Corporate coffee

Corporate coffee / Nestlé/Nespresso

Nestlè distributes mass-produced robusta clones

A report recently announced that Nestlè’s research and development facility in France has developed clones of Robusta coffee plants specific to particular countries. They are distributing them to “countless coffee growers across the globe.” These producers are suppliers of green beans to Nestlè’s instant coffee division, Nescafe, and the plants are developed to increase yield and income.

Each plant is genetically identical, as they are produced in a lab by somatic embryogenesis, a form of tissue culture. Therefore, should a pest, disease, or pathogen infect a farm planted with a particular clone of coffee plant, it is likely to wipe out every genetically identical tree on the farm, as well as every genetically identical tree planted within reach of the infection.

Tissue culture is not uncommon in agriculture, or even in coffee production. But as this statement in an article on the American Phytopathological Society web site succinctly states,

“The modern emphasis on monoculture of  genetically identical crops,
commercial propagation, and worldwide distribution of improved
varieties increases the likelihood that a chance infection will lead to
the development of a disease epidemic and the attendant crop losses.”

One only needs to look at the Irish potato famine, Dutch elm disease, southern corn leaf blight, or the current banana crisis for examples of the dangers of genetic homogenization. The dichotomy in the coffee industry is quite amazing. On the one hand, this mass production of identical plants, geared toward high yield and profits in instant coffee. On the other, a push to save wild varieties of coffee, and the pursuit of beautiful microlots and unique tastes by true coffee lovers. I know which “hand” I’m in!

Coffee and the environment / Corporate coffee

Sara Lee’s "sustainable" coffee

Another one of the Big Four multinational roasters is jumping on the green bandwagon. Sara Lee’s foodservice division is introducing its “Good Origin” line in the U.S. This line of six coffees will UTZ Certified (formerly Utz Kapeh). Sara Lee stated:

“Sustainability is the goal of protecting, preserving and improving the social, economic and environmental states of coffee producing communities. … We’re partnering with UTZ CERTIFIED coffee, the most credible and comprehensive certification program that supports these sustainable goals.”

With this move, Sara Lee says it is showing its commitment to “sustainable quality” by doubling its purchase of sustainable certified coffee to 20,000 tons in 2008.

This represents just a tiny fraction of Sara Lee’s coffee purchases
According to the International Coffee Organization, world production for the years 2002-2006 averaged right around 7 million metric tons per year. Not all is exported from producing countries; the export figure is about 5.3 million metric tons. Although exact market share is considered a “trade secret” and hard to come by, Oxfam indicated that Sara Lee buys about 10% of the coffee on the world market. Even using the lower 5.3 million ton figure, the 20,000 tons of certified coffee Sara Lee plans on purchasing will be less than 4% of their total annual procurement.

The statement that UTZ is the most credible and comprehensive certification program is just false.
The most comprehensive and credible program for “protecting, preserving and improving” the environment is the Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certification, which requires organic certification and has other stringent criteria. I wrote an entire post describing how the UTZ environmental criteria are the weakest of all the major certifications.

The most credible and comprehensive certification program aimed at improving social and economic conditions is Fair Trade. The UTZ certification program has no price minimums or guarantees for producers; it has been criticized as “Fair Trade lite” precisely because big buyers are using it as a cheaper way to tap into the ethical consumer market.

On the bright side
This is not to say UTZ certification isn’t worthwhile. The program emphasizes recordkeeping and traceability. Although the Good Origin blends have indeterminate names like Terrenos Gemelos and Tres Joyas, consumers will be able to input a source code from the front of a coffee bag and go to the Good Origin web site to identify the origin of the coffee. Sort of. You’ll get sent to the one of the UTZ producers pages, which provide general information but not many specifics (especially on growing conditions) for the cooperative or farm.

Nonetheless, that consumers can get even this much information about coffee origins from one of the Big Four is notable. As we learned some time ago, these corporations don’t actually know themselves where all their coffee comes from! Because of the huge volumes of coffee they purchase, they have networks of buyers and middlemen; traceability is a nightmare.

Do I prefer that the Big Four buy at least some coffee from some sort of “sustainable” source? Yes. But I do not believe in supporting corporations that do far more harm than good. It’s like giving a free pass to a drug dealer because he built a health clinic in his hometown, while pushing dope in front of the local school. And why should I reward a company for making a marginal effort at doing what it should be doing, being an ethical, responsible corporate citizen?

As long as consumers demand and continue to buy cheap, mass produced coffee, the Big Four will continue to obtain it from whomever they can. They’ll do the least expensive thing they can — such as buying a tiny fraction of their coffee under a certification scheme that costs them the least amount of money and effort — in order not to lose the consumers that have tried to wake up and smell the evils of unsustainable coffee. Don’t be fooled.

