Tag Archives: coffee

Recycled Coffee Grounds Can Rejuvenate Your Plants

Posted on by
0

Once a week we will be featuring a fun and/or educational activity you can try at home or in the classroom. This week the writers on the Heifer Blog have been taking a look at coffee-growing communities all over the world, where hunger and poverty is a common problem. Heifer is helping these farmers by diversifying their income and teaching them about our model for sustainable community development.

You can improve your own sustainability and lessen the negative impact of throwing away garbage that can be recycled. Try this experiment to see the benefits for yourself, with coffee grounds and growing plants.

Do you (or anyone in your house) drink coffee? Many people who do, throw the coffee grounds in the trash when they are done. However, there are many ways you can recycle the grounds, like as fertilizer to help your plants grow healthier and faster. Besides the obvious benefits of recycling instead of throwing away, you can use the natural fertilizer and cut down on the costs of buying fertilizer from the store and/or using chemical fertilizers.

Plant in a small pot

What you need:

  • Two pots (the smaller the better)
  • Potting soil
  • Small stones
  • Seeds
  • Measuring tape
  • Coffee grounds

Coffee grounds make a great natural fertilizer because they are rich in nitrogen, which provides energy to help the bacteria turn organic matter into compost. For the best results, mix the coffee grounds into the soil and sprinkle some around the plants, before you water them.

Put the pebbles at the bottom of both pots. Fill one of the pots with a soil/coffee ground mixture. Fill the other with just soil. Make a trench with your finger in the soil of both pots, and sprinkle seeds in the trench. Cover the seeds with soil, and fully soak the soil with water. Label each pot so you can keep track of your results. The pots should be placed in a well-lit area, and watered every day. Before watering the pot with the coffee ground/soil misture, sprinkle coffee grounds on top of the soil.

Measure the size of the plant with the measuring tape daily, and write the measurements down on a chart with three columns. Column 1 for the date, Column 2 for Pot #1, and Column 3 for Pot #2.

For more information on this experiment and other fun science experiments, go to: http://www.ehow.com/info_12127039_science-project-growing-plants-coffee-grinds-soil.html. For more ideas, read 12 Ways to Recycle Used Coffee Grounds.

You can also check out Heifer’s lesson plans and classroom activities related to sustainability, recycling, etc., in the Classroom Resources section of our website.

Weekly Article Roundup: A Sustainable Cup of Joe

Posted on by
0

This week on the Heifer Blog we’ve taken a closer look at how chronic hunger is a common challenge in coffee-growing communities all over the world. Heifer helps ease food insecurity by helping to diversify coffee farmers’ income as well as by providing food sources through our model for sustainable community development.

In other Heifer news:

Never Take for Granted

Posted on by
0

In a previous life, I served as Chairman of the Board for Ben and Jerry’s. It was very important to me that the company change its practices so that we were using fair trade products for the ice cream – coffee, vanilla, chocolate and all the other goodies.

I assumed that in creating fair trade relations with the co-ops and farmers that it would solve the poverty problem. But you know what they say when you make assumptions. Don’t get me wrong, I had great intentions but I didn’t have an understanding of the full picture.

While purchasing fair trade is important (and I’ll be back to discuss that!), it’s not the complete solution. The farmers still struggle with los meses flacos (the thin months). What I have learned since being at Heifer is that it is very important to pay attention to the details of impact. We need to have an understanding of the full process, the conditions and the theory of change. Heifer is doing this and this is how we work with the communities to truly work to end hunger and poverty.

photo by Amy Davenport

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Heifer, we are working in the coffeelands. Earlier this week we shared on the blog posts about seasonal poverty, a (must see!) short documentary called After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands, and also how to choose coffee with a conscience. These posts were in correlation with my colleagues attending a conference in Portland discussing our projects with Green Mountain Coffee and meeting with other organizations working in the same sector.

I see the full cycle now and as I still serve on the board of Ben and Jerry’s (although no longer the chairman), I can bring the knowledge and the understanding that I have learned from our work at Heifer. While it’s wonderful to have good intentions, you never want to take for granted the impact that you want to achieve.

How to Choose Coffee with a Conscience

Posted on by
0

As we discuss the challenge that coffee-growing communities have all over the world this week, let’s take a look back at a previous post on how to choose a coffee with a conscience. 

