The morning coffee

The taste for coffee is acquired. Few of us could say that from the first time we tried it, we knew that it would be the drink that would accompany all our mornings. It is acquired because like so many things in human sociability, it depends on our culture. And our culture and history are coffee growers. This is summarized in two words: biocultural heritage.

Biocultural heritage is a system of reciprocity and balance between human and nature, which includes all those practices and knowledge generated together, from genetic and phenotypic aspects, to landscape and ecosystem aspects of the environment (Lindholm and Ekbiom, 2019). Much of these practices and knowledge originate from the dynamism that characterizes biological and cultural resources, as they have the capacity to interact with each other, resulting, for example, in the domestication of certain crops. An important process that allows this confrontation of interactions and syncretisms is migration; several dynamics of our daily lives exist because before there was a migratory process that supports them. An exemplary case is the domestication of coffee in America, coffee culture in Mexico and that cup that we taste and that we proudly brag about when it has the characteristic label: “made in Mexico”.

There is a famous phrase by Dobzhansky -evolutionary biologist whose work allowed the rise of Neo-Darwinism- that goes “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”; although we are not here today to analyze the veracity of the sentence, I would like to transmute it into the framework of this text: plenty What we know today as biocultural heritage makes sense in the light of migration. Culture, like biological resources, are anything but stillness; they are highly dynamic and are always in constant transformation, migration and evolution (certainly an idea that I think Dobzhansky would approve of). It's as if biocultural heritage were a story that constantly rewrites itself. This story began just 300 years ago in Mexico, and for now, I don't see an end to it.

About coffee and its culture

It seems a paradox to talk about Mexican biocultural heritage and coffee at the same time: coffee is not a fruit native to Mexico, it did not exist or was consumed in Mesoamerica, it migrated from the other side of the world, arrived just less than three centuries ago and yet, it is an inseparable part of our daily lives and our identity as Mexicans.

How coffee arrived in Mexico remains a subject of study, however, it is known that French migrants from Martinique presented this bean - which would soon become Mexican gold - in Veracruz ports in the middle of the 18th century; by the end of the 19th century, Mexico was already a recognized exporter of coffee. The history of Mexican coffee growing is a rise in emotions and prices. At the beginning of its arrival on the continent, Mexico quickly positioned itself together with Brazil and Colombia as a quality producer (Pérez Akaki, 2013). Then came the first economic downturn -although of great social benefit- with the Mexican Revolution and the agrarian distribution. Although it involved a fall in foreign investment, thanks to this, land was endowed and returned to those who worked it, and after 1920, a period of international regulation took shape that allowed the price of coffee to be stable in the market, which generated an even greater acceptance of this grain by the producing peasantry (Renard, 2010).

By the middle of the 20th century, Mexico was already a properly coffee growing country with an international presence. 40% of the surface area of the state of Veracruz was planted with coffee, a similar situation was the case in Oaxaca and Chiapas, with 32% and 26% respectively (Ibid.). These three states accounted for more than 80% of domestic production by 1950. However, at the end of the nineties, specifically in 1989 in the first year of Carlos Salinas de Gortari's term in office, the American continent changed and the free market became the new commercial order that falsely led us to believe that now the peasantry (who mostly grows coffee in the case of Mexico) would be abundant and would receive just enough for their work.

As is obvious to think, coffee prices fell, plunging coffee growers into a perennial crisis to this day. Not receiving a legitimate income, three situations have characterized coffee growing in Mexico after the free market: 1) the migration of the peasantry who, unable to survive on coffee, decided to abandon the practice that once allowed them a just life, 2) the subsequent environmental crisis resulting from the displacement of traditional agricultural knowledge and the opening to monocultures, and 3) efforts to claim and reappropriate coffee, focused on other forms of production and other fairer markets. We will delve into these last two points later. With regard to the first situation, I have sometimes come to believe that this migration that brought us prosperity centuries ago in the form of coffee, is now transformed into dispossession, the ultimate objective of these policies of deregulation of the coffee sector, misnamed policies of economic liberalization: it is painful to know that Mexico, being the world's leading producer of organic coffee, exports 80% and instead consumes more soluble coffee than the rest of the countries on the planet (AMECAFE, 2017). This is the consequence of an economy that does not look after those who sustain it.