Coffee and the environment / Corporate coffee

Habitat still destroyed for cheap corporate coffee

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post discussing a World Wildlife Fund report revealing that robusta coffee was being illegally grown in southern Sumatra, with most being purchased by large coffee producers such as Kraft and Nestlè (press release here, full PDF here). That report focused on coffee being grown inside Indonesia’s Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Lampung province.

Earlier this week, ABC News carried a report on the plight of wild elephants in Sumatra. The story updated the situation at Bukit Barisan, and reported that only 4 elephants out of 60 still survive there. ABC said:

The national park is a protected forest, but a lot of it has been burned and cleared to grow Robusta coffee beans. These beans are commonly used in Europe and North America to make instant coffee.

Nestlè, which makes Nescafe, buys coffee from the region — 40 percent of it from local traders.

A Nestlè spokesman told ABC News, “It might come — we have no way of  knowing — from illegal sources. Law enforcement is not our task.”

In a follow-up post, I provided and update, in which Nestlè admitted the “difficulty of determining the precise origin” of its coffee. The company promised a year ago to increase the scrutiny of its Indonesian sources to make sure it didn’t buy illegally grown beans and launch an effort to clean up its supply chain.

If Nestlè hasn’t bothered to clean up its act, there’s a good reason: consumers are not penalizing them for their poor behavior. For the first nine months of 2007, since the first reports about the illegal coffee came to light, the Nestlè division that includes Nescafe and other coffees grew 10%, with sales — just in this division — of over US$11 billion.  It’s not just Nestlè, Kraft’s North American beverage division also posted a 5.3% gain in net revenues in the third quarter of 2007.

As long as people buy these coffees, they will continue to be produced, no matter how much habitat and wildlife gets destroyed, or how many growers become impoverished. The large multinational corporations that bring us our dirt cheap coffee are motivated by profits. Do you buy this coffee? What motivates you?

Photo of robusta coffee growing in the sun in southern Sumatra, from Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

Coffee and the environment / Corporate coffee

Tim Hortons coffee and the environment

If you are Canadian or live in a U.S. border state, you know Tim Hortons. This coffee and donut/fast food shop completely dominates the carry-out coffee market in Canada, with over 2,700 locations serving around 3 million cups of coffee a day, leaving Starbucks a distant second. Tim Hortons is such a Canadian cultural icon that there is even a store in Kandahar, Afghanistan, serving Canadian troops. There are also 345 stores in the U.S. with a goal of 500 by the end of 2008. Tim Hortons was acquired by Wendy’s International in 1995, but divested and spun it off late in 2006, so Tim Hortons is once again an independent company.

Is Tim Hortons coffee sustainable?

The coffee
The one-sentence summary is this: Tim Hortons does not sell organic coffee, does not sell Fair Trade coffee, and does not disclose the source of its green beans.

On their web site, the company explains, “we decided against buying fair trade coffee” and instead developed a program that works directly with the growers. This program, initiated in 2005, is called the Sustainable Coffee Partnership, and is implemented and managed by the outside organization EDE Consulting, of the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Hamburg, Germany. The Partnership will focus on three-year projects. These will provide technical assistance and investment in infrastructure to improve productivity and quality, aid in crop diversification (such as bananas), address the needs of families, and emphasize  “the need to respect and
protect the environment.”

The 2006 Tim Hortons annual report notes that part of the purpose of the Sustainable Coffee Partnership is to “fight against poverty among the people who provide one of the Company’s most important products, and to play a meaningful role in providing for the future supply of quality green coffee.” Therefore, the sites of the projects presumably give an indication of where Tim Hortons sources some its coffee. The first project was in Guatemala, with 750 producers in the communities of Zacapa, Chiquimula and Jutiapa near the Honduran border. Other projects are with 200 producers in Colombia in northern Huila, and in Brazil.

Colombia and Brazil are two of the biggest producers of technified “sun” coffee in the world, but there is no information on how much coffee they source from which countries or how it is grown. Their annual report merely says they have “many suppliers and alternate suppliers for coffee.”


Waste
I found that one couldn’t research Tim Hortons without coming across a lot of material on the ubiquity of disposable Tim Hortons coffee cups. They evidently paper Canada. An article in Macleans quoted a Sierra Club representative who said, “The Tim Hortons cup is easily the No. 1 recognizable item of litter in the country.” One often-cited statistic is that 22% of the litter in the province of Nova Scotia was from Tim Hortons.

