Coffee news and miscellany

Coffee news and miscellany / Corporate coffee

Sips: Corporate coffee news

Kraft’s Maxwell House coffee concentrate earns Rainforest Alliance seal. First of all, this product is a “premium roast frozen liquid coffee concentrate blend.” Blech. Second, once again only 30% of the beans are Rainforest Alliance certified, 70% mystery beans. Third, Kraft gets to boost its “green” image when 96% of the coffee they buy comes from uncertified sources. I don’t like to poo-poo any sort of sustainability effort, but this may leave a bad taste in many a mouth.

JM Smuckers, which acquired the coffee division of Procter & Gamble (Folgers, Millstone, Dunkin Donuts grocery store offerings) has been posting strong earnings, thanks to the blind loyalty people have for cheap, unsustainable coffee. It makes up 35% of the company’s sales and 50% of its profits.

Later this month, I’ll have further information on corporate coffee’s “sustainability” efforts. It’s not pretty.

Coffee news and miscellany

My year in beans: 2010

This has become something of a tradition: how much I spend on coffee each year — good, often great, sustainably-grown coffee. I’m not a typical coffee drinker, in that I get nearly all my coffee online (and so pay shipping charges) and 95% of it is single-origin. I prefer single origins because it enables me to do research on the source and gauge sustainability. Most average coffee consumers will be able to bring this price down substantially without compromising sustainability.

I started in 2008 with an annual coffee expense of $987, including shipping, which worked out to $2.70 a day.

In 2009, I kept more precise figures, calculating $1031 for beans plus $129 for shipping, for a total of $1160 for the year. This was $0.45 per 6-oz cup.

Here are my 2010 stats:

  • 78 bags of coffee totaling 61 pounds.
  • Total retail price = $1064. I purchased very few bags locally, so I also spent $143 on shipping, for a grand total of $1207 for the year.
  • This still works out to only $0.48 per six-ounce cup ($0.42 without shipping).
  • I buy a lot of really high-quality coffee, much more than the typical consumer. The average price per pound (not including shipping) this year was $17.57. The big outlier was Counter Culture’s Hacienda Esmeralda Mario San Jose which retailed at the equivalent of over $69/lb. Including that coffee, I purchased 16 bags of coffee that retailed for over $20/lb.

I have a three-year average of around 60 pounds a year, from 20 roasters. Usually, about half the roasters are new ones that I try out.

So, no excuses — great coffee that helps support ecosystems and rural communities worldwide is not too expensive for all of us to enjoy.

I’ve posted this before, but if you’d like to calculate how much a cup of coffee costs, based on the price of a bag of beans, just punch in the price and weight of the bag here:

Coffee news and miscellany

Sips: Season of giving

In the past, I have provided some suggestions for holiday gifts — great coffee- or bird-related charities as well as more conventional gifts for sustainable-coffee lovers. Here are my 2010 suggestions, which focus on helping people in coffee-growing communities.

  • Sustainable Harvest International works in Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Through projects with organic vegetable gardens, wood-conserving stoves, and biogas digesters, SHI works in rural communities to preserve tropical forests while overcoming poverty.  You can support their work by contributing through AlternativeGifts.org to SHI’s sustainable farming project, which funds the planting of shade agroforestry crops such as coffee and cacao. You can also donate directly through their web site to that project, or others including funding women’s loans and wood-conserving stoves.
  • Speaking of stoves, David Pohl of Equator Coffees recently wrote a great piece at Huffington Post outlining the huge problem in coffee-growing (and other rural) communities with primitive cooking methods that endanger health and the environment. This is a serious and widespread problem with straightforward solutions. One way to help is to donate to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
  • Support organic farming — including coffee — in Chiapas, Mexico. This project is coordinated by International Development Exchange (IDEX), a grant-making non-profit that works with local organizations. You can donate via the Global Giving website.
  • Grounds for Health provides cervical cancer screening in coffee-growing communities, and Coffee Kids [now under a larger foundation] has a wealth of programs in coffee communities in Latin America supporting education, health awareness, microcredit and food security.

Peace this holiday season.

Coffee news and miscellany / Starbucks

Sips: Starbucks news

Some recent news from/about the Mermaid.

  • Starbucks plans to develop its own coffee farm in Yunnan, China. A move I think is (relatively speaking) good news for the environment there. In my post on coffee growing in China, I noted deforestation and high chemical use are problems with coffee growing in China, which is dominated by Nestlé for instant coffee. I also mentioned that Starbucks used Yunnan-grown arabica in one of their local coffees; the quality was not up to snuff for a single-origin offering and it had to be used in a blend (“South of the Clouds”).  Starbucks wants to increase quality, and will be training farmers and will establish a farmers’ support center, (its third globally, others are in Costa Rica and Rwanda). The growing operation will no doubt have meet the standards of the rest of their suppliers, which include very good environmental criteria. This has to be an improvement over what I believe is the norm for coffee growing in China.
  • First, Starbucks announced it was terminating its partnership with Kraft, which has distributed The Mermaid’s coffee to grocery stores since 1998. Kraft was unhappy. This sparked speculation that Starbucks might want to expand in the single-cup market (currently the closest it comes is with its Via instant coffee). Green Mountain Coffee Roasters was the presumed partner, since the main alternative is Kraft’s Tassimo brand. Then Starbucks announced it would launch its own single-brewer. Stay tuned.
  • GreenBiz.com had a nice article on Starbucks’ green buildings initiative, featuring LEED-certified buildings, including a roasting facility and all new retail stores. More at the Starbucks web site.