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Garland Ledbetter

Instructor Oberg

Language Arts 11

7 January 2019

Ethically Sourcing a Cup of Coffee

Coffee is a major crop, gown in many different regions of the world. It is one of the

largest commodities in the world, second to oil. Coffee’s conventional market prices, otherwise

known as C-market prices are manipulated by the stock market, based on the supply and

demand. Twenty years ago, a push for more tasteful coffee, called the third wave, encouraged

farmers to produce a higher quality coffee bean. I wanted to learn more about coffee; is it worth

the farmer time to grow any kind, let alone produce a higher quality bean for not much more

return? Many farmers aren’t being paid a livable wage to continue to grow coffee, especially

when you consider the time and work that goes into producing one single pound of specialty

coffee.

Coffee has a very close bond to its surrounding environment. Some of the best coffee is

grown in the mountains, and more rural areas with uneven terrain. In order to be considered a

specialty coffee farm, coffee must be grown 1200 feet above sea level. Growing coffee is a lot of

manual labor for these farmers, hand picking, hand pruning, along with hand fertilizing. The

coffee farmers have limited tools, preventing them from a more mechanized system. Marianella

told me that she uses machetes to cut weeds in five to ten acres. There are many diseases that

can wipe out the plants in days. One type of disease is called roya, is a fungus of the order
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Pucciniales that causes coffee leaf rust (CLR), a disease that is devastating to susceptible coffee

plantations. It’s a hard task, but it is where the best coffee is grown, usually ensuring a larger

return. This is where the conventional market price starts to become an issue. The C-market

groups all types of coffee together and throwing a price per pound on it. Farmers that work extra

hard to produce the best coffee they can, and yet receive a price very similar to a coffee farm that

is mechanized.

The middle man of the sale of coffee usually doesn’t benefit the farmer. The exporters

and importers buy coffee and sell it to coffee roasters around the world. Usually the exporter or

importer will take advantage of the farmer and won’t pay them a price they deserve. An importer

might have good intentions, but they only buy the coffee they feel will sell the best. They might

go to a producer, and say they want to buy their coffee, but they want it to be the highest quality.

At the end of the season, they will come and try the different coffee’s and only purchase a small

selection, leaving the producer with pounds of coffee that they refuse to buy. With the third

wave, coffee roasters began creating the bridge connected with the producer, by purchasing

straight from the farm. In today’s day and age, how do you really know who is doing business

ethically? With social media, people can say they ethically source their coffee, and nobody can

really question them on it. Coffee roasters can buy their coffee at the C-market price, and yet

claim that they are paying for it at the ethical market value.

Specialty coffee is starting to diminish, due to how meticulous and hard it is to maintain a

coffee farm. A lot of “farmers are putting their farms up for sell, and they aren’t being purchased

to grow more coffee” (Jost). The land coffee grows on, must be up kept, and if it isn’t, it will

take up to three years before that land will produce coffee cherries again. Coffee will dissolve

into the mechanized coffee, because of the intensive, laborious work required, without a lot of
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return. Many farmers end up in a credit cycle, where they purchase fertilizer and tools on credit,

and pay it back after the harvest. Many times, coffee farmers don’t earn enough to pay off all

their credit from the last harvest. Many get caught in a credit cycle, where they keep growing

coffee, to pay of their debts from the last harvest, so on and so forth.

Starbucks has helped the coffee world grow, beneficially and yet in some ways hurt it.

When I was speaking with Marianella, we discussed Starbucks, and I made a negative comment

about them. She went on to talk about the many positive things Starbucks has done to help keep

coffee progressing. One major thing Starbucks has done for the industry, was made coffee sexy,

made it something desirable. Starbucks owns a farm called Hacienda Alsacia, in Costa Rica, just

15 miles from Marianella’s farm. Starbucks opened research information from their farm about

coffee to the local producers. In a sense, this is a symbiotic relationship, as both benefits.

Producers help Starbucks by helping maintain a demand for coffee, whereas Starbucks helps

them, by giving them information about the plant to better their knowledge. A few low notes

about Starbucks is they purchase huge amounts of coffee from the C-market, thus supporting it.

Starbuck’s coffee isn’t speciality coffee, it is “crappy coffee” (Jost). The negative aspect is

training the new generations that coffee needs sugar to be enjoyable. In reality, coffee can be

something full of flavor, something with a good level of acidity and sweetness.

The future of specialty coffee is diminishing at an alarming rate due to many factors, both

fixable problems, and problems that are unstoppable. Coffee’s price per pound shouldn’t be

dependent on the value of all coffee, it should be judged on the quality of the bean itself. This

alone, can help keep farmers growing coffee when they earn more money per pound. Although

Starbucks isn’t a enemy to coffee, in some ways it creates this perception. Most specialty coffee

has wonderful flavor and tasting notes. Coffee plants are super susceptible to diseases, creating
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unnecessary stress for the producer. This is something that is unavoidable, and unexpected,

making coffee farmers feel anxious. I want to ask you all this question, at the end of the day, do

you really care about where your coffee comes from? Do you care about the extra mile the

farmers go to produce a nice cup? And that is where I will leave you.
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Works cited

Hoffmann, James. The World Atlas of Coffee. New York, Firefly Books Ltd. 2018.