The COEs have just arrived. Eeee!
The Ethics of Coffee
August 24, 2009One of the things I’ve learned since starting in my new position as purchaser for the roastery is that, well, the coffee world is a funny place.
Coffee often comes to us from some of the poorest regions on earth. Sometimes (perhaps as a result of poverty, perhaps a cause of it) the systems that I have to go through to get coffee are deeply corrupt. Sometimes I wonder how much money gets to the farmers. Often I wonder if anyone knows. Likewise, sometimes I’m faced with ethical dilemmas that aren’t just the regular, every day, ‘is this farmer going to get paid for this crop?’ variety. Take, for example, the ethical issues surrounding the purchase of Zimbabwean coffee.
Zimbabwe is, of course, a nation in serious trouble. Zimbabweans need money. They need foreign money, moreover, because inflation is rampant and their own dollar is so unstable it’s almost valueless. Well, the Zimbabwe harvest is in. I’ve been offered a very nice, slightly gamey Zimbabwean coffee. But if I buy it, where does my money go? Does it end up in the pockets of the corrupt officials steering the country toward destruction, or is it going to the hands of the farmer and the mouths of his or her children? And how did the farmer get the land they’re farming, anyway? Did they get it through expropriation? And how do I feel about the ethics of that huge program of Zimbabwean land expropriation?
Maybe I should lay off. After all, Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans, and this Canadian girl shouldn’t try to enforce her imperialist self on the Zimbabwean sovereign state. Trouble is, I’m trading with Zimbabwe, and I have to be able to sleep at night, which means I need to purchase coffee in accordance with my values, however imperfect they may be, and however imperialist that makes me.
So this ethics-and-coffee thing is troublesome. The easiest thing to do is not buy Zimbabwean coffee. Unfortunately, even that non-action has political ramifications. You might not necessarily think about the family in Guatemala who have seen a cut of your morning 2.25$, but the fact is, someone, somewhere produced the crop and got paid for it. Someone, somewhere, makes a living off that. So if I don’t buy this coffee, and you don’t buy this coffee, then someone somewhere is not getting paid. Not making a living. Not feeding themselves, or the kids.
And if I do buy the coffee, how much money is actually going to get to the farmer? How much gets paid out in bribes or taxes or any number of other little expenditures particularly necessary when dealing with a corrupt and disintegrating government? Does the farmer see even a tenth part of the money for their crop? Worse, does the good that tenth-part will do for the farmer negate what amounts to complicity with a corrupt system?
I’m having a hard time deciding how best to deal with coffees like this. Some coffees are easy. The Panama? Bought the whole crop, the lion’s share of the money goes to the farmer, but coffees like this… they’re a different matter all together.
The ethics of coffee are murky and complex. It’s a side of this business that I wasn’t really prepared for.
Edit: More on Zimbabwean coffee in particular here, here and here.
The News
August 18, 2009The new store in Oak Bay is coming along. Keep an eye out for coffee-making activity in that area on the weekend.
The barista competition is still open to competitor registration. It’s hard to believe, but no, you’re not too late to sign up. But you if you want to get in on the action, you need to hustle. Here’s the info, stolen right from the facebook group:
| Host: |
Reg Barber
|
| Type: | |
| Network: |
Global
|
| Start Time: |
Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 9:00am
|
| End Time: |
Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 6:00pm
|
| Location: |
The Leonardo Davinci Centre
|
| Street: |
195 Bay Street
|
| City/Town: |
Victoria, BC
|
| Phone: |
2505441778
|
| Email: |
Our COEs, the Brazil lot 11, and the El Salvador lot 30, after much woe and hardship and not a few false starts, have actually shipped. High fives all round!
And last, a new coffee varietal has been unveiled in Kenya. What it’s going to taste like, I don’t know. But as someone who hasn’t been able to get her hands on the Kenyan coffee that she’s wanted for some time, well, I agree. There needs to be more coffee grown in Kenya.
Caffeine and Calories
August 17, 2009
Via @jimseven and mkandelz. The big, readable version is here.
