Environmental Criteria
We guarantee that all coffee sourced from Cedro Alto comes from member farms that comply with our strick environmental criteria, intended to preserve and recuperate local ecology so that farmers can make a living while disturbing the land and ecosystems lent to them are disturbed as little as possible.
Native Hardwood Shade
Cedro Alto Collective member farmers must have native hardwood shade trees in their coffee plots.
This is extremely rare in Colombia where 75% of coffee is totally deforested monoculture, and a large portion of the remaining 25% has only non-native banana or plantain trees.
Having native shade in coffee plots is extremely important for local ecology and biodiversity, for the productive sustainability and security of the farm, and supports superior cup quality. More info here.
Those who do not have native shade are encouraged to recuperate it, allowing the collective to purchase them native tree saplings, and permitted to participate on a provisional basis until tree shade is recuperated.
Cedro Alto Collective members do not use synthetic pesticides, including insecticides intended to kill pests such as borrer beetle, and herbicides such as glyphosate (Roundup) often used to control weeds between coffee plants in industrialized monoculture systems.
Pesticide-free
Responsible Water Use & Waste Management
Collective members parctice responsible water use and waste mamagement.
They fully ferment "honey water" used to wash coffee cherries before returning it to the earth. If not performed, acidic fruit pulp acidifies soil and waterways, seriously harming ecosystems.
Coffee fruit is also fermented fully in isolation so as not to acidify soil and water and so that it can later be used as natural fertilizer.