October 10, 2024 • 54 mins
Turns out climate change is also coming for our coffee! Guest host Prop from Hood Politics with Prop walks us through the coffee supply chain and how irresponsible harvesting practices have led us to the possibility of a future without coffee. Then he shows us how people in the industry, through regenerative indigenous practices, are saving our soil.
Sources:
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-18/coffee-s-future-looks-bitter-as-climate-change-hits-from-brazil-to-vietnam?embedded-checkout=true
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqnZkvKIo0g
https://apnews.com/article/brazil-climate-change-drought-coffee-harvest-a6516a4b314e6ba7c11513c08afb6996
Good Coffee: https://www.bext360.com/#/
Onyx Coffee: https://onyxcoffeelab.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqkoy-rSGjm53d4V-HFxAvccdbdtX2j9PRlxVWJ-goOkaFW7Stv
Cxffee Black: https://cxffeeblack.com/
La Palma el Tuyucan: https://lapalmayeltucanhotel.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone Media, there's nothing wrong with your podcast feed. This
is prop and I am invading that it can happen
here podcasts. To the four or five of y'all in
the subreddit that can't stand my voice and say I'm
the most annoying person in the Cool Zone extended universe,
(00:23):
I apologize.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
My mama used to say, be who you is, because
who you ain't a who he is.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
We're gonna talk about some things, specifically coffee and how
your children will probably never be able to drink the
coffee that you have drunk because climate change of bounds.
But before we do, I'm also realizing how many singers
in the eighties was singing the teenagers to children. You know,
the absolute banger of a song If I could fly,
(00:51):
I pick you up, I take you into the night,
great song right and show you that you da see?
Do you know what the first lyric in that song is,
she's only sixteen years old, leave her alone? Unless he
(01:13):
wasn't a teenager just openly singing what was we thinking?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Freaking bell Biv devout in Dude.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Maybabe backstage, underage, gotta leg it fly.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I like to do the wow thing. Oh you're we're
just openly singing the kids.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Let me get back on topic, because not only could
it happen here, it is happening here.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So you may or may not know me.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I am Los Angeles born and raised, our host her
Politics with Prop Coles on media team, and I am
your resident coffee nerd, and a lot of that grew
out of just a natural passion for coffee, which you
will hear me gush about later. But I think I'm
gonna back into this topic with back that thing up
(02:02):
with the story from a few years back.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
See a few years back, I had a.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Chance to put out a poetry book called Terraform, building
a Liverpool World. And Terraform also had four musical EP
seven song EPs called The Sky, the Soil, the People,
and the Possibility. And while I was working on the Soil,
I had a chance to partner with one of the
I mean really, it's like, I don't know if there's
a better roaster in America called Onyx believe it or
(02:28):
not in Northwest Arkansas and in a collab sort of
coffee release we were doing in partnership with mir which
is a drinkwear company.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm also an ambassador for We.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Had a chance to go to Columbia, and if you've
if you've been to South America or anywhere close to
the equator, it's I mean, you're walking into the Avatar,
you know, minus the aliens. It's this raw sort of
earth that us in the northern hemisphere. It's just colors
of green that you just can't imagine that, Like our
(03:06):
pantones have yet to match the type of green in
a forest that has to be a certain amount of
miles above sea level for it to grow coffee.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
So we fly into Bogata.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
We go about an hour and a half outside of
the city, which normally when you go to Origin it's
like you have to like take a rickety helicopter or
traverse twelve hours into you know, an African jungle, which
is like not the most plush riding, but it's just
it's this beautiful South American, you know, Colombian road and
(03:44):
then you go up this small sort of windy road
and while it's sunny, beautiful, I don't know what the
combination of indigenous African European settlers that just made whatever
combination of human made these Colombians so beautiful. But there's
(04:08):
not I mean everyone's beautiful. It is the most off putting,
how gorgeous every human is there along with this plush green.
You come over this hill and because of the way
that this farmer going to is set inside in between
(04:31):
in this small valley that's about four to five thousand
feet above sea level, there's this beautiful fog that lays
over the top of this just gorgeous, gorgeous rainforest.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Right there's grape vineyards, there's a few of those.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
There's avocados, there's all these just beautiful multi Instead of
a monoculture, a monoculture is a farm of just one thing.
Is a multi culture place that this crew called lepama
eltua kan that's who I was with, And all this
beauty and vegetation that I'm describing, apparently twelve years ago
(05:14):
was not a thing.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
This place was.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
The textbook like cartoonish level example of deforestation where all
of this natural beauty was cleared out for cattle raising
and the land was dead. But you would never guess,
you would never guess that this was ever an issue, because.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
What I'm looking at is Narnia.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So this group of local born and raised brothers came
up with a business plan and started restoring this land.
I can't overstate the before and after picture, like the
land was dying them with their reginative. Like you know,
farming practices made this a rainforest to get and that
is now growing some of the best coffee on earth.
(06:02):
So anyway we come in there, it's beautiful. Just there
are no words to express how beautiful this is. I
have a song called the Soil Is Sacred that I
shot the video at that farm. So if you want
to just go ahead and peep that, peep that to
understand this place. This place is not only just a
(06:25):
coffee farm. It's also a bike trail adventure place. It's
a hotel. You stay in these bungalows that are like
up on sticks, and then the shower is outdoors, just
covered around bamboo sticks.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That like hei the thing, and it's got like the
what we like to call the anti black shower heads.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
You know that those are the I don't know if
y'all notice, because black people don't always like to wet
our hair in the shower.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
We wash our hair much less than y'all do.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
But if you got that waterfall shower head, then that
means we got to tilt our heads back a little bit,
or make sure we got a shower cap. I don't
know if you know any black women, but you don't
wet my hair in.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
The shower anyway.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
But you're showering out there, and it's just beautiful. You're
in the rainforest. You can hear the animals and it's
just this gentle breeze is blowing. And then around eleven.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Thirty the fall kind of clears out. You get to
sit down.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
You're having some breakfasts that's just chopped up papaya and
mango that they grew right there, right God, I could
see the mango tree, it's right there. And then they'll
fry up some plantain from the plantain tree right there,
scrambling up with some eggs from the chicken.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Nest right there, right Just it's a dream.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
And as we're talking, as we're moving through this thing,
the man that runs it, who like I wish I
could have his baby. It was just the most gorgeous
human I've ever seen, just flowing, flowing quafft hair, speaking
English and Spanish. The guy could play seven instruments. At
some point where we're cutting coffee, the dude breaks into
(08:04):
a bachata and then some Coombia and he's just singing
these Colombian folklore songs while flipping over a bucket and
playing drums.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's just like you, guys, you're in a movie. You're
in a movie.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And then he casually drops, yeah, we only got twenty
seven more of those.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I was like, twenty seven more?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
What he goes, Oh yeah, part of the mission of
this form is if we don't do something, there is
twenty seven harvests left. I was like, of what he
goes of top soil, Coffee's going to go extinct in
twenty seven years. Sam talk about the possibility of a
(08:44):
world without coffee, how we got here, and what people
are doing to hopefully save the glorious being. All Right,
I feel like coffee is like the perfect analogy, the
perfect one to one ratio, or the ways for which
the global North has treated the global South, specifically black people,
(09:09):
but by and large just it's the perfect metaphor for
the raping and pillaging of resources, including people, that has
happened across the world. So coffee originates solely from Ethiopia, Okay,
so it's already it's black. This is the early fifteen
(09:31):
hundreds legend is that some sheep farmers saw that their
sheeps were going crazy, like just mad, mad energy after
they had ate a particular cherry. Because again, coffee is
a cherry, which is actually a very delicious cherry, you know,
and the bean inside is not the bean, it's the
(09:52):
pit or the seed that's inside of the coffee cherry.
