Navigating the Sea of Terms—A Coffee Buyer’s Primer
By Mark Inman

Fair Trade. Shade-Grown. Certified-Organic. These terms have become “buzz words” for coffee drinkers around the world. Unfortunately, most of the media paints a very simplistic picture of these terms and their environmental or social significance. As a fourteen-year veteran of the coffee trade, specializing in Certified-Organic and Fair Trade coffees, it disappoints me to see the media use these terms to simply sell a “juicy story.” Granted, it would be difficult to dilute these complicated issues down to an easily digestible sound bite, conveniently packaged into a marketable seal for the mindful consumer. However, I believe the cure to the ills of the ongoing coffee crisis lie in a change of consumer perception rather than the support of one seal over another. Aside from imparting the vital importance of the current seals, I hope to convey the artistry of specialty coffee and, more importantly, to raise issue with the low value consumers place on this intensely hand crafted product.

It’s All in the Details

Shade-grown and Bird-friendly
These terms are almost interchangeable and refer to the conditions under which coffee is grown. Traditionally, the coffee varieties of Bourbon and Typica were grown under a canopy of shade, which protected them from the harsh sun. This canopy was multi-storied, closely resembled a rustic forest, and provided habitat for a myriad of flora and fauna. With the industrialization of the coffee production model, coffee farmers have become dependent on systems using full-sun hybrid varieties with high-chemical inputs and mechanized harvesting methods. Gone are the days of having to harvest coffee around all those other pesky trees, plants and critters. With this agricultural shift came massive deforestation, population decline of migratory birds and other key species.

Shade-Grown coffees support these important issues in farming today. It ensures that multiple species have habitat, that the coffee varieties are predominately heirloom and not hybrid and that there is preservation of the dwindling tropical rainforests. Sadly, Shade-Grown coffees only address one aspect of the complex coffee picture. The seal is criticized for its failure to address the viability of proven organic strategies, the use of agrochemicals, or whether the coffee trees come from genetically modified root stocks. Finally, the purchase of Shade-Grown coffee does not address important socioeconomic issues.

Fair Trade
Fair Trade addresses primarily the price points at which coffee is sold and traded on the world commodity market. Coffee, like oil, pork bellies, and frozen concentrated orange juice is traded on a market based on speculation and futures. When frosts hit Brazil, analysts might predict a short supply, which in turn causes a spike in the coffee market and prices go up. When there is oversupply in the market, as is the case today, the prices fall. When market prices fall below $1.00/Lb., as it has been for the last three years, farmers face the choice of starvation, loss of land, or urban migration replete with the usual bleak array of living options. Fair trade ensures a "floor" price that allows farmers to make minimal profits in such low markets. Fair Trade farmers receive a guaranteed minimum of $1.26 for non-organic coffees and $1.41 for Certified-Organic coffees.

Like Shade-Grown and Certified-Organic coffee, Fair Trade is a work in progress and not a panacea for the present crisis. The limitations of the Fair Trade program is that only cooperatives, democratically operated along detailed guidelines laid down by Transfair USA, can apply. However, many traditional coffee farms are not co-ops. They can be privately owned or run in a tribal or communal setting. Such structures may produce premium coffee using strict environmental guidelines, pay decent wages, provide humane working conditions for its workers, but it cannot earn the Fair Trade label and premium.

Despite their claims to the contrary, the guidelines of Transfair USA do not adequately address issues surrounding the environment, biodiversity, species preservation or whether or not the coffee trees come from genetically modified rootstocks.

Certified-Organic
Organic farming is truly more about relationships than simply “chemical-free” farming. The checks and balances that result from an organic system comes from the interaction of a wide variety of life forms. From bacteria and rhizomes below the ground to pollinators and flowers above the ground to a bear crapping in the woods on the ground, organic agriculture is more a system of relationships than a means to a marketable seal.

Organic coffee farming ensures that shade-friendly varieties of coffee are planted. Chemically dependent, full-sun hybrids or genetically modified coffee trees cannot (by law) be used. The purchase of Certified-Organic coffee ensures it is not grown using any of the common pesticides, herbicides and fungicides used on coffee, many of which are banned in the United States. Similar to Fair Trade, Certified-Organic coffees offer a premium to farmers (around 40¢ above the commodities market) and during low markets, Certified-Organic farmers are able to turn profits. Small family farmers who participate in cooperatives produce most of Certified-Organic coffee available to roasters. The purchase of Certified Organic coffee creates the ability for small farms to compete against larger coffee interests. In many third world countries, the division of wealth is wide (a few wealthy, many poor and almost no middle class), therefore purchasing Certified-Organic, similar to the Fair Trade system, helps to close the gap.

