CAN COFFEE FIGHT POVERTY & SAVE THE RAINFOREST?
Your cup of coffee can help save the rainforest. Fair-traded organic coffee does not leave the sour aftertaste of poor living standards for farmers and destroyed nature in your mouth, reports the World Watch Institute. A recent study shows that insect-pollinated coffee plants yield over 50 percent more beans than plants that are shielded from bees. This may be why yield are falling in many coffee plantations that are ever more homogeneous and use more insecticides two practices bad for pollinators. Coffee was traditionally grown in mixed plantations in the rainforests with other plants below and above it. But according to the May/June edition of the magazine World Watch magazine over 40 percent of the coffee area in Colombia, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean has been converted to intensive, sun-grown coffee that uses more chemical fertilisers and pesticides. In the short term, this can lead to increased yields, but in the long term many intensive plantations have experienced
