FROM FIRST SUSTAINABLE COFFEE CONFERENCE TO
      COFFEE COOPERATIVE

In September 1996 Danette Rhoads, general manager of Heine Brothers’ Coffee, and Gary Heine attended the First Sustainable Coffee Conference in Washington D.C. This conference was held at the National Zoo and sponsored by the Migratory Bird Center of The Smithsonian Institution.

Sustainable coffee is coffee that can be grown, processed and sold today, tomorrow and 100 years from now without harming people, native soils or cultures either now or then.

As the "modern" growing practices promoted by the United States and the "sun" coffee it produced became more popular (80% of Colombia coffee is sun grown), many of the songbirds to lose their winter home so they perished. This drop in migratory songbirds is what got the Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian interested in putting on this sustainable coffee conference. At this conference, coffee farmers, processors, coffee exporters, importers, roasters and retailers came together for the first time to discuss ways to make the coffee industry sustainable.