Of course, it’s not really the company’s fault if people don’t properly dispose of their, and the company has started some anti-litter campaigns. Nonetheless, Tim Hortons cups contain no recycled material and are not recyclable. The company objected to a proposed tax on non-recyclable cups in Toronto, saying “We’re not a waste-management company. Our product is very price-sensitive.” They have recycling at some of their locations, but I’m unclear on whether it includes the cups. Tim Hortons apparently also offers a discount for bringing your own mug, but this customer (scroll to the bottom) discovered that the employee used a paper cup to fill the customer’s mug. I have had this happen myself on more than one occasion at different establishments, although not Tim Hortons.

Updated addition: Tim Hortons also objects to having its drive-through lanes be subjected to an anti-idling ordinance in Ontario.

Frankly, I’m not impressed with the sustainability efforts of Tim Hortons, or their products.

Photo of store by Thiesen.
Photo of cup in gutter by Kevin Steele.

Corporate coffee

More bad news from corporate coffee

Kraft Foods recently announced that beginning this fall, all of its Maxwell House brands of coffee (except instant and Master Blend) will be 100% arabica beans rather than a blend of arabica and robusta.

Robusta is the lower quality coffee species often used in cheaper coffees and blends. Robusta is able to grow at lower elevations and hotter temperatures than arabica, and is typically grown in sun. The biggest source of robusta is Asia, mostly Vietnam. Typically, getting any of the big corporate coffee roasters to admit they use robusta and/or how much or where it comes from is like pulling teeth. In a response to Kraft’s move, Proctor & Gamble offered that it will continue to use robusta in its Folger’s brand and Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA will keep on using robusta in Chock Full o’ Nuts. Now we know.

Kraft says they are doing this to improve flavor and quality. However, any sudden pronounced change in flavor profile would risk losing customers. So that reason doesn’t totally hold water, unless the change will occur over a long period, yet Kraft says the change to 100% arabica will be complete by year’s end. Kraft denies that this move is in response to rising robusta prices, brought on by low supply — recent robusta crops from Vietnam have been too inferior for even grocery store blends.

An important fact in this announcement is that Kraft also says the price of Maxwell House coffees will not change. Therefore, they will be buying arabica beans at robusta prices. That, in combination with keeping true to the established flavor profile, means that the arabica beans Kraft will use will be low grade and (for all the cost and economy-of-scale reasons we have previously discussed here) likely grown in big sun monocultures. I expect much of this cheap arabica to come from Brazil and Colombia. An increase in demand for cheap arabica could result in more forested areas or (in the case of southern Brazil in particular) savannah being cleared for production.

If anybody who knows more about coffee market forces can propose other possible environmental impacts, please chime in!

Corporate coffee / Dunkin Donuts

P&G to provide Dunkin' Donuts coffee

Big corporate coffee monger Procter & Gamble has partnered with Dunkin’ Donuts to offer a Dunkin’ Donuts branded coffee for sale at retail outlets including Wal-Mart, Costco, CVS, and Kroger. Although some articles say that P&G will "produce" the coffee, and others note that P&G will "distribute" the coffee, it sounds like P&G will roast the coffee to DD specifications. It will not, therefore, be exactly the same coffee sold at Dunkin’ Donuts outlets. Regardless, neither Dunkin’ Donuts nor P&G will reveal where they source their coffee, if it is sustainably grown, or whether they pay farmers anything near a living wage. (Hint: who knows, no, and no.)

Recall that I mentioned this deal when I wrote about the purchase of Dunkin’ Donuts by a private equity firm. These entities are concerned with one thing: making profits, a situation not conducive to sustainable coffee growing. Nor is P&G concerned with offering good-tasting quality coffee. For more on why this is completely bad news for sustainable coffee, you can take a look at my recent post on the connection between quality, price, and sustainability.
 

Corporate coffee

Wendy’s and Folgers

Greg at The Shot more than adequately sums up the puzzling move by Wendy’s burger chain to begin serving Folger’s coffee (owned by Procter & Gamble, the company which states in its sustainability report that “P&G does not track biodiversity land use as in
general we do not operate in these areas.”). The coffees will be from the Gourmet Selections line. Here’s what Kenneth Davids had to say about one of those varieties:

Pungently sweet, cedary, faintly sewerish-fermented aroma. In the cup neutral, sweet, very simple, with hints of walnut and continued composty ferment. Cleans up a bit in the finish. Considerable difference from cup to cup, with some cups more fermented than others.

Certainly a reason to rush to Wendy’s for coffee.  Not.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews / Corporate coffee

Coffee review: Millstone’s organic line

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #18.

I introduced the Millstone (Procter & Gamble) organic line of coffees in a previous post. This is a review of four of the five of the coffees in the line (I did not receive a sample of the Organic Mountain Moonlight blend).  There are four certified organic/certified Fair Trade coffees, and one Rainforest Alliance (RA) certified coffee.