So yeah, legend is like that's how they figured it out,
Like they eat these cherries and then they go crazy, like,
I wonder if that's going to give us strength to
you know. So it's originally discovered in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is
the only natural place that coffee grows, and every other
(10:13):
coffee bean across the world was propagated.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
From the Ethiopian one.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
It only grows between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic
of Capricorn along the equator. That is the only place
that it naturally grows. But because of climate change and
because of you know, GMO and genetically modifying and all
these different things that we've done with cross breeding and
stuff like, you know, we've been able to grow it
in in regions that aren't naturally the temperature and elevation
(10:40):
that they naturally grow in. There are many different varietals
of what we call that's what they're called, varietals of
this particular cherry or plant. But overall, you can break
the species of coffee plant into three types. So you
have typica, which most people don't drink, unless like if
you have a coffee farm that you actually export from,
(11:01):
like a lot of times, the typical stuff is just
the stuff that you keep for yourself, Like most coffee
farmers have never actually tasted their best coffee because you
ship that off to the rest of the world to
make your money. Then there's robustica, which is like what
most of the like instant coffee is made from. Really
(11:22):
a lot of the world actually drinks that, but it's
an acquired taste, like when you go through South America,
Like I know, when I went to my grandmother in
lost house, like she you know, she boiled the water
with the canela the cinnamon sticks and poured instant coffee
in and like as much of a coffee snob as
I am, I'm like, that's the best.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
That's one of the best cups of coffee I ever
had in my life.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
You know, people always ask me, what's the best cup
of coffee ever had? And I'm like, honestly, it's the
one in your hand that's the best cup. I feel
like there's like a bell curve where it's like, yeah,
you discover it, then you hit this level of snobty.
Then you become like a like a new Christian about it,
and you're just like one of the evangelize and tell everybody,
and you become just like a theological snob and you're
(12:02):
just like, uh, are you putting cream like full extraction
or die death over decaf? Like you become that dude,
and then you just come over the other end of
that hump and you're just like, dude, it's just coffee, man.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So yeah, so that's Robusticut, which, like I said, most
of the world actually drinks that. And then the specialty level,
the one that most of us are used to drinking now,
is called Arabica, and it's kind of like it's the
top tier based on whatever subjective scale we use to
(12:36):
say what.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Is the best coffee.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
But the fertile band, as what we call it around
the coffee industry, is this span that you know, kind
of belts around the equator. So that's why in Central
and South America, in certain parts of Africa and in Asia,
coffee can naturally be grown, it takes a particular elevation, right,
(12:59):
And you can even follow the Transatlantic slave trade. You
could follow the transit Lantic slave trade by following the
distribution of coffee. How coffee got to the America's transatlantic
slave trade. Anyway, there used to be this beef between
Ethiopia and Yemen as to like who made coffee first,
because without getting too much into nerdery, I want to
(13:20):
stay in the narrative here, but coffee first from Ethiopia
went to Yemen. And the argument with the yemen ease
is that they were the ones that grounded it and
made it into a hot drink.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So that's their argument that the Ethiopians didn't do that first.
But anybody that really knows it's it's like, dude, it
originates in Africa.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
I'd be willing to bet too that if you kind
of have developed somewhat of a palette for like a
good clean cup of coffee, you would probably feel like
Ethiopian beans are the best. And mostly it's just because like, well,
that's where it's from, and they have like at least
one hundred year head start in cultivating how to make
(14:00):
a bomb. Being as a fun aside, if you get
your hand on a Yemense bean, it's a flavor profile
you've probably never had in your life. That's why if
you ever go to a place and they have like
a Yemen thesee geisha, it costs so much because Yemen
has been with the Huthis and such like that have
been locked into this civil war funded by America, Saudi Arabia,
(14:22):
and Iran. You know, let's tie it all together, guys,
that's what I'm saying. It's a metaphor for everything. Why
coffee can't get exported out of Yemen is because of
this civil war. It cost so much to get coffee
out of Yemen because of these you know, wars funded
by Western countries.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Anyway, So from Yemen it got to Turkey.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
You know, this is around the time of like when
the Islamic world was really the superpower of the planet.
You know, with people like a Voez you could do
your little history on that and just all of the
most beautiful libraries, science, history, algebra, philosophy was all coming
from the Muslim world. And it was through the Muslim
(15:05):
world that coffee got to Europe. So at first Europe
wouldn't drink coffee because they thought it was Muslim. That's
what the dirty little brown folks is doing, right until
it got to Belgium, which is one of the funnest
stories to me again as coffee remaining this metaphor for
the suffering of people of color everywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So anyway, remember Europe.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Is a place for tea, but you know they got
they tea from India. Anyway, So one of the archbishops
in Belgium was presented this coffee thing, and because it
was brought to Europe by the Muslims, the people they
had thought they couldn't drink it. So this bishop was like,
(15:51):
I don't know, let me try it. So I don't
think this might be folklore. But he drinks this coffee
and he said, now I'm not gonna quote him direct,
this is the part that I think is folks, this happened,
but this is the part that says folklore. He was like, Uh,
if this is evil, let's baptize it because we can.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Make it for good. He was like, this is too
delicious to let go watching the devil get all the
good drinks.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yo, I'm said, I'm trying to drink good too, we
could drink unto the Lord, all things was made for
his glory, including this coffee.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
There used to be this.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Argument over which one was better for you, coffee your tea.
They even did this test with these prisoners where they
gave one of them all coffee, the other one all
tea to see who would live longer. And of course,
since that is like the least scientific thing you could
do possible, you know, even if the guy that coffee
live longer, it don't matter because it's not real science. Anyway,
(16:51):
I personally am very thankful that coffee got to Europe
because again something that was discovered and came from Black
people for which we're willing to share freely, like our music,
like our slang, like our style address.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
You're welcome, you know what I'm saying, but don't act
like this your house.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
You could put your flavor on it and we could
all enjoy. Because it was the Scandinavian countries that figured
out light roasting and a lot of the nerdery for
like the third wave specialty coffee that that you see
now that you're right, that's from Europe. Italy did not
discover coffee Italy did espresso. I'm thankful for that, but
(17:30):
they were only able to do espresso because of the
labor of people of color in the global South. You're
follow my metaphor here. Coffee got to the Americas via
the slave trade. But if you can just look at
a map, the jungles in Angola and the jungles of
Brazil are the same jungle. There's just the ocean in
(17:51):
between it. So of course when the Africans got there,
they would recognize the soil and be able to grow
the same things.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Are y'all following me?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
We're talking about an industry that makes four hundred and
sixty billion dollars globally every year and less than one
percent goes back to Africa. Less than one percent actually
goes to those that actually grow the product.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You are you following me on this metaphor?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Coffee has its own stock market because it's a commodity.
