Organic farmers build healthy soils by fertilizing and building soil organic matter. In the shade coffee farm, the natural leaf compost and hulls from the coffee are returned to the soil as fertilizers. This produces healthy coffee plants that are better able to resist disease and insects. Organic coffee farmers' primary strategy in controlling pests and diseases is prevention. The farmers also rely on a diverse population of birds as well as soil organisms, insects, and other natural ways of keeping pests in check.

When trees are cut down to "technify" or "modernize" a coffee farm, the environment is no longer a balanced, self-nurturing system. New varieties of coffee have been developed to tolerate high levels of sun and increase yield. However, this "sun coffee" requires greater amounts of chemicals to support the greater growth rate, and pesticides to control the insects that were previously managed by the bird population. In addition, the soil is rapidly depleted of natural nutrients. Its texture changes from dark, sweet-smelling earth to a gray and lifeless.

The movement from traditional shade grown coffee to sun grown coffee is analogous to the "Green Revolution" in wheat, corn, and rice farming. This revolution produced new varieties of these crops that required higher input of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, supporting a gigantic, world encompassing, argi-chemical industry.

With coffee there is still hope for saving the remaining old, shade coffee farming environments, and the earth that supports them.