Axiom 1: Coffee Is Inherently Valuable
Our journey in coffee starts in an interesting place.
Before we dive in and start brewing, I believe we should develop a sense of context and build a framework by which we can examine our interactions with it.
This may sound needless and I’m convinced some who read this blog will consider me an ostentatious hipster making grandiose claims about a product whose primary function is fending off tiredness; bear with me.
Coffee isn’t liquid caffeine.
It’s an agricultural product; grown, processed and brewed; which develops a distinct character based on each input factor along its journey.
These many inputs require skill, time and energy. What’s produced by this system, therefore, has come at the cost of others. It’s often said that ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’; nor is there a free coffee.
From farmer to barista, by way of mills, traders, roasters; the money we spend on coffee pays a large supply chain of other people who have each contributed to our cup. Their human efforts have intrinsic value and if we truly understand this we are required to act accordingly.
I believe this manifests in two ways:
We shouldn’t scoff at the price of coffee. - In a system where each party pays a fair share (more on the practicalities of this in later posts) the price of coffee should be representative of the quality and efforts of its contributors. We should be willing to pay a fair price for a product and that may even challenge the market rate for our consumption.
We should endeavour to waste less. - One of the best value adds to a coffee production chain is to make the most of the money we’ve already spent. If we can take steps to reduce costs, we leverage our labour and our finances and can ultimately move more money through the ecosystem.
As we move forward on our journey with coffee I’ll reference the notion of intrinsic value through the coffee supply chain and the idea that “Coffee Is Inherently Valuable” will become a foundational point from which we build our relationship with all things coffee.
“1. We shouldn’t scoff at the price of coffee.
2. We should endeavour to waste less.”
N.B. Our 21st century education should mean we all have some notion of “fair trade” and so this may not seem novel to all readers, I’ll look at broader reaching notions of equitability at later points in this blog.