It's called the c market like it fluctuates like that,
you know when you look on a bag and it
says fair trade and direct trade.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Let me tell you what that means.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
The price per pound for coffee per pealate is set
at what they call a fair trade price. So there's
a coffee commission that sets what is a fair amount
for that coffee. So you're supposed to be it's like
a fair market value for a house. You know who
sets that? Germany. Here's the problem with that. Germany can't
(18:52):
grow coffee. How are y'all setting up for a farm
to be considered organic or meeting specialty?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Called somebody a farmer in Kenya? Oh they die.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Gotta fly somebody from Germany down today farm for them
to test they soil, to tell them that they soil
is healthy enough to.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Tell these people from Germany it can't grow coffee.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
I this was a So that's fair trade is if
Germany says that this price is right.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Direct trade is.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
When me, the American buyer, goes to the farmer themselves,
and I ask the farmer how much is it?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I direct traded with them.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The farmer tells us, Now, why I partnered with Onyx
and all the other people that you see me partnering with.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
First of all is because.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Whatever that price is, what Onyx does is they'll pay
thirty percent more. So that's to guarantee not only is
this a price that the farmer said, we're gonna pay
you even more than that. There's an understanding of value
in the fact that we don't have an industry without
you and sometimes work at this other crew crawled beckx
(20:01):
three sixty, which I'm gonna talk about a little later
at the end of this, I'm.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Saying, these are ways for you to be able to say,
because everyone should be able to drink coffee.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
These are ways for which you could say, I am
not being a part of the problem.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
In these ways, I could be part of the solution.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
But yes, a billion dollar industry created on the backs
of brown folk, controlled by white folks.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I'm just saying, it's a metaphor, billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
When's the last time you walked into a coffee shop
and thought, Wow, this is something invented, harvested, and nurtured
by people of color.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
No, you don't think that. People think it aly it's
such a metaphor.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
And now, because of harsh conditions, corrosive top soil, and
abusive practices, we only got twenty seven harvests left. Now,
let's get to the science and things we can do.
All right, let's go to some sort of ad break, Right,
how do y'all do them?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
At?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It could have in here supposed to do some sort
of like speaking of situation, I don't know. So I
think the best way to get into the science.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Of it all is to.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Maybe think about it through just the supply chain period.
For centuries, the coffee plant or even farm have been
just local indigenous rainforest living families. It's your grandma, and
I know this from my own experience. This is like
your grandparents' house. Like you inherit this farm, you know,
(21:43):
or you inherit this plot of land, and you got
a couple of coffee plants in the back. Now, us
being you know, in a neoliberal, globally connected, late stage
capitalistic society, how do you get that commodity if we're
not growing them in the heartland of them America. Well,
because we can't, Number one, we have to create a
supply chain. And the supply chain is just as industrial
(22:06):
as every other thing is. So from the origin, you
have a green buyer, and the green buyer is essentially
the middle person. So that person has all the relationships
with the farms.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
So they create these relationship with these farms.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Usually depending on your relationship with that green buyers, you
take orders from them. That sometimes depending on how big
or small that green buyer is. Some of those are
like multi state, multi country, like big old corporations that
you know, go across the world and they swoop up
in a Walmart of it all and like just like
buy up all these small farms. Now some of these places,
(22:47):
some of these green buyers own the farms because they've
bought them from the indigenous populations. And others are like, no,
we just have relationships and we pay. I got to
explained before fair market value, fair trade. And then I
on the other end, like let's just say, I'm you know,
I will use my own company terraform. This isn't the
process I use, but this is just the supply chain.
So I would approach that green buyer. I go to
(23:08):
their website and say, hey, I want to roast a
Kenyon heirloom. That would be the varietal, like I want
to that's a type of being. I want a Kenyon airloom.
And I go, oh, dope, they got it at I'm
making up this number eighteen cents a pound.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
It's not like that. It's much more, but okay, dope.
So they get the order.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
On the other end, they see what they got in
stock or they got to go to origin, right, So
they go to origin, they get the thing, and then
some countries make you buy an entire shipping container because
it's just not worth it. If you're you know, you're
in Costa Rica, you're a farmer in Costa Rica. It
doesn't make any financial sense to try to ship out
(23:44):
just like one burlap bag. Like the cost is too high.
So it's like, yo, you got to buy a palette
or not a palate, you got to buy a shipping container.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So what most small like micro roasters do is they
buddy up with other people that are like, yo, let's
all do this. Will kind of go in on this
shipping container. So you have the farmer, you have the
green buyer, and then the green buyer makes the deal
with the shipment team. The shipping container gets filled, then
you got to pay the nation's tariff. So then that's
where the country comes in. Now, why some coffees cost
(24:16):
more than others, some of it has to do with
the tariffs. It's like Ethiopia charges some like fifty nine
percent tariff as they should because they tired of being
raped by white people, just like everybody else is from there.
Once it hits Land US as the roasters, we would
go divvy up the funds we've already paid them, and
(24:37):
then you go to your roasting facility. Now, if you
a big boy, you got your own roasting facility. But
most of the time, you know, a person may have
one machine in the back of their coffee shop, or
if they don't even have that, then they share a
facility where they roast a bunch of different roasters roasted
that one place. Once it's roasts getting in a bag
and into your cup. Now, this is the like specialty
(24:58):
coffee way. Now, if we talk at Startarbucks, Starbucks walks
over there and they say, hey, let me buy this city,
and they got their own shipping people in their own situation,
and then they roast in like something the size of
a mountain. Now, what I'm talking about is third wave coffee.
What that means is there is a lot of nerdy stuff.
That means it's first wave coffee. Is like the coffee
(25:18):
that your grandpa drank in World War Two. It's just
you know mud, you know what I'm saying. Even the
term Americano was because when the American Gis were in
Europe and they wanted a cup of coffee because in
Europe they drank espresso. The Americans was like, this is disgusting,
what is this? So they just add water to it.
So they called that an Americano because that's the type
(25:40):
the Americans like anyway. So that's first wave coffee. Second
wave coffee is like Starbucks or the coffee spots that
like have the ton of syrups in the back and
the name of their shop is probably some sort of
pun like in Friends, the Central Perk, Java Chip. Those
are the ones that, like the big suburb in churches
(26:00):
would have their own coffee shops, like corn and thea
House Hebrews, just some sort of corny that's second where
it's like, you know, that's your triple Machia too, you
know it's double pump all of the sweet fruitfru stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's second wave.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And then third wave is what we call specialty coffee,
and that's where the big bucks come in because you
can sell them at a higher premium. Now, for it
to be considered specialty coffee on a scale of one
nine hundred, you have.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
To grade that bean at an eighty or above.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Now, coffees that are graded in the nineties unless you've
been to Dubai or Qatar, you've never drank it. Those
go there because American we can't afford it, so the
farmer don't even show it to it. But the most
of the like if you go to like a good
coffee shop, you're drinking about an eighty three to a
eighty five. But it's not like their whole crop is that.
