The Chapel Hill Herald, December 30, 2000, pg. 3

Coffee roaster makes natural connection between birds, beans

by Lois Carol Wheatley

CHAPEL HILL—A rutted, unpaved road twists and turns through the woods and winds its way up a steep hill to Chatham County’s highest elevation point. Along the way, it passes a tall TV tower where, at certain times of the year, under the right conditions, several species of migratory raptors might be seen perching, their bright eyes fixed on the hazy blue and purple horizon.

Around the final bend, the road arrives at the summit, where there is a modest-size house with an east-facing porch. That porch would be a haven for anyone with a keen appreciation of sunrises, with an ardent love for early birds flocking to about a dozen or so feeders surrounding it, with an utter reverence for a fresh-brewed cup of first-quality coffee.

That porch is the natural habitat of Fred J. Houk, Jr., founder and president of Counter Culture Coffee. Houk might not have much influence with the sunrises, but he is a passionate activist and advocate for the birds and the coffee.

He started Counter Culture Coffee in 1995 when the connection between the two became, to his mind, painfully evident. Agricultural practices in South America, particularly in regions where coffee is grown, have been destructive of bird habitats for the past several decades.

Historically, coffee has been grown as an understory crop in Africa; that is, it flourished as small trees or as large shrubs beneath the towering shade trees of that continent. During the second half of the 20th century, however, coffee emerged as a major player on the global commodities market.

“To make a long story short, it wound up in places like Guatemala,” Houk said. “It was transferred around the world in various ways to grow and develop, and the thing that has been damaging the planet, in my opinion, is the practice known as technification.”

A number of years ago, the United States developed a new coffee hybrid in an effort to help the poor farmers of underdeveloped countries make more money by raising more product. The new species produced up to three times as much coffee in about the same space, but it also required more sunlight, which necessitated cutting down the overstory, those towering shade trees.

There was an immediate spike in coffee production and reduction in the costs of doing business. But over time, the net effect has been a glut in the world commodity market. Countries that continue to grow coffee under the canopy of shade trees have been watching their industry destroyed by the new coffee hybrid and its lower prices.

The other unforeseen consequence has been climate change problems that, Houk said, are only beginning to be felt. “What we’re seeing now, 20 years later, is a loss of biodiversity,” he said. “The topsoil is being lost, there has been damage to rivers, and what else we don’t know yet.”

Where there typically is a trade-off between economics and environment, in this case both causes are losing ground. “If it’s not warming, it’s climate extremes,” he said. “So one of the 53 things we all need to think about is how we drink our cup of coffee—what happens when you take out millions of shade trees that were nice carbon sinks.”

Houk’s efforts to save the trees have included persuading large farms already deforested to replant new trees and to halt others that may be on the verge of converting their practices. “There’s a farm in Nicaragua that we work with that has planted 100,000 trees in the last year,” he said. “That’s the victory. There is no other company like ours to the extent that we are doing it, period. We have always been about five years ahead of the curve.”

Prices rise dramatically with any organically grown and environmentally conscious production method, but for Counter Culture Coffee there has been a hidden advantage. Raising coffee the old-fashioned way produces a beverage that tastes much better, Houk said. The company has thrived despite its higher prices because its coffee—to quote a hair-dye commercial—is worth it.

“It’s like wine,” he said. “If you have deep roots and you have plants that are working with more difficulty to produce their fruit—which is what coffee is—they produce more complex fruit.”

He said his theory was confirmed recently by a study that furnished findings consistent with his own ideas about the inherent qualities of the old heirloom coffee varieties. “It tastes like it was grown a few thousand feet higher in altitude, and in coffee that’s worth money,” he said. “The higher up it is, the better it is. This is the first time people are giving scientific credibility to what I was tasting in the cup.”

Triangle chefs, as well, taste what he tastes in the cup. And residents can visit their local Wellspring and check out the “flavors” of Counter Culture Coffee on the shelf: Irregardless Café, Crooks Corner, Nana’s, Magnolia Grill. Counter Culture Coffee is a strictly wholesale operation. It roasts its acclaimed beans to local chefs’ specifications at its facility in Research Triangle Park.

“Right out of the chute, we hit a home run,” Houk said. “Within a year [of starting the company], we were the largest one between Washington and Atlanta, and we don’t have any shops. Behind the scenes we sell to almost every good restaurant and hotel from Asheville to Wilmington.”

The company made the Inc 500 list this year and employs about 20 people. Whole Foods, which owns Wellspring, has stocked the product in its stores up and down the East Coast. The Wild Bird Centers of America chain also sells the coffee nationally, and it is turning up on the West Coast in espresso bars in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where environmentalists have been putting out the word.

“I didn’t want this to be exclusive, and I sure didn’t want this to be a gimmick,” Houk said, “but even the big guys after five years of laughing at us are at least putting one bag on the shelf that is shade grown and organic.”

Houk leans on his porch railing and raises his binoculars to look out at the gray chickadees and brown nuthatches that flit from one feeder to another, and seems to see far beyond them. What he believes he sees, further out there, is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

About 80 percent of the birds that live in the woods of the eastern United States actually spend the majority of their year in places like Central America, he said, migrating to areas ranging from southern Mexico to the Amazon Basin. Many of them make the entire 650-mile over-water flight from New Orleans or Houston, across the Gulf of Mexico and into the Yucatan region of Mexico. They spend their winter months looking for food in places that, for more years than anyone can begin to count, have harbored an abundance of insects and fruit.

“Birds and beans are actually a fairly easy connection for people to understand,” Houk said. “We’re also trying to save habitat for monkeys and fish and ants.”