — most of which have poverty as a rule rather than the exception.
Although recently taken as the name of an organization supporting it, fair trade simply means that everyone involved in any given market is compensated to such an extent that no one ends up on the losing end of the deal.

In the coffee world, this has been distilled down to a few numbers that serve as standards throughout the world which farmers should be paid to be considered "fair" and just. Currently those numbers are $1.26 and $1.41 per pound, (for regular and organic respectively) paid directly to the farmer. In Costa Rica for instance, the cost of simply producing coffee is $.90 per pound. Unfortunately, very inexpensive coffee not only frequently means lower quality standards, but also much lower wages paid to the farmers, many of whom are being forced to sell their family land to pay off debts. This creates a devastating, downward spiral of poverty as many move into urban areas looking for new ways to support their families.

Quality Coffee
No matter how many different stamps and certifications are given a coffee crop, if it is not of excellent quality, there is not much of a future in it for the farmers. Quality brings demand and, in a fair market, this is rewarded by an above average price to the farmers for the extra attention to detail and hard work that goes in to producing a superior crop. By working exclusively with a small collective, and seeking to add only the finest crops in a given area, we are creating demand for high quality production and, in the end, this serves everyone by encouraging higher standards.

The End Result
Bringing all of these concepts to bear on coffee production creates a sustainable situation for everyone involved. Such a change can not only stop the destruction of the worlds most ecologically rich areas, but it can actually restore and enrich it. Over 40% of the world's rainforest has been lost to un-sustainable practices and your choice can make a difference.

Coffee is a $36-billion commodity - second only to petroleum in world market value. As a country, America consumes about one-fifth of the world's annual coffee production. Your choice of a coffee that is produced in a responsible manner can have an amazing and profound, global impact. By purchasing coffee grown to these high standards, you are making your voice heard in the most direct and effective manner possible — by creating demand