Brewing injustice

On Jan. 1, I briefly thought about giving up coffee as a New Year’s health resolution.

I quickly dismissed this absurdity and filled my favorite mug with the steaming black liquid prepared just the way I like it.

Coffee is now a large part of American culture. From the patriotism of coffee drinking after the Boston Tea Party, to the go to for informal business meetings, America has risen to be the top country for coffee consumption.

Some might not know that coffee has a complicated history. As described by Dr. Mauricio Espinoza, Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati, coffee “Has been a bittersweet sort of story and a drink. Romanticized. But its production has always been tied to slavery, to some kind of exploitation, or destruction of the environment.”

As consumers, we should be choosing products, including coffee, that promote fair wages and minimize environmental harm caused by unsustainable production and harvesting.

Espinoza spent his early life surrounded by coffee. Born in a coffee mill in Costa Rica, he worked on coffee farms since he was five years old. He now teaches Latin American literature and cultural studies, including a course on coffee culture and the environment in Latin America.

Coffee production is intimately tied to migration in many ways. Espinoza points out that even the plant itself migrated. Traders brought it from its natural habitat in Ethiopia, where it still grows wild in the highland forests. He describes the labor intensiveness in harvesting “From like September through February, in most places in Latin America, it requires lots of people to go pick coffee.” Workers must collect it by hand, “you have to pick only the ripe fruit and coffee doesn’t ripen all at once. So you have to hand pick it and then go back and pick again with two or three passes. And the places where it grows are on difficult to access roads, which requires people to carry the coffee into a place where it can then be collected.”

Oil has been the most visible commodity that drives foreign intervention, from the Iraq invasion at the turn of the century to Venezuela just recently. While coffee was not as much of a draw as oil, or even bananas and now water being used for data centers, it is part of a long and complicated history of global imperialism.

From colonialism to Banana Wars to the present, Western intervention in other countries — especially in the global south — has been a constant. Whether it is to control the spread of socialism or control the purse strings tied to the rich resources of these countries, the resulting exploitation of communities have long reaching and long lasting effects. It destroys their land and their economy, thus forcing people to migrate elsewhere.

Espinoza explains that immigration started into the coffee producing countries “in Brazil, when slavery becomes outlawed in the late 1800s and they basically lost all the free labor that they had. So Brazil started to look for immigrants to come, to attract them and help with the coffee industry.”

He goes on “In coffee producing regions, many people have been migrating especially to the U.S. because when there are price fluctuations and very bad, low coffee prices, that make it very difficult to survive in those coffee growing communities.”

The 1989 collapse of the International Coffee Agreement, which stabilized coffee prices devastated some coffee dependent economies. “There were no more fixed prices, and that created a lot of chaos in the market sense.” Additionally, “the impact of climate change on coffee through drought or cold spells, or just prices being too low to be able to live off coffee production. So especially in Indigenous areas we started to see a lot of patterns of migration to the U.S. from those coffee growing regions.”

In America during the industrial revolution coffee was used to drive worker productivity. While still a go to source of energy for the weary American worker, many coffee drinkers are seeking a higher quality drink with more ethical origins.

Espinoza notes that most of the coffee we consume is commodity coffee from big companies, that are harder to hold accountable. But consumers can still help demand more socially conscious coffee.

Robb Pearson grew up in Iowa near Washington and has grown through the coffee ranks from barista to trainer to manager, and is now Director of Coffee at Windmill Coffee, where he roasts and buys green coffee. “Coffee growers have been paid less than they deserve, and oftentimes below a living wage. Coffee was moved into the New World as a cash crop during colonialism, and a lot of those routes and historical notions have continued.”

He explains that Windmill and other companies pay a premium for higher quality coffees. They develop relationships and ensure that exporters are “working with farmers and ensuring that the quality is there for us and that they are getting paid an amount of money that makes this all worth it for them to do so.”

Pearson notes that it is “all too easy to buy coffee that's just incredibly cheap. And there is a notion that coffee should be incredibly cheap.” Pearson notes that simply being willing to pay more for coffee has a far reaching, positive downstream effect. “I think consumers willingness to spend a bit more on hopefully higher quality coffee, from coffee companies that don't just buy great green coffee but also support their employees and suppliers has a big impact.”

So next time you buy a cup of java or even a bag to brew at home, research where your coffee came from. Chances are, it will even taste better for you doing so.

Chris Espersen is a Gazette editorial fellow. chris.espersen@thegazette.com