10/18/2024
This is the BS in the coffee industry we have noted for years in our coffee travels. Multi nationals pretending to be a solution, while actually perpetuating the problem. They run program after program, certification after certification ...but none of it means anything, except to the marketing department.
Most companies are paying less than what it costs to produce coffee, perpetuating systemic poverty, it might even be considered slavery through poverty. Just an economic version of colonialism (an extraction of resources and human capital from developing countries).
The solution could be simple, just pay a fair price for the production of coffee, ensure that people are being treated right, the planet is being treated right, and let's see some investment in the community. That's what we do with Farm-Direct by the way.
But they are stuck on a shareholder supremacy model (thank you Milton Friedman), that maximizes shareholder value at the expense of all other stakeholders including the environment.
So it doesn't really matter to them (based on real actions) whether they are stepping on the hands and heads of others, that there are tears of children in your coffee, that the rivers become more polluted, rampant deforestation, and soil is turned to dirt. They could give a real s**t about any of that.
As a consumer you need to know, when the coffee you buy perpetuates Climate Change and Systemic Poverty. Unfortunately, the third party labeling systems like Fair Trade USA and even USDA Organic come no where close to meaning what you think it does. They are impracticably unreliable, and the work arounds out there are simply a part of a very corrupt system that hides behind a very black curtain, that is meant to keep you intentionally uninformed and passively ignorant. Many people, or more specifically consumers, want to do right, and make conscious and sustainable decisions but they are being hoodwinked by retailers that prey on their good hearts.
We are working on a solution, we call it Farm-Direct, it's a direct trade model that resolves the issue of poverty in coffee by disconnecting from the c-contract or commodities marketplace and paying the farmer directly. In this process, we eliminate as many of the unnecessary and nefarious hands that touch the coffee in between the Farmer and the Consumer. We take that inevitable savings, and push it to the farmer. Creating economic stability, sustainability, and the opportunity to exercise new agronomy and framing techniques that can stem the impact of climate change.
For more info, please go to onebiggislandinspace.com
We are doing this at scale (millions of pounds), something nobody of our size has ever done. Find a company (not a labeling system) you can trust.
A few excerpts from the article (although you should read the whole thing)
--However, the reality is different for the coffee farmers, as we highlight in the report from the Soconusco coffee region in the Mexican state of Chiapas, where many are now bitterly disappointed by the programme and are protesting against Nestlé’s disastrous purchasing policy, which keeps them in poverty and robs young people of their future prospects.
--As a rule, roasting companies like Nestlé do not buy their coffee directly from coffee farmers or farmers’ cooperatives, but from local intermediaries or international traders – in other words, from large corporations that control the export and import
--In addition to low wages and the risk of accidents, there have been repeated labor-law violations in the region. In 2022 and 2023, at least two farm owners involved in the Nescafé Plan were also fined by the authorities; for example, because they did not provide workers with toilets or the necessary protective equipment, and did not authorize them to take rest breaks when performing strenuous tasks.
--Nescafé Plan is also 4C certified, thereby supposedly making it “sustainable”. However, a different picture emerges on the ground. Farmers and workers benefitted little or not at all from certification, the implementation of which seems to be poorly monitored locally.
https://www.publiceye.ch/en/topics/soft-commodity-trading/why-the-nescafe-plan-fails-to-benefit-farmers
Nestlé, the world's largest coffee group, has promised that from 2025 it will only sell coffee that has been sourced « responsibly ». The Nescafé Plan, launched in 2010, is supposed to have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people involved in coffee growing. A new Public Eye report ...
