This year in celebration of Earth Day, our buying team traveled to one of the most vital wildlife nature reserves and virgin forests in Colombia. The El Colibrí coffee, grown across the valley from the unspoiled natural park called El Tatamá, or “the Grandfather of Rivers” in the indigenous language, is a model of sustainability.
Producer Angie Lopez’s family farm is a highly sustainable coffee operation, home to dozens of bird and mammal species. Thanks to the healthy forest and its surrounding ecosystem, Angie doesn’t need to use pesticides on her crops as the protected forest helps maintain a healthy balanced soil. The farm is teeming with wildlife, and is an important corridor between the central and western mountain ranges of the Andes for many important endemic and migratory species, including many of the coffee’s namesake: the hummingbird.
Birds are key indicators of a coffee farm’s well being. A large bird population is a sign that a farm is healthy as they’re dependent on ecological sustainability to thrive. For any ecosystem, the presence of birds is indispensable as they pollinize, disperse seeds, control pests, among other benefits. Additionally, birds use coffee trees to build their nests and other important types of habitats. Thus, bird watching and coffee cultivation go hand in hand and are mutually beneficial activities.
Angie and her visitors have seen over 50 bird species on the farm and around her community. Apart from her dedication to sustainable farming, Lopez also heads up a program of school-age children wherein she teaches bird watching, plant identification and natural preservation to instill vital scientific and ancestral knowledge into the next generations of farmers.
The aptly named El Colibrí, Spanish for hummingbird, is a vibrantly floral and tropical coffee with notes of peach, white flowers, vanilla and a sweetness reminiscent of cacao and malta. We are committed to continue supporting initiatives that promote healthy coffee ecosystems, with the hopes that Angie will become a conservation benchmark in the region and will help to ensure the longevity of the land sacred to the people who have lived there hundreds of years.