The fly in this system’s ointment is that some farmers can come up short with Certified-Organic depending on geographic location. For example, despite similarities in growing practices and overall crop quality, a farmer in Costa Rica or Sumatra could be receiving premiums far above the organic Fair Trade floor price. On the other hand, if you are a farmer in Mexico, Peru or Bolivia, you might see prices at or a little below the non-organic Fair Trade minimum. This is where both supply and demand play a role in determining the price for the same amount of work.

Multi-Certification
Double and triple certified coffees are a combination of the above certifications. Multi-Certified coffees close the loopholes that make individual certifications weak. For all the reasons stated above, the current recommended purchase for maximum benefits are Certified-Organic, Fair Trade coffees.

Changing Our Perception Of Coffee

Media exposure has raised the global consumer’s awareness of the growing crisis in the world coffee market. What do these low prices mean to you, what does it mean to the environment, what does this mean to the people who grow the world’s premium coffee beans?

Be it Starbucks, Peets or Green Mountain, most specialty coffee companies purchase within the top echelon of quality coffee-namely from the top 10 percent. Ultra-premium coffee companies such as Taylor Maid Farms, Batdorf and Bronson and Intelligentsia are purchasing within the top 3 percent. The consumer has been getting the deal of a lifetime for the past 20 years! Consumers have been able to taste the finest coffee available for less than 25¢ a serving; that’s right, you are able to go to a supermarket or cafe, purchase the most superlative coffee the world has to offer, go home and brew yourself a cup for 25¢. What quality of wine, chocolate, cognac or cigar do you believe you would get for 25¢ a serving? How about 40¢?

And why is that? Specialty coffee is one of the finest hand crafted products in the world. Like wine, there are “old vine” or heirloom varieties of coffee. Such trees need special attention, making mechanization close to impossible, and offer different tastes and aromas, depending on which region or elevation that variety is grown. Coffee requires 10 times the hand attention of wine production, 5 times more than chocolate and cigar production. In fact 36 humans touch your pound of coffee before you grind and brew it.

The coffee crisis is not so much about a global glut on coffee (most of this coffee you would never consume) as much as it is about the public’s perception of specialty coffee. Americans were raised on bottomless cups of insipid brown water that cost around 3¢ per serving. We awoke to the sweet sound of the breaking vacuum seal of 2lb cans of Folgers or Maxwell House that our parents purchased for $2.99. Coffee was the stuff of breakfast that you used to wash down toast. It was not “gourmet” by any stretch of the imagination and it was certainly not the type of beverage you would have waited in long cafe or drive-thru lines.

But times have changed. More Americans are waxing poetic about their Java estate, Nicaragua Segovia, or Ethiopian Yirgachefee. More Americans are drinking espresso-based beverages than in any other point in our country’s history. In their minds, coffee consumers are beginning to understand the complexities of coffee, yet in their wallets they still carry the memory of the price of a 2lb can of Maxwell house. Supermarkets have jumped on the “coffee boom” bandwagon of selling specialty coffee, now being responsible for 74% of all specialty coffee sold, yet they still will not allow coffee companies to offer products for over 10 dollars a pound. Why? Does their wine department set a price cap on a bottle of wine?

In reality, specialty coffee should be selling to the consumer for over $20.00/Lb. This increase (only changing the price per cup from 25¢ to 40¢ for home use) would eliminate the chain of poverty and destitution that plagues so many farmers worldwide. It would allow farmers to actually earn a living being a farmer rather than being the charity cases they are made to be. If we invest more in the quality of their products, in return, the consumer receives a more environmentally and socially just cup.

Fair Trade, Shade-Grown and Certified-Organic are simply verifications for consumers that minimum-controls are in place to ensure balanced agriculture and social elements. Labels are not the complete answer to the plight of the farmer—you are. If you, the consumer are unwilling to pay more for coffee, then farmers worldwide will abandon the notion of specialty coffee, turn to a mechanized system where coffee will be grown on flat, monoculture fields in full sun to meet your acceptable price point. That future is up to you.

Mark Inman is the President and co-founder of Taylor Maid Farms, a certified-organic herb-farm and coffee roastery based in Sebastopol, California.