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Women in Coffee

by Kirsti Piirtoniemi, January 12, 2010

Birds and Beans Inc. is well known for its certified Bird Friendly®, organic, fairly traded, shade grown coffees, but did you know that we also offer a women-friendly blend?

Our coffee from El Salvador Eco Cafe is directly imported from the estate located in the hillside of Santa Ana volcano, about 3000ft above sea level. The taste is always of the best quality thanks to plenty of native shade plants that grow around it to make it certified organic and Bird Friendly®. At the same time, Eco Cafe is a member of the International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA), an organization committed to "empowering women in the international coffee community to achieve meaningful and sustainable lives," and "to encourage and recognize the participation of women in all aspects of the coffee industry" (www.womenincoffee.org).

The IWCA puts women's rights and issues at the forefront of the coffee business. Unfortunately, long-standing patriarchal or "machismo" attitudes are still prevalent in most coffee growing regions. In the international coffee market, women's work is often undervalued and poorly compensated even though the majority of farmers are women. They often experience higher levels of physical, social and economic discrimination and/or abuse and lower levels of health and education compared to their male counterparts. Because women bear the burden of domestic work in addition to any paid work, they are typically left with little unstructured time. In this respect, women are often involuntarily excluded from important decision-making processes that impact their livelihoods.

The IWCA's work is significant because promoting women's co-operation and leadership in coffee increases not only the well-being of women farmers but also the standard of living for their families and even their communities. I experienced this first hand in 2007, when I visited a coffee co-operative in Costa Rica. The fact is simple, women have an incredible amount of influence with regard to meeting the basic needs of their families and communities. Through social groups and networks such as the IWCA, women can interact with each other, pool their economic and human resources, and collectively decide how those resources will be used or invested. Thus, to grow and sustain healthy communities, women must first live free of suffering and be allowed the opportunity to defy and challenge discriminatory attitudes that disable them from meeting their full potentials. The more opportunities women have to engage in local financial markets, such as with Eco Cafe in El Salvador, the more likely they, their families, communities and even countries will benefit because of positive reverberation effects.

Women coffee farmers and the IWCA are incredible agents of change. By supporting a farm that is an IWCA member, consumers can help support women's empowerment in the coffee industry and help women farmers to live full and productive lives. In an increasingly interdependent and interconnected global economy, a world fit for women coffee farmers is also a world fit for consumers in the north. If all citizens are allowed the opportunity to reach their potential, all of our nations will thrive.

In my opinion, gender justice has never tasted this good.

Cruelty Free Eating

by Madeleine Pengelley, November 2009

As a sustainability advocate I'm often asked if I'm vegan. I'm not. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, vegans, like vegetarians, do not eat meat, but unlike vegetarians, neither do they eat cheese, eggs or other products derived from animals. Some will not purchase cloths made of leather or even wool. Why would anyone have such an extreme view? Because, like me, vegans are appalled by treatment of animals on factory farms... and almost all farms in operation today are factory farms.

If you still imagine animals living idyllic lives on family farms, you need to get informed. Websites like FarmSactuary.org, Chicken Out! and Farm Forward are good sources of information. Most livestock is raised in conditions that would be considered criminal for a pet dog, yet the entire industry raises animals in cramped cages so small animals cannot turn around, never see the outdoors, and are unable to exhibit natural behaviors. Put plainly... it is cruel so its cheap. Unacceptable.

So why am I not vegan? Well, if cruelly produced animal products were my only choice I would be. However, there are more traditional farms out there and I want to support them. While vegans are ignored by farming industry, I am demonstrating that I'm willing to pay more to provide a cruelty free conditions for the animals.

So if you come into Birds and Beans, you'll find a menu without cruelty:

• Our own freshly roasted boutique coffees are certified organic, shade grown and fairly traded. Good for people, good for birds, good for health.
• organic milk from happy Harmony cows is the best tasting milk for a latté
• In our baking and egg salad we use organic eggs, the best option for egg laying hens according to Chicken Out!
• Our tuna salad is made from tuna certified by Earth Island Institute as sustainably harvested with minimal "by catch"
• For sandwiches we serve ham, beef and turkey slices raised cruelty free by Rowe Farms
• We use organic cheddar and swiss cheeses from L'Ancetre where authentic taste comes from treating the cows with respect.

We are all going to die, the question is how we live our lives while we are here.

Has the "Green Movement" Lost the Forest and the Trees?

by Madeleine Pengelley, September 22, 2009

In all the talk of global warming, carbon taxes and offsets, and energy efficiency, we seem to have lost the notion of wildlife habitat from the "green" movement. I must say that over the last 5 years this technification of the green movement has been a surprise to me. I thought the green movement would raise the awareness of disappearing wild spaces and rush to their preservation, but so far not.

At Birds and Beans we're all about habitat... the preservation and restoration of good habitat for our migrating birds. As is true throughout the world, wild habitat has disappeared or is disappearing throughout Central and South America where our songbirds spend their winters. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has determined that certified Bird Friendly® coffee farms are a sanctuary for these beautiful songbirds that would have nowhere else to go. They spend the winter in the forest like ecosystem above the coffee plants where they find food and shelter.

We are at a crossroads of man. Will we North Americans, who have squandered so much of our natural environment in favour of all the things that have caused global warming and other environmental problems, continue to ignore the needs of the other species we share this world with? Will we continue to happily swallow the slogans of greenwashers and leave behind a world barren of wild creatures for our children?

Maybe not if we know what we can do. Each of us needs to use the tool that got us into this mess to get us out: Our discretionary spending. We can forgive ourselves for our trip to this point. We didn't know the consequences. But now we do.

If we care to protect the phenomena of the spring and fall songbird migrations, truly a wonder of the natural world, we have to ensure a forest like habitat for the birds in their wintering grounds. We can do it and it is simple. We can support the farmers who grow their coffee with traditional methods under a diverse shade canopy certified with criteria developed by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

Buying our certified Bird Friendly coffee will be perhaps the most enjoyable thing you can do to preserve numbers of our migratory birds. The traditional tending is obvious in the cup. Each farm or cluster has unique flavours. Each of us can take a moment to enrich our lives with the simple pleasure of forgotten coffee flavours, while supporting farmers who share our concern for the migratory birds and preserving the phenomena of migration itself.

Lets get the word out!

Only coffee carrying the Bird Friendly® seal has been evaluated against criteria developed by the scientists at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

Be Certain. Buy Certified.™