The issue arose the other day of whether or not there is a difference between healthy organic coffee and one hundred percent natural coffee. One of our readers recently asked this question,

Is it possible to find any coffee which is not merely organic, but ‘100% natural,’ that is, it is neither artificially decaffeinated NOR CONTAINS ANY ADDED CAFFEINE beyond what is in the coffee bean naturally.

Thank you

JL

Our immediate response to JL was,

Yes, it certainly is.

100% organic coffee is grown, processed, stored, transported, and roasted without the addition of artificial fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, or fungicides. In addition, no extra caffeine is added either.

It is possible to decaffeinate coffee but good organic coffees have no added caffeine beyond what nature puts in the coffee bean.

This question got us thinking. Is one percent natural coffee only found in the wild? Or, can a coffee farmer bring shade grown organic coffee, grown under strictly natural conditions, to market? Coffee is, after all, a plant that comes from the highlands of East Africa. The first recorded use of coffee as a beverage comes from as early as the 13th century and it is generally agreed that the plant grew naturally and people simply picked the ripe berries. By the 1400’s coffee was known of at Sufi Islam monasteries in Yemen and by the 1500’s the drink was imbibed in Persia. Somewhere along the line someone had to have carried the seeds and planted them in order to start a coffee farm. Remember that no one was making synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides in the middle of the last millennium. Thus we might say that folks in that era all drank one hundred percent natural coffee, organic coffee as it were.

How is Organic Coffee Natural?

Organic coffee certification tells us that the soil in which the coffee was grown must have been verified as free from prohibited substances for at least three years. In addition there must have been distinct boundaries between land on which organic coffee was grown and land where pesticides, herbicides, and prohibited chemical fertilizers might have been used. This practice guarantees that the drift of substances sprayed or otherwise applied on adjacent land will not contaminate the organic plot of land. Organic coffee certification includes the adherence to a specific and verifiable plan for all practices and procedures from planting to crop maintenance, to harvest, de-husking, bagging, transport, roasting, packaging, and final transport. Along the way procedures must be in place at every step to insure that there is no contamination of the healthy organic coffee produced in pristine soil with regular coffee produced on soil exposed to herbicides, pesticides, and organic fertilizers. In short, organic coffee is grown in pretty close to the same conditions as one hundred percent natural coffee found in the wild. Shade grown organic coffee is typically spaced out as well, further mimicking a plant growing naturally.

When Does Coffee Cross the Line from Natural?

The obvious ways in which commercially grown coffee is not one hundred percent natural coffee are that plants are bunched together in order to increase crop yield. Plants are treated with a variety of chemicals in order to increase yield and reduce crop loss from pests and diseases. And newer varieties of coffee can be grown in full sun which is rarely the case with one hundred percent natural coffee. To the extent that someone intentionally plants coffee, organic coffee is not one hundred percent natural coffee. To the extent that the organic coffee that you drink is the same as might have been found in the wild and processed under strictly organic conditions, good organic coffee is, in fact, one hundred percent organic coffee.

Thanks, readers, for your comments.