The product brochure indicates these are grown in Central and South America, although they would not divulge any specifics, such as farms or co-ops, growing methods, or even country of origin for two blends.  The information says that this collection is “made from the very best arabica beans” although the product descriptions do not say “100% arabica.” However, these coffees arrived in coated paper bags, taped shut, with handwritten labels, so I don’t know what the actual bag might indicate.

These coffees made their biggest and most lasting impression right after I opened the box. The smell — presumably mostly from the paper-bagged varieties — filled the room in short order.  It wasn’t a pleasant coffee smell, but a very strong chemical/burnt rubber odor. It remained pungent for another 12 hours, as I took it all into work and had to move it out of my office because it smelled up my whole end of the hall. Happily, (but curiously), the odor disappeared by the next day, and even when we opened the packages, the beans mysteriously lacked real coffee odor.

Organic Nicaraguan Mountain Twilight Blend. This is described as “A medium-dark roast with a delightful aroma and smooth, rich taste.” Millstone would not answer a question regarding what co-op(s) in Nicaragua this came from; “blend” indicates more than one country of origin, but this information was not forthcoming.

The beans were quite dark, with a sheen but no spots of oil. The beans didn’t really smell like coffee, but had a dull burnt rubber aroma.  The coffee didn’t taste burnt, but lacked any richness.  One taster thought it tasted like coffee that was too weak made in a dirty pot (although it was made with our standard measurements, two tablespoons of grounds to each six ounces of water, in a french press for our first tasting).  This was just plain, mediocre coffee.  1.25 motmots.

Organic Mayan Black Onyx. “The darkest of our organic roasts with a smooth, bittersweet taste.” Again, no information on source.

These were dark beans indeed.  They smelled vaguely like burnt nuts (some debate on what kind of nuts — the kind that is the fruit of a tree, or the kind that is screwed onto a bolt). It was a surprise to us all that such a strong, dark and assertive-looking brew could taste so flat, insipid and lifeless. It left an odd coating on the tongue. I recall, back in the day, getting drunk, trying to sober up with coffee, then passing out. That stale taste left in my mouth the next morning?  Sorry, that’s what I thought of.  Our mean score barely struggled above 1 motmot.

Kenneth Davids at Coffee Review took a run at this one:

“A rather striking dark-roast coffee in its disconnected extremes of abandoned sweetness and charred bitterness.”

Organic Deep Peruvian Forest Blend. “A dark roast with a light, floral acidity and a clean finish.” No information on region of Peru, or if or what other countries contributed to the blend.

Yes, we kept going (we only tried one a day, to prevent any fatigue or bias). This was surely the strangest and worst of the bunch. Also a dark roast, but again a flat dark brown without surface oils. The beans had absolutely no coffee smell.  One reviewer said if he had been blindfolded, he would not have guessed it was coffee. Brewed, this blend had a truly strange oceanic smell, not coffee-like, but almost briny, a whiff of the sea. The taste was also genuinely odd — one reviewer (who has spent three summers in Alaska) said it reminded him of a hot puddle of seawater sitting on a pair of discarded rubber waders on a crab-fishing boat.  0.5 motmots

Rainforest Reserve. This was the only coffee that came in a sealed foil valve bag. It actually smelled like real coffee, but there was still a harshness to the odor that was faintly disagreeable. It is billed as a medium dark roast, but was identical to Green Mountain’s dark roast Rainforest Blend.

I was absolutely unable to get an answer from Millstone if this RA-certified Rainforest Reserve is the same as their Signature Collection Rainforest Reserve. If so, I found an old press release that notes it it sourced from the Lake Atitlan area in Guatemala. However, the Signature selection is not labeled organic, so I have to assume they are not sourcing from the same farms (remember that RA-certified coffee is not required to be certified organic, unlike Smithsonian Bird Friendly coffee, which is). The advantage Millstone has by not revealing the source of their beans is that they can change what goes into each variety, depending on availability and price.

This coffee was certainly the best of the bunch, which wasn’t saying too much.  It was slightly bitter, with a thin, metallic-tinged flavor that lacked richness. One person in our first group of four tasters did like it, and her score bumped up the average to our final rating of 2.25 motmots.

The only variety of the line not sampled was the Organic Mountain Moonlight.  However, the far-more-talented palate of Doug at Bloggle did review it. He notes “Its flavors tend toward wet earth and wood… and for a cup that tastes subtly of mud, it has surprisingly little body, but it does offer a fairly harsh, stale finish.” Check out the comment regarding why Millstone might be purposely marketing such characterless and uninspiring organic, Fair Trade coffee.

