Organic Products and Coffees – “No Health Benefits?”
Today’s news seems to be awash with a report commissioned by the Food Standards Agency, stating that organic food is no healthier than non-organic food, much to the frustration of the Soil Association. In light of the fact that we have a number of organic coffees in our range, I thought I might add a little to the debate. The disappointing aspect of this is that the media picks up on these reports and the next thing you know organic products are vilified as an expensive luxury with no added benefits to buying them.
We have several organic coffees in the Grumpy Mule range and I’d hate to think that customers become wary of buying them because of reports like this, because for us it’s the quality and taste of the coffee that is the key – our Organic Brazilian coffee from Fazenda Santa Terezinha just won 2 Star Gold in the Great Taste Awards because of the way it tastes, not because it is organic.
The intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides on coffee farms may be a good short term measure for guaranteeing pest free yields, from ageing coffee trees and for less effort, but doesn’t exactly guarantee the long term sustainability of the farm and quality of the harvest. When the price of fertilizers goes up, suddenly they become an unaffordable luxury and both yields and quality of the coffee go down. Careful farm management, including regular pruning of coffee trees, replacement of old stock, weeding, turning waste materials such as the coffee cherries into organic fertiliser are all methods of maintaining quality and yield from the harvests without the need to excessively use fertilisers or pesticides.
We look for great tasting coffees that have been produced in the most sustainable manner and that is from an environmental, economic and quality perspective – it’s frequently the case the best farms for this are either organic (such as Fazenda Santa Terezinha in Brazil), or non-organic but with very considered agro-management of their farms (such as the Blackburn Estate in Tanzania).
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