Birdsong & Coffee

10Mar2008 10:02 PM Filed in: Film & Video

Birdsong and Coffee - A Wake Up Call is a great little documentary (with links to Community Agroecology Network and other organizations working to make a positive difference) about how shade-grown, fair-trade coffee helps not only protect the biodiversity in lovely countries like Costa Rica (which we had the pleasure of visiting a few years ago), Mexico (likewise on the fond memories of visiting), El Salvador, and Nicaragua, but also maintains the vital economy of coffee farmers in those regions. An important aspect of the film for me is how students from UC Santa Cruz were "adopted" by their Central American families, and they realized how kind and caring the farmers were both to their families and the land, and also to the northern researchers. I didn't realize that coffee, as a world commodity, is second only to oil! (I'm not even a coffee drinker, but I love the smell...) Another local company doing their utmost to make a positive difference (we love their chocolate!) is Dagoba. I checked out Birdsong and Coffee - A Wake Up Call from RVML.