Milton JungThis is the type of bird that eats the coffee.
When Jacu birds starting eating the coffee berries at Henrique Sloper’s farm in Brazil, Modern Farmer reports, he was upset. Until he remembered his days as a surfer in Indonesia, where he’d come across civet-poop coffee:
“I realized I could try something similar with Camocim and the Jacu bird, but coming up with the idea was only half the battle,” says Sloper. “The real challenge lay in convincing my coffee pickers that instead of berries, they needed to be hunting for bird-shit.”
But money buys a lot of things, including the willingness of workers to hunt through bird poop. Now Sloper’s farm is making Jacu bird-poop coffee, which sells for around $24 per pound. It’s good for business and it’s good for the birds: Sloper’s biodynamic farm has 99 different types of trees besides coffee trees and is, says Modern Farmer, “a dream habitat for the Jacu.”
At least he didn’t go as far with the inspiration as that guy who started marketing himself-poop coffee …
