Paul Baicich writes for "The Birder Conservationist" for the American Birding Association:
Procter & Gamble, the consumer-products giant, announced in mid-September that it would begin marketing sustainable coffee.
Through Millstone Coffee, P&G's upscale coffee brand, the company will sell a far trade certified blend intended to assure small coffee growers a decent return.
Recently, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and now P&G have been pressured to sell fair trade coffee. (For details on the Dunkin' Donuts story, see the October [2003] issue of Birding, page 459.)
P&G's Millstone also will being selling a shade-oriented coffee blend certified by the Rainforest Alliance.
Shade-grown coffee, of course, provides overstory cover for many Neotropical migrant birds in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Moreover, it is estimated by Co-Op America that 80 percent of fair-traded coffee is also shade-grown and organic coffee.
In the past three years, the price many coffee farmers are paid for their coffee has fallen by half.
This has resulted in a humanitarian crisis
millions of coffee-growing families and an ecological crisis for the
regions in question.
The current coffee glut has resulted in low market prices, forcing thousands of growers to abandon their farms.
Many farmers who remain in business are clear-cutting forests, creating pastures, and/or using chemical-intensive methods to produce other crops, rather than engage in the environmentally sensitive methods involved in shade-grown coffee production.
P&G's recent move is not necessarily altruistic, as many observers have noted.
Just about the only sector of the $19.2 billion U.S. coffee industry that isn't stagnant is the $8.4 billion specialty coffee segment.
Within the specialty portion of the industry, the $100 million fair-trade business—although minute—is usually viewed as the fastest-growing niche.
This market move by P&G is expected to nudge its behemoth rivals, including Kraft and Nestle, to consider fair-traded coffee.
(Speculation is that P&G's fair trade versions might also filter down to its Folgers and private label brands.)
While P&G's fair-trade line has been introduced online and will also be sold via a toll-free number, the company announced that it expects the coffee to be sold in supermarkets nationwide within a year.
Millstone has two certified coffees in its 
