We’ve come here to Fero’s administrative office—a basic room with one desk, papers neatly piled in the corner, a few shelves and informational posters on the walls—in the coffee farming region of Sidama, Ethiopia, to meet with the board of directors and get an update on how things are going here.
A circular economic model is the vehicle required for change within the specialty coffee industry. When we operate along a continuous circle across our supply chain, we can build wealth and expertise alongside coffee farmers, rather than in spite of them.
Current leading trends in specialty coffee primarily tie company resources to increasing coffee farm production and quality through capacity building and agricultural inputs. While production and quality investments at coffee origin are necessary components to any "sustainable" trading model in the coffee industry, increasing agricultural support (under the guise of combating climate change) fall grossly short from anything even close to what our coffee-growing friends would call "sustainable."
Coffee could change the world. But first we need a disruptive innovation to evolve our trading system. This post is the first of four installments diving deep into the issue of true sustainability in the coffee industry, written by HG cofounder Chris Treter. [ Part 2: Price Matters a lot, and...
Author's note: I traveled to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in May of this year, to participate in the third annual Saveur du Kivu and visit with Higher Grounds' producer partners at the Muungano coffee farmers cooperative. road |rōd| noun 1. a wide way leading from one place to another, especially...