Most farmers are just small plots. So what do you
(26:55):
do with the rest of it, well, the rest of it,
which is the most of your harvest to make the
numbers round, And let's just say you have one hundred
coffee trees, maybe ten of them produced an eighty five, right,
so that's ten percent.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
So you've spent all year.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Fighting drought, fighting climate change, fighting excessive heat, fighting all
that only for of your whole plantation, only to get
ten percent of it to be actually be available to
sell the rest of it. It just goes to the stock
market and you just hope and pray that you're able
to sell it. But you have that three weeks to
try to make your year's salary. So what happens is,
(27:31):
since you can only sell ten percent, only ten percent
of it is even available to sell. Right, I'm talking
specialty cofee is where we are now. If in fact,
somebody comes in here and pays it, and then they
only pay fair trade rather than direct trade price, you're
getting a price set by Germany is not even enough
to pay the little kids that just miss school to
be able to pick your farm, because that's who actually
(27:53):
picks the cherries. This is daywork, just kids from the
farming community that come in there. They try to make
a day's wage to pick their things. What happens is
to be able to survive this how it is in Honduras.
To be able to survive, you go get a loan
from the government to be able to make your money
for the year and then hopefully off that harvest you
can pay that loan back and make enough for the
(28:15):
next year so you don't have to get a loan.
The problem is they're charging these farmers thirty percent interests,
so they're locked into this situation that says I can't
even afford to even keep my family plot because I'm
just staying in debt. So then what do you do,
governor a dumb They'll re up your loan. So they're like,
oh cool, no problem, We'll just we'll re up your loan.
(28:37):
These So these farmers end up being hundreds of thousands
of dollars in debt and it's adding every year because
they can never catch up, which is bonkers. Considering how
much coffee we drink across the world, one would think
they would be fine. So I mean, what's your option.
You sell the land or remove the coffee, just yo,
(28:58):
get some cows, beef, right d forest? I mean there's
money to make there, or you sell it to a
big conglomerate. And what does the big conglomerate do burn
down all of the forests and create a monoculture, right,
and a monoculture are like what you would pitch what
we do in America for corn or all through the
Amazon rainforest. And if you know, obviously you've seen a
(29:20):
force monoculture. Ain't how earth works. Right, The diversity of
plants becomes its own fertilizer. But if you don't have that,
if you don't have chickens that survive off the avocados,
and you know, I'm pulling things out of nowhere. But
like the point I'm trying to make is when you
create a monoculture, you have to also create a way
to sustain that, and the only way to sustain it
(29:41):
is destructive. One cup of coffee in this way releases
was it eighty grams of co two? I mean it's
like driving half a mile, Like your cup of coffee
is a half a mile full of poison if done
the way that most of the bigger names in the
industry do it, which is now rising our carbon right.
(30:02):
And if you're going to do that, then that means
you need a gang of fertilizer, right, which is bad
for the soil. And then you also need to use
way more water than naturally required. Matter of fact, according
to the UN, one cup of coffee uses one hundred
and thirty liters of water. If you're doing this like
monoculture style, right, that looks like farming the way we
(30:25):
do it here, one cup of coffee one hundred and
thirty liters of water, which is a bathtub.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's like a bathtub full.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Of water to create this one cup, so obviously multiply
that times a billion. Not only is this practice like
everything else in this neo capitalistic world, the demand was
so big and the desire to get the most amount
of money with the least amount of price is destroying
the very thing that makes the product possible. Now, the
(30:54):
rest of the world isn't stupid. We understand that this
process is not right. We're killing the soil, we're killing
the land. Everybody knows that. So the EU passed this
law that says, if you're going to import any sort
of commodity, including coffee, you have to prove that it
didn't come from deforestation, right, So this is them trying
to do their best. The only problem is, if I'm
(31:18):
an indigenous farmer on a small plot, I don't even
have access to deforestation. But the only way for me
to prove that is, like I said before, with the
fair trade, I have to fly somebody down.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It's on my own dime.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
It's because the EU doesn't understand regenitive practices because they
don't know any indigenous people, right, So this is now
adding a double burden to the farmers that are actually
doing it right, who can't possibly do the volume of
the people that are doing it wrong. So the first
problem is like the system is not even financially sustainable,
(31:52):
Like i'n't even got to the specifics of the deforestation
and all those things that have caused this problem. Now
According to Bloomberg's twenty twenty two study of tropical cash crops,
included arabica as well as avocado and cashew, are probably
the most vulnerable to climate change because the regions that
are suitable for this production continue to shrink because of
(32:14):
why heat. It's too hot, which means that Arabica won't
be able to grow. So we'll probably have to start
drinking robustica. Right. It's estimated that in thirty years from now,
basically fifty percent of lands that can grow coffee will
not be able to grow coffee anymore if we don't
do anything fifty percent. You think theyn't make it fun
(32:37):
of you for your twelve dollar cup of coffee?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Is crazy? Now listen.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Nestley reports that there are more than six thousand cups
of nest Cafe coffee drink every second. Are y'all following
me every second? That's how much coffee we drink. Now,
granted that coffee is not a rabica, it's robustica. Robustica
is what really most of the rest of the world drinks.
It's us again, being a part of the northern hemisphere,
(33:06):
being a part of the global north that like the
Pristine kind of good, shiny type. Right. The problem is
our insatiable desire to consume things as fast as we can.
And I don't want to blame I'm not blaming the
victim here. I'm just saying it's impossible to do the
volume is the argument.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
How do you do this volume that we all.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Want in this global supply chain and the way for
which we've set this up. How do you do this
volume and still keep the price where the price is?
And you know what the solution has always been, You
just rip off the farmer and destroy the earth. So
deforestation giving us too much carbon, which has made the
(33:52):
weather erratic, which means that some years the crop is
flooded and it doesn't grow right because it's too much rain.
Other years it's complete drought and you have to dig
even further into the ground to try to get the
amount of water that had we not raised the temperature
one point five degrees celsius, had we done some changes,
(34:13):
the earth would be the same. So Brazil is the
biggest coffee producer in the world, right and this year
this year was the worst drought they've had in seven decades,
with above average temperatures and one of the biggest producers
out there. Associated Press interviewed him Silvio Almeda and that
(34:37):
fool's coffee plantation.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
The AP just reported this.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Was expected to harvest one hundred and twenty sacks of
coffee beans, but they only got one hundred and then
their quota, saying, given the conditions here in twenty twenty five,
crop is already affected, he told Associated Press, pointing out
that part of his plantation where flower buds have already
died before blooming. I won't say it's doomed, because God
(35:00):
can do anything, but based on the situation, it's already compromised.