Of coffee and its agro-ecosystems

Coffee likes shade, yes, and also height; humidity is important, it likes mountainous slopes such as the Gulf and the Pacific, but perhaps the characteristic it most appreciates is the biodiversity with which it grows: the one that gives nutrients to the soil, shade against the sun, heterogeneity to the landscape, controls herbivores and gives it organoleptic characteristics such as citrus or chocolate touches. For coffee, this was not always the case because its place of origin - East Africa, quite possibly Ethiopia - does not have these qualities that Mexico enjoys; coffee underwent an intense process of adaptation to local agroforestry systems, the fruit of Mexican agrarian and cultural history.

Since this small exotic grain arrived, its acceptance and adoption has been enormous, so it is cultivated in many regions of the country and under very different systems. Of the four systems I will mention, two of the latter completely threaten their existence and that of their people - coffee growers - and represent the main problem of coffee in Mexico and Latin America.

The most traditional form of cultivation occurs in mountain systems: implies the minimum impact on the ecosystem, since coffee trees are planted in specific areas where the lowest substrate of the forest (undergrowth) and nothing else is weeded. Due to its technique, it maintains the original composition of the vegetation, and for this reason, it is the least widespread form of cultivation, assuming native forest ecosystems, something that in our country is difficult to find anymore. Yields are low, not because of the soil's inability to nourish or because of the need for pesticides, but because it is such a biodiverse area, maintaining the balance between coffee trees and other vegetation does not allow mass production, but it does allow for family reach. This system, but with a more structured planning, is known as traditional polyculture, and it is the second way that exists in Mexico to cultivate coffee, with the difference that it manages the agroecosystem and then, coffee trees are interspersed with bananas, mameyes, colorín, cacao, avocados, guavas, sapotes and oranges (Moguel and Toledo, 1996); this is very important when it comes to defining the aromas of coffee. Both systems promote ecosystem conservation, landscape heterogeneity, carbon capture, use comprehensive pest management and take care of the traditional agricultural practices associated with them. Both systems are also the reason why coffee and its cultivation are part of Mexico's biocultural heritage.

Among the most conventional, most harmful, least regenerative and most widespread systems, are the commercial polyculture and coffee monoculture in the sun. Commercial polyculture is nothing more than the clearing of native vegetation to generate an artificial ecosystem that provides coffee trees with “diversity”. Diversity that is mostly introduced and exotic. While this system creates forest cover that allows coffee to grow under shade, almost none of this shade is native vegetation. However, coffee in the sun is a widely distributed system in Latin America and is the most aggressive and the one that most undermines the resilience of coffee itself. Coffee in the sun involves a monoculture, highly fertilized and poisoned with pesticides, where no tree species provides shade, much less the benefits associated with biodiversity. Brazil was the main producer of coffee for a long time, and this happened because the coffee it sowed was coffee that grew under the sun (Rice, 1996). Even more dangerous, these two cultivation systems are highly sensitive to pests and are responsible for the fact that rust - the nightmare of all coffee growers - cannot be eradicated, much less controlled in certain plantations.

The incorrect management of coffee plantations violates the biological diversity of the ecosystem and the environmental services it offers, erodes soils, makes it impossible to filter water, threatens pollinators and animals that find homes in roots and leaves, affects carbon capture, but above all, being a plant of enormous sociocultural importance, violates the way of life of those who depend on it (Perfect et al. , 2010).

About coffee and its heritage

I often wonder if there is an answer to the coffee crisis in Mexico. A part of me, that dark and pessimistic side that observes the abandonment of the countryside and the lack of regulation of the sector, says no. Deep down I know that it is. More than knowing it, there is compelling evidence to show that this tradition, this heritage, is being recovered and protected.

