Shade coffee certification programs have emerged over the past six years to verify that coffee marketed as ''shade grown'' is actually grown on farms that provide higher quality habitat for biodiversity. In spite of good intentions and an increasing market, little consensus exists on whether current criteria can successfully identify coffee farms of conservation significance. This paper provides the first ecological evaluation and comparison of shade-grown coffee criteria used by major certification programs. Using vegetative data, we evaluated criteria developed by the Rainforest Alliance, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC), and the Specialty Coffee Association of America across a range of coffee agroecosystems in Chiapas, Mexico, to determine which management practices each program would certify. Fruit-feeding butterflies and forest bird species found in these coffee agroecosystems were compared with nearby forest reserves as indicators of biodiversity and conservation potential. These agroecosystems fall into three categories: rustic, commercial polyculture, and shaded monoculture. The rustic system contained significantly higher fruit-feeding butterfly diversity and an avifauna more similar to that found in forest reserves than the other systems. This was also the only agroecosystem that met the criteria for all certification programs, while the shaded monoculture fell short of all sets of criteria. This suggests that certification programs are succeeding in discriminating between the extremes of shade coffee production. Certification programs differed, however, in their treatment of the intermediate, commercial polyculture systems, reflecting different philosophies for conservation in managed ecosystems. Programs promoted by SMBC use high standards that would exclude all but the most diverse commercial polyculture or rustic systems to certify only those systems that support high levels of biodiversity. The program supported by the Rainforest Alliance only excludes the shaded monoculture while engaging the others in the move toward greater sustainability. The merits of each approach should be put to rigorous debate, and their ability to contribute to biodiversity conservation should be reflected in product marketing. This study suggests that further research can provide a stronger scientific basis and independent verification for the certification of green products that claim to enhance biodiversity conservation in tropical agroecosystems.
In spite of the attention that has been focused on the importance of traditional, shade coffee production for biodiversity, little is known about the relative conservation value of different systems of managing the shade canopy. We surveyed fruit-feeding butterfly species richness and vegetation structure on different shade coffee management systems in Chiapas, Mexico, that ranged from intensive commercial to traditional, rustic systems. The impact of management on the diversity and structure of the shade canopy in each coffee production system was quantified and compared using a Management Index. This Management Index revealed statistically significant differences between management systems that previously were distinguished by researchers using qualitative, ''gestalt'' categories. Butterfly species richness was found to decline as management intensity increased, but a significant drop was found between the rustic system and the other more intensive systems, corroborating the importance of preserving rustic, shade coffee production for the conservation of biodiversity. Fruit-feeding butterflies were found to be very sensitive to the intensification of management of the shade canopy, so they may be an effective way to monitor ecological changes that accompany intensification within the coffee agroecosystem. Additionally, the vegetation Management Index may prove useful for quantifying management practices to evaluate certification criteria for conservation benefits.
We compare species richness of birds, fruit-feeding butterflies and ground-foraging ants along a coffee intensification gradient represented by a reduction in the number of species of shade trees and percentage of shade cover in coffee plantations. We sampled the three taxa in the same plots within the same period of time. Two sites were selected in the Soconusco region of the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Within each site four habitat types were selected and within each habitat type four points were randomly selected. The habitat types were forest, rustic coffee, diverse shade coffee, and intensive coffee (low density of shade). We found different responses of the three taxa along the intensification gradient. While ants and butterflies generally decrease in species richness with the decrease of shade cover, birds declined in one site but increased in the other. Ant species richness appears to be more resistant to habitat modification, while butterfly species richness appears to be more sensitive. Bird species richness was correlated with distance from forest fragments but not with habitat type, suggesting that scale and landscape structure may be important for more mobile taxa. For each of these taxa, the rustic plantation was the one that maintained species richness most similar to the forest. We found no correlation between the three taxa, suggesting that none of these taxa are good candidates as surrogates for each other. We discuss the implications of these results for the conservation of biodiversity in coffee plantations, in particular, the importance of distinguishing between different levels of shade, and the possibility that different taxa might be responding to habitat changes at different spatial scales.
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