What these people were saying is like next year's crops
already dead. This where we are, y'all. Are y'all hearing
what I'm saying. He's saying, we ain't gonna have no
coffee next year. It's already dead.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Remember when Robert read off his little book, you know,
the whole started off, the whole, it could happen here
thing and in one of them places. After the Civil
War and went down, coffee was something you had to
smuggle into the country like a drug. This is what
he talking about that ain't gonna be no coffee, y'all.
I was at an event two years ago. It's called
the Color of Coffee Collective. It was for the black
(35:43):
people in the coffee industry. And of course this is
stretch to the whole diaspora. So you know, Central and
South American just ultimately people of color in the coffee
industry connect, you know, plot strategize, have some transparency in
our supply chains. A lot of us in America in
the West scream you know, pro black, pro black, We
(36:03):
for the culture, we for the people, and like to
put you know, the faces of our farmers on our
bags in you know, part of the marketing. But most
people who are in the coffee just have never gone
into source, so you don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
It'sally you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
You don't know Tabby who like is actually like growing
your coffee.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
It's just a name on a spreadsheet brought into you
from an importer. Right anyway, So there was a panel
discussion about about climate change and about ways for which
we can do better. So they had a bunch of farmers.
I remember it was a farmer from Kenya who.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Gave us these just heaters just these heat rocks, these
bars during this panel discussion, and after I show these bars,
I'm gonna go for a break, and then I'm gonna
tell you about people that are doing things better in
ways for which we can maybe save our soil so
that your kids can possibly enjoy coffee.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Also, so someone asked, I believe it was a roaster
from Puerto Rico, was like, hey, so, what are some
of the ways that you're adapting and hoping to mitigate
climate change? Like how are y'all dealing with climate change?
So he was asking this Kenyan farmer, like what's he
doing for climate change? And his answer was, I mean,
you tell me we're at source. He's like, we're a
(37:24):
third world country. We didn't cause climate change.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You did. What are you doing?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
He's like, we're the ones suffering, and not only are
we suffering from the effects of climate change in our
own life, because of your greediness, you created the climate
change that is causing the problems in the very crop
that you're trying to get from us. So because of
your problems, this is why he's explaining it. I now
can't grow something that we've grown for hundreds and hundreds
(37:52):
of years. And you asking me what I'm doing for
about it? No, what are you doing about it?
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Ouch?
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So here's some things that are being done next.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
The wildest thing about how complicated any of these solutions are,
which are you going to take many, many decades to
actually see the difference in the actual top soil. The
most bonkers part is the fact that like the solutions
by and large are kind of the same across any
(38:36):
world problem. It's mutual aid, it's collective, communal, collaborative work
among every part of the supply chain. It's so in
some senses it's so beautiful that like, really the solution
is us. I say that to not grossly oversimplify, but
I say that to say that there's hope. So I'm
(38:56):
going to introduce you to a couple programs and a
couple of farms and sort of some things to look
for in your coffee purchasing, because you guys want to
see the world be better. Also, first thing is farms
going back to indigenous practices. Now, two I know personally,
and one I'm going to tell you about from Ecuador.
(39:19):
This there's a whole documentary on it. If you look
up on YouTube. It's called How Climate Change Threatened Coffee
Production by DW Documentaries, And I mean right like pretty
on the nose. So a coffee collective in Ecuador called
Vila Cory. It's their Kichua language. It means green gold
in their indigenous language. And they're doing something very similar
(39:41):
to my friends in Hondoras called Kadacha Coffee. Now, what
they are are cooperatives on the business side.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
So I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I'm going to get to the business cooperative side after
I explain to you the indigenous practices, even though all
of these things are related. So what they do is
something that's so obvious, which is like, you got to
stop doing monocultures. First of all, it makes sense financially
because now you're diversifying your commodities.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
So you have your coffee plants.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
If you see a coffee plant, coffee plants are pretty short,
like they don't grow taller than six foot normally. So
since the climate is so hot, what is the natural
way to shade them? Well, the natural way to shavee
them is trees. So if you plant them among trees,
the types of trees that first of all naturally fertilize
the soil. Number two, they produce fruit. Number three, they
(40:34):
produce raw materials. Right, So these people have planted trees
that are indigenous to the area. So a lot of
times in coffee places like there are certain species of
beans that really only grow in particular regions. But the
only reason they grow in those particular regions is because
of the mineral the way that the minerals are in
the ground in that area. So if you can mimic
(40:55):
those minerals, if you bring those minerals to this place,
you could grow that bean. So technically, and if I
have the my minerals, I can be in Costa Rica
and grow a Rwandan coffee because it's just the Rwandan
soil in Costa Rica. And you could still argue that
it is this is some of the future of like
(41:15):
if it do ever.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Get so bad.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Right when they grow in coffee in Sacramento, you know
what I'm saying in Vancouver in some sort of building,
it's because we just gathered the minerals that we've destroyed
and put.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Them in a laboratory. That's not good for the earth.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's that's an invasive not only invasive pieces, an invasive mineral.
So you're completely changing the biosphere of that land just
to grow that one crop.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
That's absurd. The land already does what it needs to do.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So what these guys do in Ecuador is the same
thing they do in Colombia in Zipa Coln that was
the name of the city that they were in. Also,
what's happening on doors is like you just let the
land do what it does. What I learned on one
of these farms is like the quickest way to know
a place is not organic is there's no insects. Like,
(42:05):
if there's no ants, that means the ground's poisonous. Right.
The ants come out, they eat whatever waste is on
the ground, whatever like natural waste is on the ground.
They come back in, they go back into the soil.
They're irrigating them soils themselves. You don't need lawnmowers if
you have chickens, right, the chickens eat the thing. The
shade of the trees keeps the temperature down. It produces
(42:28):
fruits like avocado, papaya, Like I said before, mongos, plantains.
These trees that naturally grow in this area keep the
soil rich and the coffee strong. So you're keeping the
temperature down, the land does what it absolutely does. So
now you don't need pesticides. You also need less water
because when the temperature being shaded and brought down, the
(42:51):
water is not evaporating as fast. Whoa, and then the
quality of the bean is higher. Now here's where the
indigenous practices move from just the ground to also the community.
