Coffee and Chocolate

Part 1 on making ehtical choices of holiday treats.

Coffee beans and chocolate; coffee fruit on the plant; bags of roasted coffee; a mug of coffee with a pile of roasted beans

f you are a consumer of coffee or of chocolate, I have a question for you: Could you easily find the identity of the farmer or farm cooperative and the country of origin of the coffee or chocolate you consume? I’ll return to this question later. This story is about coffee. I will add another story about chocolate shortly.

My parents loved good coffee and good chocolate. My father, a Dutch operatic baritone, often brought home fine Dutch chocolate. My mother, a science writer and editor, loved Ethiopian coffee and brought home a pound of fresh-roasted coffee every couple of weeks. When I was 12, I assumed the family duty of making coffee. I used a hand-cranked grinder to process the beans, then made my mother’s coffee with a filter, what is now called pour-over coffee, but that we called Mellita coffee, the brand name of the paper filters. I began drinking coffee at age 12 and have never stopped.

I am joined in my coffee habit every day by over a billion people worldwide. The reputation of coffee has varied during that time. For many years, health “experts” discouraged coffee consumption on the assumption that the stimulation of caffeine was bad for us. Now we know, based on actual research, that coffee, especially black coffee, is a real health drink. We’ll discuss this more in a later story. Now, I want to focus on the future of coffee.

Coffee originates in the mountains of Ethiopia, at about the same place that we humans originated. Coffee was a food, the whole fruit consumed as an energy source, often carried in balls of whole fruit and animal fat, a sort of African pemmican. There was a single species, Coffea arabica, that soon left Ethiopia and was cultivated worldwide in the “coffee belt” roughly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Coffea arabica, known as arabica coffee, was joined in international trade by another species from further west in Africa, Coffea canephora, known in trade as robusta coffee.

And that is what we drink today. Arabica produces a higher quality, tastier coffee. Robusta is used largely for commodity coffee (see below) including most of the world’s instant coffee.

Now we come to the problems that challenge our consumption of coffee today:

• Coffee is all the rage in wealthy countries, but the 100 million people who produce all that coffee are mostly mired in poverty. You may spend quite a bit on a cup of coffee that you cherish, but the people who produced that coffee see very little of your money.

• The genetic diversity of most of the world’s coffee is extremely low. Many of the coffee farms outside of Ethiopia were established with only one or a few plants. This renders coffee, especially arabica, susceptible to a number of pest and pathogens. Coffea arabica is now listed as an endangered species due mostly to habitat loss in Ethiopia, limiting the gene pool for crop improvement.

• Climate change is a serious threat to both arabica and robusta production. Research suggests that much of the habitat suitable for coffee production will no longer exist by 2050 to 2080 if current warming continues. This especially true of arabica coffee, which thrives in cool mountain habitats like the mountains of Ethiopia.

All is not lost, though. The world needs to get more serious about rapidly shifting to renewable energy and ending our dependence on fossil fuels. This is already happening, as renewable energy is the lowest cost form of energy in the world. The fossil fuel industry and its political puppets are doing everything possible to stop the transition to renewables, but we need to make sure that they fail.

New species of coffee that can tolerate warmer climate show some promise. Although we mostly use only two species of coffee for consumption, there are 122 species in total. Scientists at Kew Gardens, under the leadership of Dr. Aaron Davis, and their network of cooperators, are looking at promising species that are more heat and drought tolerant. Recently, they rediscovered a long-lost species, Coffea stenophylla, in West Africa which shows considerable promise for production under warmer conditions. It is not yet in wide cultivation and may be best suited for hybridization with the other species. (Note: I have seen vendors offering to sell C. stenophylla beans; I don’t believe them).

Let’s suppose, then, that we can solve the problems of climate change with renewable energy and careful breeding. That still does not solve the first problem, the miserable treatment of coffee producers.

This is a problem that you and I need to solve. There are coffee companies in developed countries that are treating their farmers well. That is why I asked you that question at the beginning. Many companies are buying commodity coffee, that is traded in huge volumes where the identity of the producer is lost. The money for commodity coffee barely trickles down to the farmers and cooperatives that produce the beans.

Some companies claim to only deal in fair-trade coffee. Fair trade began with good intentions, but today is not providing farmers with fair income. The solution, both for coffee and chocolate is direct trade. In direct trade, the person you buy the coffee or chocolate from is personally engaged with the farmers and farm cooperatives.

I buy much of my coffee from Little Waves* roasters in Durham NC. The owners of Little Waves are directly engaged with, and buy from the producers. They personally visit the farms that they buy from. I am not promoting them, as there are many other ethical, direct-trade coffee roaster around the world. *Note: I have no relationship with Little Waves roasters other than being a loyal customer.

That’s where your judgement comes in: can you find a place to buy coffee that is in direct trade with their suppliers and clearly verifies that relationship? You should be able to find the name of the farmers or cooperative right on the package? And do you trust the roaster?

Now, I need to point out that you are certainly going to pay more for direct trade coffee. You will also most assuredly get a better cup of coffee. But we need to behave ethically in this as in other markets: buying commodity coffee is effectively stealing from farmers. And, if we want coffee to have a future, we need to pay more.

I’d be interested in your own steps in buying coffee and being fair to farmers. Let us know where you get your coffee, and perhaps we can make a list.