Save our Soil

Recently, I came across a new community outreach project that Counter Culture Coffee is starting called, "Save our Soil." The basic gist of the campaign is that convential farming is depleting the top soil that allows for plants to flourish, and that is is especially true for coffee growing regions. In order to prevent soil degradation orangic farming practises need to be implemented, and the only way to do that is if we the consumers buy organic coffee.

Here is an excerpt from the press release:

"The quick bursts of productions afforded by conventional, chemical based farming are ultimately unsustainable. In fact, chemical-dependent is destroying soil health, leaving farms with increasingly barren earth," said Counter Culture Director of Coffee and co-founder Peter Giuliano. " Extraordinary coffee, which are passionately dedicated to protecting, needs rich healthy soil to survive. When soils suffer, great coffee, and beyond that, great food, is impossible.

Now I tend to be a little skeptical of outreach programs like that because to me they seem a lot of times like mere green washing a product, just look at the large scale orangic farms that are organic but not really in the spirit of being organic. However, in this case I am really drawn to it, a lot of it has to do with a lot of factors, mainly Counter Culture Coffee appears from my eyes to practice what they preach. If you are able to browse their site and see the coffees they offer you will notice that a lot of them are direct trade and/or organic.

The nice thing that they stress is why we should choose organic. I believe that a lot of times we are just told to go organic because it's better and that doesn't really work. This is especially true for coffee, because going organic is not a benefit for the consumer as I highly doubt any negative impacts makes it to the actual cup since the fruit is processed so much before finally being brewed. So by focusing in on the environmental impacts and just flat out saying that better quality coffee comes from this process is encouraging for me to see.

Speaking of being encouraged, I encourage everyone to take a look at their campaign and events they will be holding in their training centers.

And obviously, there are plenty of direct trade and organic coffees on Roaste to choose from!