Rather than having one hundred small farms compete against each other,
they just work as a community. So rather than waiting
for Johnny European to come down and say buy my beans,
(43:12):
no by hes by my means, they're like.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
No, by our beans.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
They pull all the beans together, bring all of their
crops together, and they say, yeah, maybe I can't produce
whatever kilos that this person needs by themselves, but we
can produce that. So that way, if there's a farm
over here that's got a smaller crop because maybe you know,
mother in law got sick so they weren't able to
(43:37):
work as hard as they can for those beans, or
maybe collectively again, heat dome was too high, there was
too much of a drought. We really couldn't grow that
much on our own. Together though we could meet this order.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
You follow me.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
And when that happens because again, who usually picks the
beans are the community's kids. Now, if we can collectively
fill the order right after we cup and we say
collectively our.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Coffees are good enough.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
And there's different types of species, Like you know what
I'm saying, like this is a I don't want to
get too much into nerdery, but each bean in each
tree is a particular species. Maybe when we cup, we say, hey, listen,
this is the same thing that happened on Doris. It's like,
you know, we sit around and we're tasting, basically doing
a taste test these different batches of beans. I don't
know which farm they came from. I know they're all
(44:23):
a part of this collective. But if I say, yo,
I want these, then when we pay, since it's not
a middleman, it's a community.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Now, the main load.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Goes to the particular farm that it was ordered from,
but the rest of it goes and it's spread across
the entire community following me. Okay, now back to the
soil situation. I feel like I'm all over the place,
but you have to understand because the problem's all over
the place, and a lot of these places are connected.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
So in Colombia, they kind of did the same thing.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So La Pammel tu Acon is the place that everybody
comes into. And since every individual farmer does not have
connections across the world with bringing buyers in and there's
no promise that they won't be taken advantage of and
ain't gonna be able to sell but maybe five ten
percent of the crop. The rest of it either goes
to the trash or goes to the sea market. It's
(45:16):
just the open stock market. You just hope somebody buys
your beans. It's just no way to live. As I
explained before, what Lapama ends up doing is this is
they say, okay, well check this out.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
We'll buy your coffee, all of it.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
And not only will we buy your coffee because we
know you need soil, we're gonna set you up with
a business so that not only can you sell your
coffee to us, you can also sell your fertilizer to us.
And the fertilizer that you're creating, we're going to build
that business for you. And how they do this is
this thing called biochar. Now it makes so much sense.
(45:52):
If you have donkeys and other places at pigs and
other animals that have waste, you can make fertiliz.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Duh, Right, So what they do is.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
This, They have these composts, these big old flat things
that they build in front of you.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
They basically they build it for you.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
They went to all the local farms and they were like,
we'll build this for you, right, and then we'll buy
the product from you. So they build these flatbed things
where you could take all the stuff that you would
compost anyway and put it in this flatbed, cover it,
and then we're going to give you this stuff called biochar,
which is some of the dopest like Mother Nature showing off.
(46:33):
So basically it's made from like you heat wood right
at the highest of temperature with no oxygen, so once
it becomes carbon, it doesn't turn to ash, you know
what I mean. It's almost like you know when you
like after you light a fire when you hold the
charred pieces, like how it crumbles away this one because
you heat it at the highest of temperature without letting
(46:55):
oxygen in, so like it doesn't become like a like
a red fire.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
And then you mix that into your compost and it
just makes this pristine soil. So now guess what these
farmers don't have to pay for soil. They don't have
to pay for nutrient wrench soil. Matter of fact, they
can sell off the excess. Their crop's already been sold.
So you don't have to go get a loan from
(47:22):
the state. You would need that loan to be able
to set up your like your washing stations. Like how
you get the coffee from a cherry to the roast
or to the green bean is like, it's a long process.
It could be very expensive. It's all good. The hommies
down Narrow do that for you. We'll put you in
this system, and we're gonna pay you even if your
particular crop, your particular bean isn't sold, because we'll sell
(47:46):
it somehow, Like if it doesn't sell on the high
end eighty percent Arabica specialty coffee thing, we'll figure out
a way to sell it. You're still getting paid anyway.
We're buying your whole crop rather than the ten percent
that would happen. And like I said before, if your
beans aren't as good as they're supposed to be, these
programs by one hundred percent from these farmers, So these
farmers are able to sustain themselves. Right and now, you
(48:09):
can pass these farms down to your children.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Right because we're doing this collectively.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Since we're doing this collectively, especially it's what happens in Honduras,
a third of the money goes to the community itself.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
I've wrapped at a school that was built.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
By them selling the coffee like this, there's now a
medical clinic because a lot of times these farms are
hundreds of miles away from the city.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
You have to get airlifted as something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
And since these are indigenous communities, they're the most forgotten
oftentimes in these areas. So purchasing these coffees really at
a high price, which is what we're supposed to do,
guarantees that the individual farmer is paid, the community is paid.
It's done in a way that's tied much more to
(48:53):
the indigenous practices. And now collectively, because we're buying from
responsible places that are locally grown. Now we can afford
to bring the EU people down here to prove that
this is not a process of deforestation, because they're moving
collectively for real.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
It's just like fast fashion.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
It's like that T shirt only three dollars because a sweatshop,
you truly do get what you pay for in a
lot of way. And finally, I'm gonna tell you where
tech is actually helping, and it's this program called BEX
three sixty. They could use a little help on the marketing,
but it's essentially they're using blockchain to create transparency and
(49:41):
it's probably the dopest thing I've ever seen. And I
saw it from wanted a supply chain to the other.
So in this program, these local farmers right who just
have these small home plots, who have been running these
plots for centuries. This they grandfather's land, they you know,
they grandmama's land that they got it, who don't have
access to American and worldwide coffee buyers meet up with
(50:06):
this collective, right the Karacha collective, that's one of them
that I'm that I'm specifically talking about. And Karacha signed
up with this thing called bext. And what happens in
bext is, if you've ever been to developing countries, not
everybody ain't got a smartphone. So in this thing, once
the farmer harvest is alls beans, washes them and says, hey,
(50:26):
I got these many kilos of this type of being,
click opens his Bext app on his smartphone, takes a
picture of it and puts the weights and the numbers
so that we know everybody and everybody in the supply
chain can see this. There's a QR code even on
the bag. Once you buy the bag in Sacramento, there's
a QR code on it, so you could see all this.
(50:47):
So the kid from the farm snaps the thing. It
goes to the exporter, which who just lives down the street.
It's not like some you know, multi conglomerate company from
the North. No, this lady lives down the street. She's
born and raised here. She opens it up and she
says to us, who flew in from America to be like, yo,
(51:09):
we want to try some coffee. Opens the app and says, hey,
this is the farmer, this where it is, this, how
much he wants this, how much he asking for it?
Here's our price. But I'm looking at the app, that's
what he's charging. And then i know she's adding a
third of that price because the other third of what
she's asking for is literally paying for the hospital that's
(51:31):
across the street. So it makes perfect sense to me.
And I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, cool,
I know how much the shipping container costs because I'm
seeing it.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Of course I got to pay for shipping. What is
you talking about?
Speaker 1 (51:43):
So it's all transparent, it all makes sense, and it's
all regentitive financially in climate wise. Once we buy it,
I can see if she paid the farmer, because that's
also in the app. So once the farmer gets his money,
takes a picture, got the money, screenshot received, and then
a portion of that money is given in cash so
(52:05):
that you could pay the kids that picked your farm.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Click saw that. That's in the app.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Right as that stuff is shipped across the country or
across the ocean. You can put in all of the
roasting notes, which are kind of lame if you're not
really into stuff like that. And then finally the sealed
bag that says here's one from Denver, Queen City, a
collective coffee right that, hey, look, this is a Honduras bean.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
We bought it this price.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
And then when you pay it's called a third cost.
