Coffee, cost and conditioning: A bedtime read

I love personification, and I love alliteration - and for the past some time, I have been wondering how coffee by society has been deeply personified. It has almost become akin to one’s identity.

My great grandfather never consumed tea, but only coffee; as for him tea was a beverage brought to India by British colonists, but Coffee was a sign of independence and freedom.

From ‘mountains or beaches’, we have easily transcended to ‘being a tea person or a coffee person’. Coffee has become an essential to office breaks, romantic getaways, a morning muse, and even a prime theme for music and songs.

That is how deeply is coffee embedded in our culture, but are we aware of it?

Last week, a lot of you deliberated on lab-created coffee for lesser emissions and an alternative for the effects of climate change on the coffee crop, but a conversation with Archit Batra reminded me of why ‘People’ are central to the Triple Bottom Line of ‘People-Planet-Profit’, and the E and G of ESG, is only executed by S, Society.

Archit and I had a conversation about his experience working with coffee farmers in Rwanda and Ghana. While I spent a lot of time researching lab-made coffee, this conversation made me realise as to if we switch to lab made coffee, what about the farmers, what about their years of effort, their yield, time and energy, and of course their livelihoods. Shifting to lab-made coffee might be more beneficial in terms of coffee, taste, aesthetics and even decarbonization, but because climate change is affecting the coffee crop, that doesn’t mean we eradicate the crop itself.

The value chain of the coffee crop in African regions is pretty skewed. The main element that makes coffee - coffee, is the roast. There is no roasting infrastructure in areas where coffee is grown, and the coffee growers do not have the capabilities of building one as well.

Most roastaries are based in parts of Europe, which directly means an emission-heavy supply chain for the coffee beans, as well as proportional monetary loss for African coffee growers. The rampant transfer of raw coffee beans from one part of the world to another adds to price parity as well as social inequality for the actual farmers. This also gives a stronghold to developed nations who can control the geopolitics as well as the supply and demand of an essential common commodity like coffee.

Earlier this year, the African Fine Coffees Association (AFCA) announced how they are trying to work upon the marketing of, and designing strategies for the export of unprocessed coffee as well as to develop a coffee-booming infrastructure internally. According to data obtained from AFCA, coffee exports from Africa were valued at over 3.6 billion USD in 2022. Ethiopia was the leading exporter, earning around 1.5 billion USD, followed by Uganda with an export value of nearly 813 million USD during the same year.

Coffee definitely is a commodity forever in demand and struggling across the supply chain. We have discussed how climate change is directly impacting the lives and livelihoods of coffee growers. From a personal perspective I feel lab-created coffee will take away what is rightfully the farmers’, but from a research perspective, lab-made coffee is also fascinating in its own right.

As a first, Atomo Coffee is creating sustainable coffee without the coffee bean. The American companies say that to meet coffee supply for the next three decades, the commercial coffee industry encourages deforestation of the last leg of vast forests. It is essentially a race against time of the coffee bean versus climate change. Finland remains to break its own coffee consumption record with most coffee drinkers per capita, and a group of Finnish scientists at VTT, a research and technology organisation created lab coffee from cultured cells derived from the leaves of a coffee plant.

On a more traditional and Indian front, I spoke to the people involved to see what our homegrown specialty coffee brands are working towards.

Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters has emerged to be one of India’s foremost choices for a fresh brew. Started in 2013, Blue Tokai started on the ethos of transparency and ‘vocal for local’. The brand sources its beans directly from coffee farms and estates. Back in 2013, only one estate was a bean provider, and today Blue Tokai sources from and supports over 11 farms across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Right from disclosing every step from sourcing to supplying the coffee, they have also been mindful to partner with estates adhering to sustainable farming practices and signatories of the Rainforest Alliance. The roasters also works towards wildlife and biodiversity conservation, and is also an investor in the Araku Valley Farmers Collective, run by TechnoServe.

The Coffee Roasters have also identified gaps from farm to cup and the problem posed by inadequate roasting infrastructure across India. They have set up a washing station and roasting facility in the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu. Roasting lessons are also conducted for less-equipped farmers.

In the post-pandemic world, Third Wave Coffee has emerged as a new winner for specialty coffee. Founded in 2017, the chain commits to source their coffee sustainably from smaller estates in Nilgiris. They are also a member of the Fair Trade collaboration of organisations, apart from committing to ethical pricing for all their products and pay equity for their growers.

In India, Starbucks as a Tata Alliance makes up one of the most popular coffee chains. Though globally the brand has undertaken commitments like plant-based menu options, eco-friendly packaging, investing in regenerative agriculture, forest conservation and groundwater replenishment, a sustainable value chain and waste management - in India, the company had slightly different goals.

Starbucks calls itself the C.A.F.E Champion, which extends to Coffee and Farmers Equity. This focuses on sustainable coffee farming with sustainable agricultural practices like water conservation, bio-fertilizers, supporting the prosperity and resilience of the farmers, and co-investing in farmer communities via technical assistance and grants. Across the globe, Starbucks is committed to 100% ethically sourced coffee, providing 100 million coffee trees to farmers by 2025, investing 50 million dollars in funding and training 200,000 farmers by 2020.