Parting thoughts
The thin body of these coffees, and their unappetizing aroma, were what really made them stand apart.  If we give Millstone the benefit of the doubt and believe that they use all arabica beans, then the lack of body and flavor can only be from poor handling and processing. This is a nice lesson in mass production versus hand-crafting. You can’t process and roast tens of thousands of pounds of beans with the same care and attention as batch-roasting to order.  The wheels just fall off.

Finally, a bit on Millstone and sustainability. I dug up P&G’s 2004 sustainability report (PDF).  It covers the whole company, not just the coffee, but has an index by subject. Under “Environmental Indicators, Biodiversity, Major Impacts on Biodiversity” there is no page reference, but a statement that says

“P&G does not track biodiversity land use as in general we do not operate in these areas.”

Indeed.

Corporate coffee / Dunkin Donuts

The odd bedfellows of Dunkin Donuts

Dunkin Donuts is a coffee and donut chain that originated in the northeastern U.S. which now has 7,000 stores worldwide. The company reports that it serves 1 billion cups of coffee annually.

Last year, Dunkin’ Donuts announced an aggressive expansion campaign, in which it aims to triple the number of stores in the U.S by 2020.  In January, it added Asia to expansion agenda. Just last week, the company revealed it has entered into a distribution deal with Procter & Gamble to put Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on retail shelves.

All this market saturation comes about a year after the Dunkin’ Brands group (which also includes Baskin-Robbins ice cream stores and Togo’s deli) was purchased by three private equity firms.  Bain Capital was founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who left the firm in 2001. The Carlyle Group owns controlling interests in many military contractors. Headquartered in Washington, DC, so many politicians have been associated with Carlyle, including both Presidents Bush, that it has been called the “Ex-Presidents Club.”  Former G.H.W. Bush Secretary of State James Baker is one of the founders. Thomas H. Lee Partners is known for its recent purchase of Clear Channel Communications, and is now pursuing buyouts in China.

Even prior to the change in ownership, coffee accounted for over 60% of Dunkin’ Donuts $4.4 billion annual revenue, accomplished in part by one of the highest mark-ups in the industry, about 95%, according to an article in New York Magazine. Even as they contemplate world domination, there is grumbling that the quality of their coffee may be in decline or at least inconsistent.

Is it sustainable? Their espresso drinks are made from Fair Trade beans, but there is little information available on origin, other than they use 100% arabica beans from Central and South America.  However, this photo of a sun coffee farm comes from their “From Tree to Cup” slide show.

Let’s see, the idea of supporting the military-industrial complex, investments in China, and sun coffee for a so-so cup…. no thanks.  That just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

(Update: see also “A hot serving of empty promises” regarding the brands’ sustainability initiatives.)

Corporate coffee / Organic coffee

Millstone’s organic line

[Update: Millstone was one of the coffees acquired by JM Smuckers, but it has now been discontinued. This post is for historical reference.]

Last month, a number of coffee bloggers, including C&C, received an offer from a public relations firm offering samples of Millstone Coffee Company’s organic line. Millstone is a coffee brand of the global conglomerate Procter & Gamble.

There are five certified organic varieties in this line (update: as of 2011, after being acquired by Smuckers, there are only three in the line, neither is Rainforest Alliance certified). One is Fair Trade certified. Another is Rainforest Alliance (RA) certified. I asked the PR rep a series of questions regarding these coffees.  My questions, the answers from P&G relayed to me via the PR firm, and my further comments are below.

Arabica or robusta?
My question: For all types, are they 100% arabica beans? Or do some or all have some robusta beans in them? If they do, can you provide a percentage, and the country of origin of the robusta?

Millstone replies: All Millstone Coffee flavors and roasts, including the 100% Organic line-up of Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance certified coffees, are made from premium Arabica coffee beans.

My comments: This is not a straight answer.  My 50/50 cotton shirt is made from cotton, but half of it is made from polyester. Searching the entire Millstone site does bring up many mentions that only the top 15% of arabica beans are used in their coffees. I don’t know what that means. Along with robusta? Top 15% of what? The word “arabica” is not on any of the web pages for four of the five coffees in this organic line; it is on the Nicaraguan Mountain Twilight Blend, but 100% is not indicated.  It is not in the  promotional material for this line for this line I received. Four bags I got had handwritten labels so I don’t know what is on the usual bags.  The Rainforest Reserve came in a valve bag, which did read “100% certified organic arabica beans,” which could still be considered ambiguous.

Given the added appeal and marketing cache of labeling coffee “100% arabica,” I can’t imagine why, if this line is all arabica, that this specific wording is not trumpeted from every bag, brochure, and web page.

Origins

My question:What specific regions, cooperatives, or farms do the Peruvian and Nicaraguan coffees come from? Are they grown under diverse shade? There is no mention of country of origin for the Rainforest Reserve, Organic Mountain Moonlight Fair Trade, or Mayan Black Onyx varieties. Can you provide this information (with region and cooperatives?)