When you buy the bag, there's an extra dollar added
to the cost of the bag, and that extra dollar
does not go to the roaster. It goes back to
the farmer. You know how I know because there's a
QR code. You could check it and the farmer can
confirm if they got they money. It's transparency, it's us
(52:53):
taking care of us. So obviously, because the world works
the way it works. If this continues to be financially viable,
here's some of the things we could do. One is
we could start drinking more robustica like everybody else, and
it's actually delicious if you could find a good roaster,
and Tabi is a great roaster New Yen Supply. She's amazing.
She does cold brew and like Vietnamese coffee. It's robustica.
(53:16):
But then there's other spots across the world. It's going
to cost a little more. But I'm telling you why
it costs a little more because they come from a
multicultured land that uses indigenous practices, that has lowered its
carbon footprint, that is direct traded and has transparency. This
is not a list of everybody doing this. These are
(53:38):
the list of people that I know personally and people
that have researched. So in North Cak and South Cak
you got Black and White roasters, and you got Bridge
City Roasters. Denver, there's Queen City Collective up in Sacramento.
There's Old Soul Coffee, Onyx, Coffee Lab, Coffee Black that's
(54:00):
there in Memphis. All these people you could order their
coffees online don Cable Hall in New York. The transparency
is there and is doing its best to make sure
that this being stays on this planet. So I'll link
in the show notes all of the data that I'm
pulling this from and ways for which you can connect with,
like very socially responsible and climate responsible coffee roasters, Geez
(54:27):
only sixteen years old.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Boy, I tell you that's the first lyric in That's all.
Speaker 4 (54:34):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts can now
find sources for it could Happen here, listed directly in
episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Zone Media, there's nothing wrong with your podcast feed. This
is prop and I am invading that it can happen
here podcasts. To the four or five of y'all in
the subreddit that can't stand my voice and say I'm
the most annoying person in the Cool Zone extended universe,
(00:23):
I apologize.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
My mama used to say, be who you is, because
who you ain't a who he is.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
We're gonna talk about some things, specifically coffee and how
your children will probably never be able to drink the
coffee that you have drunk because climate change of bounds.
But before we do, I'm also realizing how many singers
in the eighties was singing the teenagers to children. You know,
the absolute banger of a song If I could fly,
(00:51):
I pick you up, I take you into the night,
great song right and show you that you da see?
Do you know what the first lyric in that song is,
she's only sixteen years old, leave her alone? Unless he
(01:13):
wasn't a teenager just openly singing what was we thinking?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Freaking bell Biv devout in Dude.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Maybabe backstage, underage, gotta leg it fly.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I like to do the wow thing. Oh you're we're
just openly singing the kids.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Let me get back on topic, because not only could
it happen here, it is happening here.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So you may or may not know me.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I am Los Angeles born and raised, our host her
Politics with Prop Coles on media team, and I am
your resident coffee nerd, and a lot of that grew
out of just a natural passion for coffee, which you
will hear me gush about later. But I think I'm
gonna back into this topic with back that thing up
(02:02):
with the story from a few years back.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
See a few years back, I had a.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Chance to put out a poetry book called Terraform, building
a Liverpool World. And Terraform also had four musical EP
seven song EPs called The Sky, the Soil, the People,
and the Possibility. And while I was working on the Soil,
I had a chance to partner with one of the
I mean really, it's like, I don't know if there's
a better roaster in America called Onyx believe it or
(02:28):
not in Northwest Arkansas and in a collab sort of
coffee release we were doing in partnership with mir which
is a drinkwear company.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm also an ambassador for We.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Had a chance to go to Columbia, and if you've
if you've been to South America or anywhere close to
the equator, it's I mean, you're walking into the Avatar,
you know, minus the aliens. It's this raw sort of
earth that us in the northern hemisphere. It's just colors
of green that you just can't imagine that, Like our
(03:06):
pantones have yet to match the type of green in
a forest that has to be a certain amount of
miles above sea level for it to grow coffee.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
So we fly into Bogata.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
We go about an hour and a half outside of
the city, which normally when you go to Origin it's
like you have to like take a rickety helicopter or
traverse twelve hours into you know, an African jungle, which
is like not the most plush riding, but it's just
it's this beautiful South American, you know, Colombian road and
(03:44):
then you go up this small sort of windy road
and while it's sunny, beautiful, I don't know what the
combination of indigenous African European settlers that just made whatever
combination of human made these Colombians so beautiful. But there's
(04:08):
not I mean everyone's beautiful. It is the most off putting,
how gorgeous every human is there along with this plush green.
You come over this hill and because of the way
that this farmer going to is set inside in between
(04:31):
in this small valley that's about four to five thousand
feet above sea level, there's this beautiful fog that lays
over the top of this just gorgeous, gorgeous rainforest.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Right there's grape vineyards, there's a few of those.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
There's avocados, there's all these just beautiful multi Instead of
a monoculture, a monoculture is a farm of just one thing.
Is a multi culture place that this crew called lepama
eltua kan that's who I was with, And all this
beauty and vegetation that I'm describing, apparently twelve years ago
(05:14):
was not a thing.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
This place was.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
The textbook like cartoonish level example of deforestation where all
of this natural beauty was cleared out for cattle raising
and the land was dead. But you would never guess,
you would never guess that this was ever an issue, because.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
What I'm looking at is Narnia.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So this group of local born and raised brothers came
up with a business plan and started restoring this land.
I can't overstate the before and after picture, like the
land was dying them with their reginative. Like you know,
farming practices made this a rainforest to get and that
is now growing some of the best coffee on earth.
(06:02):
So anyway we come in there, it's beautiful. Just there
are no words to express how beautiful this is. I
have a song called the Soil Is Sacred that I
shot the video at that farm. So if you want
to just go ahead and peep that, peep that to
understand this place. This place is not only just a
(06:25):
coffee farm. It's also a bike trail adventure place. It's
a hotel. You stay in these bungalows that are like
up on sticks, and then the shower is outdoors, just
covered around bamboo sticks.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That like hei the thing, and it's got like the
what we like to call the anti black shower heads.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
You know that those are the I don't know if
y'all notice, because black people don't always like to wet
our hair in the shower.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
We wash our hair much less than y'all do.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
But if you got that waterfall shower head, then that
means we got to tilt our heads back a little bit,
or make sure we got a shower cap. I don't
know if you know any black women, but you don't
wet my hair in.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
The shower anyway.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
But you're showering out there, and it's just beautiful. You're
in the rainforest. You can hear the animals and it's
just this gentle breeze is blowing. And then around eleven.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Thirty the fall kind of clears out. You get to
sit down.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
You're having some breakfasts that's just chopped up papaya and
mango that they grew right there, right God, I could
see the mango tree, it's right there. And then they'll
fry up some plantain from the plantain tree right there,
scrambling up with some eggs from the chicken.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Nest right there, right Just it's a dream.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
And as we're talking, as we're moving through this thing,
the man that runs it, who like I wish I
could have his baby. It was just the most gorgeous
human I've ever seen, just flowing, flowing quafft hair, speaking
English and Spanish. The guy could play seven instruments. At
some point where we're cutting coffee, the dude breaks into
(08:04):
a bachata and then some Coombia and he's just singing
these Colombian folklore songs while flipping over a bucket and
playing drums.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's just like you, guys, you're in a movie. You're
in a movie.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And then he casually drops, yeah, we only got twenty
seven more of those.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I was like, twenty seven more?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
What he goes, Oh yeah, part of the mission of
this form is if we don't do something, there is
twenty seven harvests left. I was like, of what he
goes of top soil, Coffee's going to go extinct in
twenty seven years. Sam talk about the possibility of a
(08:44):
world without coffee, how we got here, and what people
are doing to hopefully save the glorious being. All Right,
I feel like coffee is like the perfect analogy, the
perfect one to one ratio, or the ways for which
the global North has treated the global South, specifically black people,
(09:09):
but by and large just it's the perfect metaphor for
the raping and pillaging of resources, including people, that has
happened across the world. So coffee originates solely from Ethiopia, Okay,
so it's already it's black. This is the early fifteen
(09:31):
hundreds legend is that some sheep farmers saw that their
sheeps were going crazy, like just mad, mad energy after
they had ate a particular cherry. Because again, coffee is
a cherry, which is actually a very delicious cherry, you know,
and the bean inside is not the bean, it's the
(09:52):
pit or the seed that's inside of the coffee cherry.
