Axiom 3: Coffee Should Do Good

In many ways this post is the hardest post I’ve written. There is, unfortunately, an element of coffee consumption which often goes unspoken. It is poorly communicated and many consumers have no idea of the depth and breadth of its impact.

To understand the issue let’s briefly look at history of coffee. Apocryphal stories aside, the consumption of coffee is of Yemeni Sufi tradition. The use of coffee in religious rituals, which aimed to maintain prayer for longer periods, spread the plant through the Arabian Peninsula and from there to Ottoman Turkey and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Western culture’s first encounter of coffee was in 16th Century Malta. Turkish slaves were known to prepare coffee and the practice was assumed by Maltese high society. This elevated status inspired the coffee drinking culture of Europe, increasing demand and causing the proliferation of coffee growing throughout the colonial world.

These colonial structures are the foundation of coffee trade and, therefore, the pernicious assumptions of colonialism continue to affect the coffee industry today.

From slavery in Malta, to forced labour of indigenous groups in Guatemala, to African slaves on plantations in Brazil, to the decimation of indigenous peoples in Indonesia; an almost endless story of suffering for coffee growers can be told. We, the rich beneficiaries of hundreds of years of Colonial rule, owe reparations to these people.

The quantity of cherry picked by most workers dictates their entire wage. Overall security for farm workers is very low.

Coffee doesn’t exist in a bubble and proper recompense requires society wide change beyond our scope. I firmly believe, however, that we as coffee buyers should understand our history and play our part in acknowledging and rectifying it. Coffee has a debt to its growers and to that end our buying decisions should create beneficial outcomes for them.

With each purchase we enact our values. The microeconomics of our wallet can challenge the accepted power structure or simply go along with it. By choosing to buy coffee which, not only commands a premium price, but actually does good further up the supply chain, we recognise the history of exploitation in coffee and move towards a system which doesn’t rely on a history of oppression.

I believe as conscious modern consumers, we are compelled to make this moral decision. Our approach to coffee cannot be considered complete without it.