Millstone replies: P&G doesn’t disclose information about the specific regions, coops, farms, etc. where the coffee is grown. This is all proprietary information that the company does not share publicly due to competitive reasons.

My comments: This answer is nonsensical. A roaster might want to protect the source of an exceptional, small-lot coffee, available via auction, so that the competition doesn’t try to outbid them.  Why make a such a secret out of where you get your mediocre, inexpensive beans? Maybe, like Nestlé, P&G doesn’t even know where they all come from. Or, like Kraft, would rather you didn’t know.

No matter why they won’t divulge origins, the fact that a consumer cannot easily find out where their coffee was grown — and therefore if it was produced in an ecologically-friendly way — is unacceptable.

100% Rainforest Alliance-certified beans?
My question: What percentage of the beans in the Rainforest Reserve variety are Rainforest Alliance certified?

Millstone replies: A medium-dark roast, Millstone’s 100% Organic Rainforest Reserve coffee comes from the forested slopes of Latin America, where the high-altitude volcanic soils have produced high-quality coffees for centuries. And because the beans are 100% certified by the Rainforest Alliance, you can feel good that you’re giving back to farmers and the environment with each and every cup.

My comments: I asked this question specifically because big roasters have been using only the minimum amount of RA certified beans that are necessary to carry the RA seal (30%). I’m wasn’t quite sure that “the beans are 100% certified” is the same as 100% of the beans are certified.

Just to be sure, I wrote to Rainforest Alliance. They replied that the Rainforest Reserve uses 100% RA-certified beans. Great! But the link they provided [now dead] was to Millstone’s Signature Collection Rainforest Reserve.  It’s a different package and not marked organic. If this is the same coffee that has been relabeled or rebranded, why is one labeled certified organic, and the other not?

Determined to clear this up, I wrote to Millstone directly. I specifically asked if these were the same coffees (providing links to the product pages), why one was organic and the other not, and once again the percentage of RA-certified beans in the organic Rainforest Reserve. After a week, I received a reply informing me that there was lots of useful information on the web site that I would find helpful — but they did not give me any links or any answers!

I gave up. The answers to all of these questions should be simple, straightforward, and easily available to consumers.

Coming soon, the C&C tasting panel gives these coffees a try. Update: Reviews are posted here.

Corporate coffee / Nestlé/Nespresso / Retail and specialty roasters / Starbucks

Nestlé and Starbucks respond to illegal coffee report

In an article in an Indonesian newspaper, Nestlé and Starbucks both responded to the report that they had been purchasing robusta coffee beans illegally grown in a Sumatran national park in Lampung province.

Nestlé
A spokesman for Nestlé Indonesia made this statement:

“Nestlé never willingly purchases coffee from dubious sources. However, the company admits the difficulty of determining the precise origin of a coffee bag which has passed through different hands before it reaches the Nestlé buyer.”

The emphasis is mine, which precisely sums up why I continuously recommend not buying supermarket coffees.  If the companies themselves don’t know where their coffee comes from or how it is farmed, how can we know it is farmed sustainably?  Or believe them?

Nestlé also said that the coffee they purchase from Lampung (around 12,000 tons a year) goes to make instant coffee. So brands to avoid = Nescafé and Taster’s Choice.

 


Starbucks
A spokesperson for Starbucks’ Indonesian partner denied that the company purchased coffee from Lampung (the southern province in question), or any robusta beans from Sumatra at all.

Starbucks is listed in the report on page 50, in an appendix on recipients of tainted coffee.  The list was compiled from records of the Cooperative Industry and Trade Service of Lampung province. It’s possible these records could be forged or falsified, I suppose. There is nothing as yet on the Starbucks web site concerning this issue.

By the way, buyers of Lampung beans should know better.  It was in 2003 that published reports [1,2] revealed that 70% of Lampung’s beans came from inside or adjacent to Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park and that endangered animals were threatened from the illegal cultivation.

[1] O’Brien, T. G. and M. F. Kinnaird.  2003.  Caffeine and conservation.  Science 300:587.

[2] Kinnaird, M.F., E.W. Sanderson, T. G. O’Brien, H.T. Wibisono, and G. Woolmer. 2003. Deforestation trends in a tropical landscape and implications for endangered large mammals. Conservation Biology 17:245-257.

Hat tip to bccy.

Coffee and the environment / Coffee regions / Corporate coffee / Jacobs Douwe Egberts/KraftHeinz

Illegal coffee growing threatens wildlife, Kraft major buyer

In a well-investigated and detailed report (pdf) released yesterday, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) revealed that robusta coffee is being illegally grown in southern Sumatra, with most being purchased by large coffee producers such as Kraft and Nestlé.

