The CEC’s trinational cooperation on shade-grown coffee had direct trade benefits for the three countries. In 2003, Starbucks purchased more than 1.6 million pounds of shade-grown coffee from Mexico and invested $200,000 in Conservation International’s Conservation Coffee program. In addition, the CEC’s shade-grown coffee initiative resulted in the development of ecological criteria for shade-grown coffee farming, which were incorporated into the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s “Bird Friendly” labeling system. The success of this work led to the involvement of some 700 farmers who received a 60-percent price premium over local prices and exported 50 percent more than the year before the program started.