As we have seen, coffee is not a common crop. A lot of history, a lot of culture and a lot of mountains support it: coffee is a socio-ecosystem in itself, and to take care of him, we must begin to understand and manage him as such. It is impossible to alienate producers from the production chain, or to alienate coffee itself from the environment where it grows, or worse, to alienate the coffee farmer. So the solution, as always, must be comprehensive. Let's take an example of our own:

In Toroto, we work with coffee farms in Chiapas. We work to produce carbon credits that allow farm owners to mitigate emissions within their own production chain (Insetting), so that your coffee is carbon neutral. Beyond the environmental benefits that carbon compensation brings, by conserving and properly managing coffee plantations to have ecosystems capable of storing carbon in their soils and vegetation, we are, above all, protecting the biocultural heritage: protecting those who cultivate and care for coffee, their families, their ways of life and a coffee tradition of management and management of this resource and its environment. In this case, Making your production chain carbon neutral is more than an added value for the company, since all these links are integrated, from cultivation to commercialization, in order to generate a common good. The strengthening of producers, their families, their processes and their products builds a social subject that is key to the well-being of their community (Moguel and Toledo, 1996), which goes hand in hand with the construction of a just, sustainable, culturally appropriate and competitive agri-food system that allows the country to return to its position as a global reservoir of high quality coffee.

On the other hand, the capacity of an area to capture carbon goes directly hand in hand with its biodiversity and richness. The coffee farms that Toroto works with are farms committed to promoting sustainable production systems. In this way -and as far as the environment is concerned- conserving the farm's natural environment for carbon management purposes involves conserving the region itself: Perfecto and Vandermeer, two agroecologists specializing in Latin American coffee plantations, highlight the capacity of this agroforestry system to generate by itself a new ecosystem service, that of self-regulation of pests, which emanates from the ecological complexity that this system naturally has. What does this mean? A coffee plantation with a high associated diversity is capable of self-regulating its largest predator, rust, without the need for pesticides. Simply, ensuring that insect populations - generally those most affected by pesticides and pesticides - are stable and thrive. This is revolutionary and goes against any policy of alienating the coffee farmer from his crop. This finding speaks of resilience, both ecological and of the sector.

Life is a tangle of ecological connections. Biocultural heritage is a tangle of meanings, traditions, migrations, syncretisms, organisms, practices and diversity. Sometimes the crops that give us identity are not ours, but we adopt them as such. Other times, those same crops open the door for us to recognize that our relationship with nature was always there, only a little fractured along the way, but always latent. Coffee is not ours, but it writes its parallel story to ours and it is our duty as coffee drinkers to demand and choose an ecologically reciprocal trait.

“40 years ago, consumers wanted to drink coffee; now they want to drink coffee with history. And now more, a coffee with history, sustainable and carbon neutral.”

- José Javier Muñoz, administrator of Finca Guadalupe Zajú

References

• Lindholm, K. and Ekbiom, A. (2019). A framework for exploring and managing biocultural heritage. Anthropocene. 25:100-195.
• Moguel, P. and Toledo, V.M. (1996). Coffee in Mexico, ecology, indigenous culture and sustainability. Sciences, No. 43, July-September, pp. 40-51.
• Perez Akaki, P. (2013). The 19th and 20th centuries in national coffee culture. Journal of History, 67: 159-199.
• Perfect, I.; Vandemeer, J. and Philpott, S. (2010). Ecological complexity and pest control in an organic coffee plantation: unveiling an autonomous ecosystem service. Agroecology (5): 41-51.
• Renard, M. (2010). The Mexican Coffee Crisis. Latin American Perspectives, 37(2), 21-33.
• Rice. R. (1996). Traditional Coffee and Biodiversity in Northern Latin America. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Congress of Latin Americanists Geographers in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.