Corporate coffee

Responsible Shopper ranks big coffee corporations

When I write about corporate coffee, I often refer or link to Co-op America’s Responsible Shopper corporate profiles.  They’ve now done summaries of many industries, comparing top companies in broad categories, including grading the largest coffee corporations. Companies get a letter grade, and are color-coded to boot.

The list includes the big four, plus Starbucks. Starbucks is a big player in the coffee industry, but frankly not in the same league as the other multinationals. It deserves
a fair amount of criticism in some areas, but I believe Starbucks doesn’t receive due credit for its role in heightening awareness of specialty coffee and weaning the public away from the multinationals.

As for the other four, letter grades for the Environment category are:

  • Kraft = “n/i.” This is undefined. No information? C’mon. I’ll provide a generous one, based relative to the grades Co-op America is providing: C.
  • Sara Lee = C-.
  • Procter & Gamble = n/i. My grade: D-
  • Nestle = F (it got this failing grade across the board for various corporate responsibility categories).

[Unfortunately, these profiles are no longer available.]

 

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!

Certifications / Coffee news and miscellany / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance partners with the Coffee Quality Institute

A Problem
Judging by the enormous market shares of the Big Four corporate coffee multinationals, a lot of people don’t mind drinking lousy tasting coffee. However, plenty of people won’t do it. But more imporantly, if it doesn’t taste better, a lot of folks are not going to pay extra for certified coffee, and these coffees nearly always carry a premium. I’m not even willing to fork over more cash just for an eco-friendly label if the coffee is mediocre. If I can’t drink tasty, sustainable coffee, I just don’t drink it — although I’m as addicted as the next person. Unfortunately, I’m an exception.

Here’s the nasty truth: Even people who profess to caring about the environment tend to default to habitat-destroying, cheap coffee produced with tons of chemicals if there isn’t sufficient motivation to switch.  If they try a certified coffee and it doesn’t taste any better than the stuff they’ve been drinking, they don’t bother to buy it again.

A Partnership
That’s why it’s good news that the fastest growing and most familiar eco-labeller, Rainforest Alliance (RA), has inked an agreement with the non-profit Coffee Quality Institute (CQI). Among other things, this partnership will integrate CQI’s standardized coffee quality standards into RA’s tracking and traceability software and promote those standards within RA’s sustainable agriculture program. On a practical level, it means coffee buyers (importers, roasters, and consumers) will have some objective benchmark (the Q coffee score) indicating the quality of the coffee, as well as the flavor profile.

For the last five years, RA has had annual Cupping for Quality events and cupping competitions organized by CQI. These events and awards really help highlight the fact that sustainably-grown coffees can have amazing flavor, worthy of purchasing just for their taste alone. This partnership should really help buyer awareness and enhance interest in the quality of sustainable coffee.

A Conundrum
I’m not sure how RA will reconcile this commitment to quality — with an emphasis in this case on taste — with their partnerships with big corporate roasters like Kraft. Kraft’s Yuban coffee is 30% RA certified, and has been described by Ken Davids, one of the most respected coffee evaluators in the world, as “Cloyingly sweet, earthy/mildewed character with very distinct grassy notes.” This same review says that those who should drink Yuban are “on a budget with a commitment to organic growing principles that transcends the desire to drink decent coffee.” One could argue that the high-quality RA certified beans are being overwhelmed by the remaining 70%, mildewy, grassy, earthy, who-knows-where-they-come-from beans. But that certainly defeats the purpose. This odd dichotomy — fine work in environmentally and socially sustainable, high quality coffee, alongside helping corporate giants buff their green image by permitting their seal on products containing as little as 30% certified beans — produces not a small amount of cognitive dissonance among coffee lovers, myself included. This will eventually be the subject of its own post.

SCAA flavor wheel photo by AndyCiordia under a Creative Commons license.

Caribbean / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Larry’s Beans Organic Barahona

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #35.

To follow up on the post on coffee growing in Hispaniola, here is our second review of a Dominican Republic coffee (the first was Café Alta Gracia). Here wer have Organic Barahona from Larry’s Beans. Fair Trade and Certified organic.

Larry’s Beans is one of the members of Cooperative Coffees, a group of 23 roasters who have banded together in a green coffee bean buying cooperative. They directly source coffees from small-scale farms at or above Fair Trade price. You can read about their producers (which provide beans to the member roasters), and best of all, you can access all the purchasing documents — complete transparency. Not every lot is acquired through Cooperative Coffees, but access to the paper trail from outside purchases will also be available as the kinks are worked out of the system.

Cooperative Coffee’s DR producer is the Federation de Caficultores de la Region Sur (FEDECARES), covering 13 provinces in the DR with over 170 member organizations and 7600 farmers. This particular lot came from the El Polo Cooperative, one of the new member organizations, based in the southwestern DR town of Polo, in Barahona province. I believe this puts the elevation of the coffee at 800 to 1200 m.

The beans were a medium roast, with a sheen of oil and some pinpricks. Nobody could adequately agree on much about this coffee. One smelled honey and tasted honey, and was quite emphatic about it — and this is a flavor highlighted by the roaster that is noted on the bag. Another found it nutty, and I thought it had a woody or earthy taste. It was one of the few coffees I’ve had that I thought tasted better cool.

There was no roast date on the bag, but it did have a use-by date. Use-by dates are “X” number of months from the roast date; presumably the day of the month of the roast date and “expiration” date are the same. This would indicate I received the coffee when it was already almost three weeks old. The less-than-vigorous bloom seemed to back this up. I think this coffee would have been much better freshly roasted, or at least we would have been able to tease some more flavors out of it.

Overall, a soft, laid-back sort of coffee, pleasant but unremarkable, coming in at 2.5 motmots. If you’ve tried to convert a grocery-store coffee drinker to specialty coffee via a really refined and elegant bean and been disappointed that the person found the good coffee to be too different or just “didn’t get it,” this DR coffee might be a better place to start. It won’t be offensive,off-putting, or weird — just a big step up and a good price and ahead in sustainability.

UPDATE! Jonathan Bonchak, Goodwill Ambassador from Larry’s Beans, sent me a fresher bag of this coffee. Indeed, it had a much better bloom, and it was pleasantly sweeter than the last bag. Two people gave it substantially higher ratings — “It was delicious!” — and in this set of tastings it earned just over 3 motmots.  Thanks, Jonathan!