“Illegally grown coffee is mixed with legally grown coffee beans and sold to such companies as Kraft Foods and Nestlé among other major companies in the U.S. and abroad.” — WWF

The coffee is being grown inside Indonesia’s Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, which has over 300 bird species and is one of the few places where the endangered Sumatran subspecies of tigers, elephants, and rhinos coexist. This park has already lost 30% of its land to illegal agriculture, mainly coffee. WWF found 173 square miles being used for illegal coffee growing, with a yield of nearly 20,000 tons of coffee annually.  Wildlife has abandoned these cultivated areas.  WWF tracked the illegal coffee from the park through export routes to multinational coffee companies using satellite imaging, interviews with coffee farmers and traders, and trade route monitoring.

The U.S. received 17% of the coffee tainted with illegally grown beans.  Illegal beans are sold to local traders, who mix them with legally grown beans which then make their way to exporters. Major international companies purchase beans from exporters, and if they are not conscientious about their supply chain, they may not know they are buying illegal beans. The main buyers are shown in this graph from the report (click to enlarge), with Kraft being the number one buyer.

Exports of robusta beans from Lampung province, where most the park lies, have been steadily increasing, and the top six companies on the graph buy 55% of all Lampung beans. The profits spurring the encroachment into the park are financed by the purchases of these global roasters, and all Lampung beans have a very high probability of being contaminated with illegally grown beans, according to WWF. Talcoa (part of Kraft Foods), Kraft, and Nestlé were the top recipients in 2003-2005; Folgers (Procter & Gamble) and Starbucks received smaller amounts in 2004.

After being contacted by WWF, Kraft and Nestle were among five companies in the early stages of “engaging with WWF” on the problem. Four companies, including ED&F Man, parent company of VOLCAFE (which supplies beans to Nestlé and Maxwell House), denied involvement. Eight other companies did not reply (full list in report).

Remember this is robusta coffee, so you don’t have to worry about the Sumatran arabica beans from your favorite specialty roaster. The illegal beans are those used in most supermarket blends.  Another reason to not buy these coffees!

See update #1 here and a late 2007 update here.

Hat tip to Ned Potter’s ABC News Science and Technology blog.  Map adapted from GoVacation Indonesia.

Corporate coffee

Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club coffee

In my post summarizing Coffee Review’s look at supermarket coffees, I mentioned that Wal-Mart’s coffee deserved special attention. I was unable to find out exactly where Wal-Mart sources its ”Great Value 100% Arabica” but I can tell you where it sources its Sam’s Club’s Member’s Mark: Café Bom Dia, a huge Brazilian coffee roaster and importer. Because Wal-Mart prefers to (has to) work with large suppliers, and because the Great Value coffee contains beans from Brazil, I’m sure this is a major source for the Great Value as well as the Member’s Mark.

So, when you buy coffee from Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club (including the Café Bom Dia and Marques de Paiva brands), here is where your coffee comes from:

The photo is from the Café Bom Dia web site (since removed). The coffee is grown in the Mata Atlantic Forest region in the southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. Only 7.3% of the original forest remains, having been cleared for agriculture, with coffee being the major crop. In the Mata Atlantic, 40% of the plant species are found nowhere else on earth, and there are 30 critically endangered vertebrate species, including 15 birds.

Café Bom Dia has 3 million coffee trees on over 741,000 acres. Although deforestation from coffee cultivation has occurred since the beginning of the 19th century, I do not want to buy coffee grown in this manner, nor do I want to encourage this type of production or expansion of these farms. Sustainably grown coffee mimics, at least to some degree, the natural forest system.  High production coffee is its antithesis, a factory system geared towards efficiency, uniformity, and low cost. Economies of scale dictate that when you buy coffee from large retailers and corporations, you are not supporting biodiversity and with your dollar are voting against the environment.

It is astonishing to me that Member’s Mark brand is Rainforest Alliance (RA) certified. I’m guessing that once again this means that the coffee includes only the minimum 30% certified beans, but I am writing RA for clarification.  Frankly, I don’t understand how RA can justify encouraging purchase of coffee from companies which obtain most of their coffee from giant monocultures. We’ll see what they say.

More information:

Update: Wal-Mart’s trustworthiness regarding organic food labeling is discussed in this new BusinessWeek article, which links to photographs taken by the Cornucopia Institute showing misleading labeling.

Further update (2008): Fact check on Walmart’s false claim about Sam’s Choice Rainforest Alliance certified coffee.