Originally posted October 25, 2011. 

The next time you buy coffee, make sure you are environmentally aware about where you coffee comes from. The words Fair Trade, Shade-Grown, and Organic are just a couple of buzzwords that are now being used to describe your cup-of-joe.

Haven’t heard of these words? Here is what they mean:

What’s shade-grown coffee?

  • “Shade-grown” generally describes coffee grown under a canopy of diverse species of shade trees, often on small farms using traditional techniques.
  • Shade-grown coffee, in contrast to sun-grown or “technified” coffee, provides food and shelter for songbirds, as well as other animals and plants.
  • Shade trees also provide natural mulch, which reduces the need for chemical fertilizers. Up to 40 species of trees can be found on traditionally managed shade coffee plantations; these trees protect the coffee plants that grow beneath them from rain and sun, help maintain soil quality, reduce the need for weeding and aid in pest control. Organic matter from the shade trees reduces erosion, contributes nutrients to the soil, and prevents metal toxicities.
  • As rainforests disappear, shade coffee farms offer one of the last places for birds to feed and rest in many tropical regions. In addition to birds, shade coffee plantations provide habitat for orchids, insects, mammals (such as bats), reptiles, and amphibians.

What’s organic coffee?

  • Organic coffee growing strives for a balance with nature, using methods and materials which are of low impact to the environment.
  • Organic farming replenishes and maintains soil fertility, eliminates the use of toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and builds a biologically diverse agriculture. In a natural ecosystem, nature constantly works to correct imbalances. Organic farmers do the same by selecting the most environmentally friendly solutions to the pest and disease problems that affect their crops.
  • When a grower or processor is certified organic, a public or private organization verifies that it meets or exceeds standards defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

What is fair trade coffee?

  • Certified Fair Trade coffee has been traded and sold according to international fair trade criteria, which includes:
    • Farmers are guaranteed a minimum price for their coffee. If world price rises above this floor price, farmers will be paid a small premium above market price.
    • Coffee importers provide credit to farmers against future sales.
    • Importers and roasters agree to develop direct, long-term trade relationships with producer groups, cutting out middlemen (or “coyotes”) and bringing greater commercial stability to an extremely unstable market.
  • The fair trade movement is based on the idea that producers in developing countries are capable of achieving economic success provided they receive fair prices in international markets for what they produce.
Learn more about organic, shade-grown and/or Fair Trade coffee at

www.FairTradeCertified.org

www.qai-inc.com

Heifer Ends Hunger in the Coffeelands

Posted on by
0

In 2011 Heifer was featured in a short documentary film titled, After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands. This film depicts the struggle of small-scale coffee farmers and their families during “the thin months” and how Heifer and other nonprofits help families diversify their sources of food and income, reducing their dependence on coffee for livelihood.

Watch the film now to learn more:

Seasonal Poverty in the Coffeelands

Posted on by
0

Chronic hunger is a common challenge in coffee-growing communities all over the world. Coffee is the most traded agricultural commodity in the world, and the 25 million coffee farmer families in the world depend upon coffee as their sole source of income. For every pound of gourmet coffee sold, a coffee farmer may receive between $0.12 and $0.25. Once the season’s harvest is sold, however, the income rarely lasts throughout the remainder of the year.

In Mexico and Central America, los meses flacos, or “the thin months” refer to the three to eight months out of every year when two-thirds of small-scale coffee farming families cannot maintain their normal diet. This phenomenon actually occurs in other coffee-growing parts of the world, taking place during the region’s rainy season (and more widely called seasonal poverty).

Seasonal Poverty Cycle

To ease food insecurity in the coffeelands, Heifer works to help coffee farmers diversify their income as well as food sources. Heifer supplies farmers the inputs and training a family needs to make it through the lean months, including rabbits, fish, honeybees and mushrooms as well as training on how to create local markets.

Last week, Heifer’s Vice President for the Americas Area Program Oscar Castaneda and other staff from Heifer Headquarters, as well as staff from our Peru and Honduras offices attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America 2012 event. Our staff worked to inform and expand our collaboration with other entities interested in improving the food security of coffee farming families.

This week, we’ll take an extended look at the lives of coffee growers, their struggles, and how the Heifer model for sustainable community development offers commodity farmers a way to feed their families and supplement their income when coffee cannot.