Food and Wine in Utopia: Interview 2 (Coffee Roaster)

Foreword

                In this series of interview about Food and Wine in Utopia, I interviewed a coffee roaster in Santa Barbara via email exchange. A book that I recommend reading along this is This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein.

 

What do you do in the coffee industry? And how long have you been in the coffee industry?

I manage Verve’s QC Lab, work with our green buyer to roast and evaluate samples, and do a bit of education to the wider team. If you count an internship, 2015. Otherwise, I got employed starting in 2018.

 

Do you plan to stay in it in the long run?  

Yes! As long as I can. 

 

What is your motivation to stay? Or leave? 

I never get tired of it and there are many ways to make a difference in people’s lives 

 

Was the motivation the same when you first started out, compared to now? 

It’s the same in general! I’m grateful to be able to do something that has an impact, is fun, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural. Now that I have been doing it for several years and have judged brewing competitions, I see potential to compete and experience a new side.

Do you think there are problems in the coffee industry?

So many, wow, yes.

What is the biggest problem in the industry? 

I would say since its inception, legacies of slavery/colonialism. However, today, I would say climate change and unpredictable weather.

 

Can you please elaborate on the inception and legacies of slavery/colonialism? Has there been attempts or successful attempts at reparations? What aspects of those traditions are still employed today?

The inception were the colonizers, the Dutch, who started the whole thing to interact with coffee. Coffee is native to Ethiopia and South Sudan and got taken across the Red Sea and farmed in Yemen. That’s where the Dutch discovered it and named it arabica because they found it in Arabia. They then took it to Indonesia where they had colonies. That’s the first forced slaved labor coffee farming. 

The problem is the harvester and pickers that pick the coffee are paid by the volume that they pick. As much as people like to champion social responsibility, there’s still child labor and families picking coffee berries. The kids are not forced to do it but probably don’t know any better. And the coffee goes to these trucks, and they don’t know what happens in the fermentation, logistics, sorting, milling, export, or anything downstream. They just don’t know. It’s a loss of knowledge and a severance of the ties they have to what they started. 

And in terms of cupping, a lot of operators don’t know how to cup. They can’t assess their own quality so they can’t justify selling it at a higher price so they sell it at the local market price, a lower price. These things are reminiscent of the legacies that shelter coffee knowledge from the locals in order to prevent any threat to the profits of the business owners. 

I remember in Guatemala we were talking to this guy at 9pm and they were still hauling coffee when they started at 7am. They do 14 to 15-hour days. They wake up 2-3 hours before work, they have to get the bus. They only get to sleep for 5 hours. It’s so normalized, they just live to work sort of thing. There are more people that are leaving though. 

What is the biggest problem that impacts YOU? 

Now the biggest problem is that the prices are super volatile. Prices are the highest right now. High prices are good for producers because they are getting more revenue but it’s bad for roasters and companies that want to buy the coffee (especially quality focused roasters). Roasters can also hold onto their coffee for longer before selling it and wait for the prices to crash to then sell it, so that’s still accessible to a degree. So, from a quality standpoint it’s worrying. There’s been a lot of single origin contracts defaulting because the price is volatile. This is our problem with supply-chain reliability.

 

You mentioned the slavery/colonialism history earlier. Does this impact you? Who does it impact?

It does impact me in a positive way but I’m super aware of it. When I go into a country where they produce coffee, people are listening more intently and take what I say with more seriousness. It’s a big responsibility to say the right thing. For example, if I’m cupping in a room full of local people, they’re probably going to take what I say or judge the coffee seriously. I can’t do anything about that (or about founding an institution that can help better educate the locals) but I try to ask a lot of questions, “I read these things, you lived these experiences, tell me what it is like”.

I want to emphasize that it could be really easy to do nothing and to coast. An example is like I’m not going to solve climate change but when I speak to people, I try to use my position to inspire people. 

In a utopian society, obviously these problems will be addressed but do you think all the problems can be addressed?  If not, what problems do you think cannot be addressed even in utopia?  

Yes, I think that is fundamental to a utopia. They all can be addressed, but not all at once. Anyway, “problem” is subjective, so the list is infinite. However, it will take forever to work through that infinite list of problems. There’s always going to be some problem, as a “problem” is subjective, and we’re subjective humans. I would like to think that people would be much more open to listening and considering a wider range of problems, so they actually have a fighting chance of improving the situation. 

 

If not all the problems can be solved at once, and you see it as a progression of solutions and declarations, what do you think can be addressed first? What is the most attainable goal or solution?

The easiest thing we can fix is communication between different groups. We have better communication technology, translator apps, etc. Keep people in the loop. It just takes a little bit more effort to communicate knowledge, culture, tradition, education. With all these tools, we able to communicate what we want or need. 

Do you see any relations between wine and coffee? 

As a drink, yes, so many. Also, production-wise, though wine hasn’t had quite the same level of colonization intertwined with its expansion. Both are complex drinks that have been instrumental in many thought revolutions and are heavily romanticized. We talk about many of the same topics when describing them (acidity, body, balance). We enjoy learning how they connect to the land which produced them. They both can marry art and science. I find that overall, people who tend to appreciate one, also appreciate the other (even if they don’t consume it).