August 10, 2009
GET
EXCITED
AND
POUR
THINGS
This Post Is Not About That
July 31, 2009I was going to write a post about how no one is talking about the way the press is always comparing Starbucks to fast food joints. I was surprised how hard this was to do without coming across as snarky, or inviting a Starbucks bash-a-thon. So this post is not about that. Not any more. This post is about the importance of words.
In my other life, I’m a writer. It makes me crazy to find words so overused or widely applied that they lose their currency. Take for example, “bold”, or “fine grind”. These words on their own don’t mean anything. If someone asks for a fine grind, I need to determine how fine. If someone asks for a bold coffee, I have to find out, exactly what it is about the coffee they like that makes it, erm, bold, to them.
Empty words blow over when you breathe on them. Words that mean something stand up to scrutiny.
If you suspect someone is feeding you an empty word, say, “ethical” or “best available”, I encourage you to challenge it. Just ask, “What do you mean by that?” If the person you ask can’t explain, the words they’re using are empty.
There’s no place for empty words in coffee. Let’s get rid of “best available” and “fine grind” and “medium roasted” and “bold”. They’re words that mean nothing and do nothing. Replace them with words that have substance: “top three percent of the world’s crop”, “grind for a manual pour-over”, “roasted like…” and “tastes like…”
It’s not that hard. Unless, of course, there was never anything behind the words anyway.
OMG
July 21, 2009The halogen brewers have arrived. They are beautiful, but require a voltage converter before we can play with them.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
PBS, The ECX and Disco
July 19, 2009A few days ago, Aaron Brown from PBS kindly called us to get our view on the ECX, what it means for small roasteries like Discovery Coffee and how buying Ethiopian coffee has changed now that the ECX is in place. They’re doing a show about it on Wide Angle. Here’s the blurb:
“Eleni Gabre-Madhin is a woman with a dream. The charismatic Ethiopian economist wants to end hunger in her famine-plagued country. But rather than relying on foreign aid or new agricultural technology, she has a truly radical plan. She has designed the nation’s first commodities exchange, which she hopes will revolutionize an ancient market system whose inefficiencies have been partly responsible for the country’s persistent food shortages.”
I don’t speak very well, but I hope my point came across in the interview, because it’s important. Right now, the ECX is preventing us from getting coffee directly from farms we’ve dealt with before. It’s preventing us from guaranteeing that farmers are getting the lion’s share of the money we pay*, we’re unable to be sure about quality and age of the beans, and we’ve heard about some serious shipping delays.
We want the same things Gabre-Madhin wants. Ethiopian farmers are some of the poorest in the world, and they produce such an amazing product, there’s no reason a small cadre of greedy exporters should be living high off the hog while their cousins starve. We want to get money to farmers too.
We want to work with her. We love Ethiopian coffee. We want to buy it**. We have customers who want to buy it. But they only want to buy it if it’s (i) the quality they’ve come to expect, (ii) guaranteed ethical, and (iii) fresh. Right now, the product Ethiopia is offering through the ECX is not a product I can sell.
If you want to watch the show (and I know I do), it airs on the 22 of July, and you can check out the website, enter into discussion and read all about the show here.
*As it stands, we have no idea what the farmers are getting when the government buys the coffee. Presumably they get market value, but we’ve got no evidence. I hope the ECX will help eliminate this problem after it gets through these first few growing pains.
** Those Ethiopian coffees that do provide all the things we want are few and therefore extremely expensive. We’re far better off picking up a certified organic, bird friendly, rainforest alliance, COE participant from Guatemala for the same price.
The Rumor, It’s True
July 17, 2009If you’ve been in the store in the last few days, you’ve probably heard the rumblings. If you haven’t, well, you’re about to hear them now.
It’s true, and it’s no longer a secret. We’ve got an amazing new barista flying all the way across the planet to come and work at Disco. Here she is, helping with set up at the WBC in Atlanta. Her name is Anya, she’s coming in September and we all ready love her.
