Left image: Coffee cherries. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Right image: Roasted coffee beans. Photograph by the author.
As a coffee drinker for more than twenty years, I would say that the addiction started slowly. I brewed local grocery store coffee in a drip brewer just because I liked the earthy taste of black coffee and the pick-me-up that the caffeine provided. It wasn’t until I was older and started venturing into local coffee shops for my favorite drink—iced coffee with a splash of whole milk—that I wondered why coffee shop coffee was so much more expensive than the stuff I found at the grocery store. I wasn’t as coffee educated as I am now, and I knew enough to know that fresh roasted coffee tasted better, but I still wasn’t sure why it was pricier.
It wasn’t until I began researching Coffee Culture New Orleans and interviewing local coffee roasters and professionals that I learned the full story of how much work goes into a cup of specialty coffee.
For starters, you have to understand that “specialty” is a very specific term when it comes to coffee. When specialty coffee is labeled as such, it has undergone a grading process in which it scored eighty points or higher on the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA)’s one-hundred-point scale and has zero primary defects and five or fewer secondary defects. Primary defects in coffee beans are caused by severe insect damage or a lack of water during development. Secondary defects are more superficial—like beans broken or chipped due to machinery issues, or water-damaged, withered, or unripe beans. Secondary defects don’t affect the taste of the coffee. Grading also includes the coffee cupping process, in which coffee quality is scored on a ten-point scale based on fragrance and aroma; flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, and balance; and sweetness, uniformity, and cleanliness.
Seventy-five-pound San Franciscan Coffee Roaster, Orleans Coffee. Photo by the author.
Coffee can’t be grown just anywhere. It originated in Ethiopia and is now grown in an area known as the Bean Belt between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. About a dozen countries in this area produce 60 percent of the world’s coffee. When you buy coffee from a small roaster or coffee shop, you’re supporting not only the people who are serving you coffee, but also the people who grow it. The beauty of small roasting is that roasters have the opportunity to develop relationships with the farmers who grow and sell them coffee. Many of these farms are small family farms, and coffee production is their sole source of income.
When small roasters take steps to ensure that the farmers they work with are being properly compensated in an ethical manner, the coffee industry as a whole benefits.
During my research, I learned about a company called Shared Source, which works with coffee farmers in Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, and Ethiopia and facilitates equitable coffee trade between roasters and small-scale producers. This allows producers to make a living from coffee. When small roasters take steps to ensure that the farmers they work with are being properly compensated in an ethical manner, the coffee industry as a whole benefits. When coffee farmers are being properly sustained, we can be assured that generations to come will be able to produce coffee and support their children year after year. When you pay a little extra at the small coffee shop, or when a bag of specialty coffee beans costs a little more than a bag of coffee on a grocery store shelf, it’s because the people on the small farm on which the coffee is grown are being properly compensated and are making a livable wage. Coffee from ethically supported farms is always a great way to get your caffeine fix.
Green coffee beans. Photo by the author.
Michael Matthews of Alinea Coffee Roasters explained to me what goes into choosing coffee for his coffee shop, Bearcat Café in New Orleans. He selects ethically sourced coffee that he knows a variety of customers will enjoy. Approachability is important; he doesn’t want his customers to be intimidated by a particular flavor profile, especially if they are just casual coffee drinkers. When deciding what coffee farmers to buy from, Matthews takes his choices seriously, knowing that the coffee he buys supports entire families that rely on this crop to make a living.
He described the importance of fair coffee pricing and how some coffee farmers are forced to sell their coffee below market value to unscrupulous buyers to make ends meet. When this happens, Matthews explained, farmers eventually can no longer afford to keep their coffee farm and pay for the intensive labor it requires. As a result, when outside buyers come in and offer to buy the land and plant another crop on it such as sugar, the farmers may agree out of desperation. Now, a small coffee farm has been eliminated, and generations of coffee growing has come to an end.
When deciding what coffee farmers to buy from, Matthews takes his choices seriously, knowing that the coffee he buys supports entire families that rely on this crop to make a living.
Some dedicated roasters make regular trips to the farms on which their coffee is grown. Felton Jones Jr. is the chief roastmaster and brand ambassador for PJ’s Coffee and New Orleans Roast, LLC. Jones has been working with PJ’s Coffee since 1993, and part of his job is to select green coffee for PJ’s, decide how it will be roasted, create coffee blends for the brand, and secure future contracts. Jones is certified by the Specialty Coffee Association of America in green coffee purchasing. He contracts and sources PJ’s Coffee from farms in Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, and Sumatra.
The Bean Belt. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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Jones established a direct trade agreement between PJ’s Coffee and two farms—one in Nicaragua and one in Honduras—that he visits annually. This agreement guarantees the purchase of a substantial amount of coffee that meets PJ’s quality standards, which comes to about 95 percent of the coffee produced by the farms. This commitment ensures that these farms will be able to sell coffee for a sustainable price for years to come and secure future generations in the coffee-farming industry. In Honduras, Jones has established a relationship with a woman-owned, vertically integrated farm, in which the farmers control every aspect of coffee production, from planting trees to milling beans. Supporting this farm also means supporting the community in which the farm is located, because the farm gives back to its community by providing medical care and education for neighboring farmers.
Through Jones’s hard work, PJ’s Coffee has committed to purchasing coffee that is 100 percent ethically sourced from farms that offer workers a good quality of life and maintain sustainable practices.
Supporting this farm also means supporting the community in which the farm is located, because the farm gives back to its community by providing medical care and education for neighboring farmers.
New Orleans Coffee Import Co., owned by Kellan Lyman, is a small coffee-importing company that specializes in introducing green specialty coffee from the Philippines to the United States. Lyman was living in the Philippines when she saw an opportunity to bring its specialty coffee to the United States and establish relationships with producers, farmers, and coffee roasters. The company’s goal is to create direct trade relationships between farmers and coffee buyers. Through her work, Lyman wants to support coffee growers by contributing to their shared capital funds.
Like elsewhere in the Bean Belt, coffee farmers in the Philippines sometimes fall victim to predatory loan sharks offering exploitative contracts. Aware of this, Lyman supports farmers by buying their coffee at a higher industry price when she can. Lyman explained to me that many coffee importers don’t even offer to import coffee from the Philippines because, although the country’s high, mountainous elevation and volcanic soil create the perfect environment for coffee growth, from 1888 to 1891, coffee rust, a fungus that affects coffee plants, practically destroyed the country’s coffee trees and reduced the country’s coffee industry to one-sixth of its total production. While the Philippines does produce coffee for large brands like Nestlé, the specialty coffee industry is limited. Lyman hopes that New Orleans Coffee Import Co. will be a small step in changing that and will push the Philippines’ specialty coffee to the forefront and help support the small farms there.
Next time you’re at your favorite coffee shop, take a moment to think about the work that goes into getting the coffee from a seed to your cup. The hard work of the farmers can’t be ignored, and paying a little extra means that we will get to enjoy their delicious coffee for years to come.
Coffee at Cherry Coffee. Photo by David Rodrigue.
Thanks for reading this blog post by Marielle Songy. Interested in learning more? Here’s the book page for Coffee Culture New Orleans. You can also watch Songy’s appearance on Steppin’ Out, New Orleans’ weekly arts and entertainment review hosted by PBS, or attend one of these upcoming book events:
Marielle Songy is a writer from New Orleans. Her previous book, The Absinthe Frappé, was published by LSU Press.
We’ll be back in a couple weeks with a blog by Rose McLarney.
Until then,
— The team at LSU Press
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