 

We have also interviewed other winemakers and vineyard workers about utopia. Topics that have been discussed include how the general economy impacts wine, how “over”-utilization or over production of cheap quality grapes/wine impacts the consumer’s taste preference, about wages and labor forces. Does the coffee industry face similar problems? 

YES! All of these. I would say especially so with cheap coffee. People accept the standard that if coffee tastes bad, it needs milk and sugar to make it palatable. There has long been a global influence for producers to focus on maximizing volumes, treating the coffee as a bulk commodity. Now, there are some producers who are able and motivated to heavily select and aim for low volume with high quality, but those are by and large producers who have more education and a bigger safety net.  

 

Is there a specific unique problem associated with the coffee industry?

The colonial/cash-crop roots of the coffee trade set an artificially low price from the outset for coffee. To sustain that low price, some workers throughout the entire chain have always experienced exploitation. As consumers have come to expect cheap coffee, it creates a barrier for producers to charge higher/more fair prices. 

 

Would you consider coffee as a luxury food commodity, or an essential food commodity?

 Luxury! I really appreciate this question. I appreciate roasters/cafes that push to elevate coffee as such. Years of meticulous work go into the craft, and there is so much nuance to be enjoyed when we treat it as a luxury. 

What do you think the proportion of food grown in utopia will be in terms of essential vs luxury?

Another excellent question. I would say 50/50. We really do not need THAT much food. Especially in the US, we are so accustomed to thinking about getting ENOUGH food. It would be great to see a shift to a more quality/nutrient dense food supply with lower volume. Then, we could focus on luxury foods, with the goal of bringing maximum enjoyment. 

 

What would the quality and quantity of coffee look like in a utopian society? i.e. do you think there’s too much coffee plantation in the world now? Do you think there’s too little? Do you think there’s too much of bad coffee processing premises? Do you think the “overconsumption” accusations of our society also applies to coffee? 

There would be much less coffee, with much higher quality. Producers would be freed from the notion of high-volume throughput, able to slow down and focus on designing processing styles that fit more harmoniously with their particular location and situation. It is not so much overconsumption that is the problem, but a lack of reverence for the product. I think if there could be more education and time spent on the consuming experience, we would see a shift in consumer preferences.

 

Often in the food industry, the burden or responsibility of education about food are often “short-lived” among artisan producers or small producers. These are often settled on big food companies who have the resources and bandwidth to put out programs that are aimed at educating the public about food in general, do you think in the current situation that large coffee producers can take that role?

Big companies are mostly educating through social media or through sponsoring events. They’re using their wealth of knowledge and resources to “create content” as well. It could be about cupping, new varieties, post-harvest process, supply-chain stuff. People are now focusing on women’s month. And you see that on social media as well. These big companies are guys like Caravela (a Colombian coffee company), Ally (Brazilian), but I don’t see Starbucks doing any of this or successfully. On the other hand, small companies do a lot too. There’s some that lean hard into education, but they don’t have the audience, like Unblended.

What about access to coffee? What about access to food in general? What does that look like in utopia?

 Access here, I focus on opportunity to see them and affordability. Access to quality coffee is becoming less of an issue. There are so many choices in the specialty market that basically anyone who lives by a mailbox can get high quality coffee. Now, that is not the case for rural people who don’t have internet access, but that would change in a utopian society. 

Access to food would improve because that is a human right and it is a shame we are still struggling with this problem today. In a Utopia, all people would be given the same access to the same foods, along with an understanding of their benefits, and suitable uses. Consumers would be re-labeled as “people”, with us all sharing the same needs and rights.

The way people get into coffee, the way they get addicted to caffeine, the way they get into the flavors of coffee. Do you see similarities in other aspects in our society that people get into it? Do people get addicted to certain things for the wrong reason? Like only getting into coffee for its caffeine and the taste is a secondary hedonistic materialization? Do you think they eventually grow out of this phase and appreciate it more for its “flavors”? What is it about our society that encourages this naïve introduction to things?

The motivation to dive deeper is so personal and complex, but I think it has to come down to some level of consistent dopamine release caused by doing that activity. I see so many similarities, with literally anything. People get addicted to shopping, to exercising, to meditating. I think it would only be the wrong reason to get addicted to something if that “thing” becomes all-consuming and prevents someone from living a balanced life. I don’t know why someone would get into coffee for only caffeine, since a huge part of the culture is the ritual surrounding brewing, serving, and taking part in a custom that inherently involves dozens or hundreds of people’s effort, across multiple cultures. 

 

What is the biggest obstacle to utopia? How optimistic are you? 

Individuals’ struggle for power is the biggest obstacle to utopia. I really don’t think it is possible for all of society to become a utopia, unfortunately. However, on smaller scales, isolated groups of people could organize and cooperate to form societies that are nearly utopian. I doubt they would last forever though, as surely someone (or several people) within that group would eventually begin to strive for more power.