Coffee beans were grown in the shade up until the 1970s, where sun-cultivation was proposed as an idea to increase production. As this idea was implemented, it slowly became more common than shade-growing coffee. However, sun growing coffee creates a vast array of environmental problems along with it. This includes deforestation, an example being how 2.5 million acres of forest was cleared in Central America for sun-cultivation of coffee. Soil erosion, water pollution, and lack of biodiversity in the crops also go hand-in-hand with the implementation of this change to sun-cultivation. More fertilizers and pesticides must be used to compensate for the missing protection of the trees as well.

In the past decade, the coffee industry has been on a decline as there is now a surplus of coffee beans, leaving the price of coffee beans to slowly decline. Farmers in producing countries, like Brazil, are abandoning their farms, for a pound of coffee beans is barely amounting to a U.S. dollar. We must ban the sun-cultivation of coffee beans and return to shade-growing, which is not only environmentally safe, but can also possibly aid the problem of the coffee bean surplus in the markets.