Spring is in full bloom, and if you haven't already found time, make some to stop and smell the flowers. The bees are buzzing, the birds are chirping---and a groundbreaking new study has found that coffee beans are larger and more plentiful when these those two helpers work together to protect coffee plants.

This new finding is essential for the entire coffee industry, which generates 26 billion dollars annually. These animals help everyone, from farmers and corporations to the everyday coffee lover who depends on coffee for their morning buzz (pun very much intended). Without the help of the birds and the bees, some of which even travel thousands of miles, coffee farms would see a 25% drop in their crop yields, roughly $1,066 per hectare (100 acres) of coffee.

This new study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the first to showcase these findings, using real-world experiments from 30 coffee farms. Researchers found that nature's contributions, such as bee pollination and pest control by the birds, produce larger yields when combined than either does alone.

Lead author Alejandra Martinez-Salinas of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) says, "Until now, researchers have typically calculated the benefits of nature separately, and then simply added them up. But nature is an interacting system, full of important synergies and trade-offs. We show the ecological and economic importance of these interactions in one of the first experiments at realistic scales in actual farms."

For the experiment, researchers from the United States and Latin America manipulated coffee plants across 30 different farms, using large nets and small lace bags to exclude birds and bees from the trees. The scientists then tested four key scenarios: one study allowed access to birds, one allowed access to bees, one excluded both birds and bees, and the fourth recreated a natural environment where birds and bees were allowed access to the trees. Among the conclusions: Birds are essential for natural pest control by eating insects like the coffee berry borer, one of the most damaging pests that affect coffee production worldwide.

"These results suggest that past assessments of individual ecological services—including major global efforts like IPBES -- may underestimate the benefits biodiversity provides to agriculture and human wellbeing," says Taylor Ricketts of the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Environment. "These positive interactions mean ecosystem services are more valuable together than separately."

"One important reason we measure these contributions is to help protect and conserve the many species that we depend on and sometimes take for granted," says Natalia Aristizábal, a Ph.D. candidate at UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

University of Vermont. "The secret to better coffee? The birds and the bees: Study calculates winged helpers’ effects on coffee—while pioneering a better way to measure nature’s ‘unpaid labor’." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 April 2022. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220404152702.htm.

So the next time you enjoy a cup of SunriseCoffeeLA, perhaps take a moment to appreciate the wondrous, wonderful world we're a part of. We'll keep doing our part and work hard to ensure that you experience a consistently excellent cup of coffee, whether in the office impressing clients, as an after-dinner treat with dessert, or slowly waking up on a lazy weekend morning.