Modern problems community solutions
Specialty coffee was a movement founded to solve two problems for two different groups of people. Coffee producers experienced the C price in a free fall––dropping by 50% almost overnight after the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) in 1989––which left them grappling with how value would remain in their countries. And in the Global North, a revolution of small to medium sized coffee roasters was blossoming but having trouble finding coffees to fulfill the growing demand for unique lots and value chains.
With the help of the U.S. and the rest of the Global North, coffee production became greatly technified with identifying and cultivating new cultivars, processing and increasing yields. For instance, Cup of Excellence was specifically developed to recognize individual producers for their hard work and help with the fallout of the ICA.
Fast forward 35 years now and it can be argued the coffee industry has solved one of its two original problems. Great coffees have become relatively easy to find, at almost any price, anywhere, at almost anytime––within reason.
But for producers, looking for better pricing is still a struggle. According to Colombia University’s Center for Sustainable Development paper Ensuring Economic Viability and Sustainability of Coffee Production––led by President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Jeffery Sachs––the average price of the C market adjusted for inflation has been $1.70. Now it’s half of what it was from 1962-1989 at $3.80 a lb. To make matters worse, the value retained by coffee producing countries is now 10% and during 1962-1989 was between 30-50%. The Sustainable Coffee Transaction Guide Return To Origin project made estimates that value retained by specialty coffee production was on average 20%.
This has created new problems in the coffee industry––for the Global North experiencing the highest prices since the 1970’s––and for coffee producing countries, declining yields, forced migration patterns, social fragmentation, and ecological damage.
Essentially, communities that grow coffee have faithfully met the demand for better coffees, even now to the point of essentially subsidizing for the rest of the value chain to their detriment. But it has come at a great cost––communally and ecologically. Many of specialty coffee’s unintended consequences are just starting to be explored.
It has left me with the question, how do we solve these new problems in the specialty coffee industry?
The hidden cost of treating industry wide problems as individual solutions
Third wave coffee, in many ways, has been a movement against large coffee companies who made coffee producers invisible. One of the main ways we have sought to make coffee producers visible has been to focus on the individual producer, and unique flavors found in micro-climates. By purchasing these lots we reward their hard work.
But this strategy may have unintended consequences if applied universally to all types of communities that grow coffee. The focus on making the individual doesn’t always mean better.
Limitations of scaling the individual
The ideal of highlighting the individual can come at the risk of the community. Anthropologist Ted Fischer found this to be the case when he did his ethnography with smallholders in the highlands of Central America. Third wave buyers looking for great coffee and connection would go into communities and cooperatives, separate lots, and pay far beyond the community price. It’s an obvious win, right?
But when he interviewed these same producers––many said they embraced growing specialty coffee because it was a tool that gave them the freedom to own their own lands and build a future for their children. Now, they feel torn––between the fiduciary responsibility of their households, and to the community they also live with. The introduction of outside buyers paying high rates for individual lots incidentally created an environment of jealousy, suspicion and rugged individuality.
Sustainability Governance Researcher, Dr. Janina Grabs has described this phenomenon as the single exit fallacy. It’s an analogy of a theatre that catches on fire, but there’s only one exit which happens to be the entrance. Those closest to the exit have the easiest time to escaping, but as soon as more people get up to flee, the more congested it becomes, and it’s harder and harder to make it out unscathed. For specialty coffee, those who sit closest to the exit–– i.e., having the best coffees–– have the best chance to make it out, but it leaves so many more at risk of being caught in the fire of cheap prices.
Global scaling of individual producers can come at a great cost. By making individual producers visible, we’ve also made communities invisible.
One way to avoid this is simply to have very honest conversations with communities that grow coffee.
From visibility to relationality: Kaad Kaapi and Forest Coffee
I joined Osito over a year ago and have been working in green coffee for the last 9 years. When I heard the story of Kaad Kappi and its project devoted to forest coffee, I felt it was a template for many coffee growing regions.
While Indian coffee producers do not have the exact same history as many Central American producers, they have common threads––the value of community and land. Kaad Kaapi is a wonderful collective of producers in the Chikmagalur and Coorg districts of Karnataka. It is a small group of coffee growers with a common goal of rigorous environmental protection––despite a wide array of backgrounds, ages and even religions. They are a brotherhood (and one sister!) bound by their foresight and knowing that without a concerted effort to preserve the natural environment, flora & fauna, we are on a fast track to a world that is an increasingly challenging place in which one can thrive. Conservation has become an act of communal stewardship.
Grown in the Western Ghats, this area is considered by the World Heritage Site as one of the eight “hottest biodiversity hotspots.” Like most forests, it’s currently under threat––so local populations are taking it upon themselves to protect the land with coffee acting as a tool for care.
Originally practiced in Ethiopia, forest coffee is a different form of coffee cultivation––where the life of the forest comes first, and coffee cultivation comes second. It means the migration of native Elephants found in the Western Ghats are prioritized, even if it costs them trampling on a few coffee trees along the way.
Their philosophy is quite simple: without profitable coffee farms as the economic MEANS of preserving native trees, other plants and animals of all sizes, the forest will swiftly get replaced by other commercially destructive activity with easily-realized, short-term gains but at the expense of long term environmental and economic sustainability, like so many other communities and their lands.
And their way of creating profitable coffee farms to protect the forest is the same as the indigenous producers in the highlands of Central America––Quality.
Quality coffee was specifically chosen instead of other commercial endeavors by Kaadkaapi because of how it mixes well with the ecosystem and biodiversity found in the forest. They found coffee aids in soil nutrition while simultaneously providing shelter for local wildlife. Coffee is there to support the forest and the community––not the other way around.
Spending time with this group is not only an inspiration because of their collective response to collective issues––but it’s just simply fun. Even though the challenges we collectively face can be daunting, Kaad Kaapi still finds resolute joy. During each visit, there were a good many laughs shared in Chikmagalur leaving us this meeting feeling reinvigorated.
For me, Our partnersihp with Kaad Kaapi is important because it demonstrate’s whole point of being relational is care–– that care is the preservation of each other and for one another and the local environment. If we are to leave a better planet for future generations, it’s going to take a collective effort, likely led by indigenous knowledge of living with the forest. If specialty coffee is to solve its new problems, it must be in relationship, with local communities as experts. Kaad Kaapi is an example of how specialty coffee can be used as a tool to foster community and our environment––instead of individualizing and extorting it.