72 - Coffee... and Birds! (w/ Fabiola Rodriguez!)
72. Coffee… and Birds!
This show has talked about biodiversity, but we haven’t been the best at pointing the magnifying glass at ourselves. How do growth of non-essential crops like coffee impact biodiversity across the globe? Let’s learn to be scientifically conversational.
General Learning Concepts
1) Discussion questions:
a. What is biodiversity? How does biodiversity differ when traveling across the longitude of the earth?
b. What is coffee? What are the steps required to produce “functional” coffee that humans consume? Where in the world is coffee being produced? How do these steps impact the local biodiversity? How do these steps impact the non-local biodiversity (eg. migratory birds?)
c. What are some things that consumers can do to reduce their impact to the environment?
Fabi: “I did notice I said 2 billion birds had declined in North America and it is actually closer to 3 billion. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6461/120”
- Mesoamerican Development Institutes information on coffee: what is IOC coffee?
http://mesoamerican.org/cafe-solar/
- Purchase Café Solar a coffee that considers both the form of production and the coffee drying:
https://www.cafesolar.com/shop/
- Birds and Beans (Smithsonian Institute Certification) 'find a retailer' for bird friendly coffee where coffee maintains a diversity of trees as shade within coffee farms:
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/migratory-birds/find-bird-friendly-coffee-retailer-near-you