Birdsong and Coffee — A Wake Up Call

Birdsong and Coffee — A Wake Up Call

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What is the “natural organic connection between coffee farmers, coffee drinkers, and birds”? Why do we need a wake-up call? Part One of this documentary explores the “coffee crisis” and its devastating effects on migratory songbirds, rainforest ecosystems, and 25 million coffee growers worldwide. Part Two shows how we, as coffee consumers, can address the environmental and fair-trade aspects of this crisis.

Released :  2004

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Birdsong and Coffee: A Wake Up Call

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BIRDSONG & COFFEE, A Wake Up Call from Old Dog Documentaries on Vimeo.

“Coffee is the second most-traded commodity on earth next to oil. . . . What I’d like to see us do as a nation is to give as much attention to the issues of coffee growing as we do to oil production, because I think it’s just as important to the future sanity of the planet that we sustain this earth.”
— Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA)

Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica. In this film we hear from experts and students, from coffee lovers and bird lovers, and-most importantly-from coffee farmers themselves. We learn how their lives and ours are inextricably linked, economically and environmentally.

Part One lays out the background of the “coffee crisis,” a situation that Seth Petchers of Oxfam International describes as a “humanitarian catastrophe.” We meet the coffee growers of Agua Buena in the rainforest of southern Costa Rica, who welcome us into their homes and describe the labor-intensive process of shade-grown coffee production.

We learn that 25 million coffee growers worldwide are paid a mere pittance in the corporate marketplace while bearing the full brunt of global price fluctuations. When prices crash, farmers go hungry and their children are forced to drop out of school. Families are separated, communities disintegrate, and the land is cleared for other crops or other means of livelihood. Such clearing of the land–like the more “efficient” process of sun-grown coffee production–disrupts the ecosystem in ways that have deadly consequences for migratory songbirds, in particular, and for global ecological balance, in general.

Part Two offers simple but effective solutions based on what Robert Rice of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center calls the “natural organic connection that exists between farmers, coffee drinkers, and birds.” We meet students, faculty, and staff at the University of California Santa Cruz who introduce us to Fair Trade coffee. Simply by changing our buying habits, we coffee consumers can not only guarantee farmers a fair price, but also protect the songbirds that visit our backyard feeders–all while enjoying the highest-quality coffee, sent directly to our homes by the farmers themselves.

 

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