Coffee reviews / Corporate coffee

Coffee Review reviews supermarket coffees

The latest at Coffee Review is a look at mainstream supermarket coffees.  Reviewing prepackaged, pre-ground coffees is a departure for Kenneth Davids’ site, which is the best source on the web for reviews of specialty coffees. Davids was honest, perhaps even courageous, giving a couple of coffees fair scores. However, his overview states that “the mainstream supermarket coffees reviewed here offered mainly mediocrity, bracketed by a couple of excursions into pretty good and more than a couple into sheer repulsiveness.”

Just because a few coffees scored “pretty good” should not encourage people to stick with these cheap beans, for reasons described below. He reviews 14 coffees available in major supermarkets, which include a couple I’ve never heard of (regional?) and some “crossover” products such as Peet’s and Starbucks.  You should certainly read the whole article, but I’d like to mention two points he makes about the big corporate coffees. He reviews Maxwell House and two Yubans (all owned by Kraft); four by Folgers (owned by Procter & Gamble); and MJB Premium (owned by Sara Lee).

All of these commodity brands share a similar heritage.  Davids writes:

Most of the robustas in the cans appeared to have been steamed to remove the sewery taints these coffees acquire through being dried inside the fruit in rotting heaps. The result is a neutral, cloyingly sweet, woody, vaguely nut-like cup, usually with a slight residual hint of rot. All of the standard branded, canned blends shared a similar steamed-robusta-heavy profile, with only minor differences.

Aside from the lousy taste, the corporate (and public) thirst for cheap robusta beans is what precipitated the coffee crisis, driving thousands of small farmers who grew quality arabica beans out of business. This is most often framed as a serious humanitarian crisis — and it is — but it has also been an ecological disaster. Plummeting prices led farmers to sell their farms, or convert them to less environmentally-friendly crops (including drugs) or to sun coffee. Please read more here.

Davids discusses what inexpensive coffees mean to farmers, even the theoretically beneficial types like the Rainforest Alliance certified Yuban blend (which I discussed in depth here). He notes, “mainstream supermarket coffees generally fail to provide much option for those of us who want to recognize and reward coffee growers as our colleagues rather than exploit them as unacknowledged drones in the vast global commodity hive.”

One coffee he reviewed, which got a decent score, was Wal-Mart’s Great Value 100% Arabica, which was also incredibly cheap (“someone got shafted..at the coffee-tree end of the supply chain.”) The importance of a retail giant like Wal-Mart in the coffee business deserves a post of its own, which will be forthcoming.

Coffee news and miscellany / Corporate coffee

Genetically-engineered coffee

Nestlè, whose coffee brands include Nescafe and Taster’s Choice, has obtained a patent on a genetically modified coffee plant that will improve the solubility of instant coffee powder made from its beans. The patent also includes other aspects of the process which produces the coffee powder.

Nestlè has come under fire in the past for not labeling products that contain GE ingredients and insufficient third-party testing.  Must we take any risks for something as mundane and profit-oriented as faster-dissolving instant coffee?!

Other genetic manipulation going on by various groups working with coffee includes goals such as:

  • Simultaneous ripening of coffee cherries. Cherries would ripen to a certain point then stop; final ripening would be triggered by spraying with ethylene, at which point they could be picked by machines. To be practical, this would have to be done on short coffee varieties that also require high chemical inputs to maintain good yields.  A lot of this work is being done at the University of Hawaii, and Kona coffee growers strongly object to any GM coffee being put in the field in Hawaii, as they are concerned about the genes “escaping” and contaminating their own plants, a situation not without precedent.
  • Beans with little or no caffeine. As explained in a previous post, caffeine protects plants from pests, so “decaffeinated” plants may require more chemicals to protect them. The work I’ve seen so far is being done on Coffea canephora — robusta — which has far more caffeine than higher grade arabica beans.  This might seem like starting at a disadvantage, but the choice is no doubt due to the ability to mass-produce robusta in large, sunny, chemically-doused plantations. There are naturally-occurring low caffeine coffee varieties that are bitter and not commercially viable. Attempts to breed these traits into arabica varieties (which are not closely related) have been unsuccessful.  Recently, several mutant low caffeine arabica plants were located in Ethiopia.
  • Pest-resistant varieties.  Initially, crops implanted with proteins that are lethal to pests (usually derived from Bt) may lead to decreased pesticide application. Many transgenetic Bt crops target specific pests, and that may cut
    down on broad-spectrum insecticide application. On the other hand, other case studies have indicated that there is a lack of support for claims that GM crops result in a widespread decrease in chemical use. Pests are more likely to become resistant to insecticides in genetically-modified crops than are crops that are sprayed with pesticides.  There is also concern about impacts on non-target organisms. Since many coffee pests can be kept in check by careful cultivation and integrated pest management the risks associated with GM Bt coffee seem unreasonable.