So yeah, legend is like that's how they figured it out,
Like they eat these cherries and then they go crazy, like,
I wonder if that's going to give us strength to
you know. So it's originally discovered in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is
the only natural place that coffee grows, and every other
(10:13):
coffee bean across the world was propagated.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
From the Ethiopian one.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
It only grows between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic
of Capricorn along the equator. That is the only place
that it naturally grows. But because of climate change and
because of you know, GMO and genetically modifying and all
these different things that we've done with cross breeding and
stuff like, you know, we've been able to grow it
in in regions that aren't naturally the temperature and elevation
(10:40):
that they naturally grow in. There are many different varietals
of what we call that's what they're called, varietals of
this particular cherry or plant. But overall, you can break
the species of coffee plant into three types. So you
have typica, which most people don't drink, unless like if
you have a coffee farm that you actually export from,
(11:01):
like a lot of times, the typical stuff is just
the stuff that you keep for yourself, Like most coffee
farmers have never actually tasted their best coffee because you
ship that off to the rest of the world to
make your money. Then there's robustica, which is like what
most of the like instant coffee is made from. Really
(11:22):
a lot of the world actually drinks that, but it's
an acquired taste, like when you go through South America,
Like I know, when I went to my grandmother in
lost house, like she you know, she boiled the water
with the canela the cinnamon sticks and poured instant coffee
in and like as much of a coffee snob as
I am, I'm like, that's the best.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
That's one of the best cups of coffee I ever
had in my life.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
You know, people always ask me, what's the best cup
of coffee ever had? And I'm like, honestly, it's the
one in your hand that's the best cup. I feel
like there's like a bell curve where it's like, yeah,
you discover it, then you hit this level of snobty.
Then you become like a like a new Christian about it,
and you're just like one of the evangelize and tell everybody,
and you become just like a theological snob and you're
(12:02):
just like, uh, are you putting cream like full extraction
or die death over decaf? Like you become that dude,
and then you just come over the other end of
that hump and you're just like, dude, it's just coffee, man.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So yeah, so that's Robusticut, which, like I said, most
of the world actually drinks that. And then the specialty level,
the one that most of us are used to drinking now,
is called Arabica, and it's kind of like it's the
top tier based on whatever subjective scale we use to
(12:36):
say what.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Is the best coffee.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
But the fertile band, as what we call it around
the coffee industry, is this span that you know, kind
of belts around the equator. So that's why in Central
and South America, in certain parts of Africa and in Asia,
coffee can naturally be grown, it takes a particular elevation, right,
(12:59):
And you can even follow the Transatlantic slave trade. You
could follow the transit Lantic slave trade by following the
distribution of coffee. How coffee got to the America's transatlantic
slave trade. Anyway, there used to be this beef between
Ethiopia and Yemen as to like who made coffee first,
because without getting too much into nerdery, I want to
(13:20):
stay in the narrative here, but coffee first from Ethiopia
went to Yemen. And the argument with the yemen ease
is that they were the ones that grounded it and
made it into a hot drink.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So that's their argument that the Ethiopians didn't do that first.
But anybody that really knows it's it's like, dude, it
originates in Africa.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
I'd be willing to bet too that if you kind
of have developed somewhat of a palette for like a
good clean cup of coffee, you would probably feel like
Ethiopian beans are the best. And mostly it's just because like, well,
that's where it's from, and they have like at least
one hundred year head start in cultivating how to make
(14:00):
a bomb. Being as a fun aside, if you get
your hand on a Yemense bean, it's a flavor profile
you've probably never had in your life. That's why if
you ever go to a place and they have like
a Yemen thesee geisha, it costs so much because Yemen
has been with the Huthis and such like that have
been locked into this civil war funded by America, Saudi Arabia,
(14:22):
and Iran. You know, let's tie it all together, guys,
that's what I'm saying. It's a metaphor for everything. Why
coffee can't get exported out of Yemen is because of
this civil war. It cost so much to get coffee
out of Yemen because of these you know, wars funded
by Western countries.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Anyway, So from Yemen it got to Turkey.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
You know, this is around the time of like when
the Islamic world was really the superpower of the planet.
You know, with people like a Voez you could do
your little history on that and just all of the
most beautiful libraries, science, history, algebra, philosophy was all coming
from the Muslim world. And it was through the Muslim
(15:05):
world that coffee got to Europe. So at first Europe
wouldn't drink coffee because they thought it was Muslim. That's
what the dirty little brown folks is doing, right until
it got to Belgium, which is one of the funnest
stories to me again as coffee remaining this metaphor for
the suffering of people of color everywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So anyway, remember Europe.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Is a place for tea, but you know they got
they tea from India. Anyway, So one of the archbishops
in Belgium was presented this coffee thing, and because it
was brought to Europe by the Muslims, the people they
had thought they couldn't drink it. So this bishop was like,
(15:51):
I don't know, let me try it. So I don't
think this might be folklore. But he drinks this coffee
and he said, now I'm not gonna quote him direct,
this is the part that I think is folks, this happened,
but this is the part that says folklore. He was like, Uh,
if this is evil, let's baptize it because we can.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Make it for good. He was like, this is too
delicious to let go watching the devil get all the
good drinks.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yo, I'm said, I'm trying to drink good too, we
could drink unto the Lord, all things was made for
his glory, including this coffee.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
There used to be this.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Argument over which one was better for you, coffee your tea.
They even did this test with these prisoners where they
gave one of them all coffee, the other one all
tea to see who would live longer. And of course,
since that is like the least scientific thing you could
do possible, you know, even if the guy that coffee
live longer, it don't matter because it's not real science. Anyway,
(16:51):
I personally am very thankful that coffee got to Europe
because again something that was discovered and came from Black
people for which we're willing to share freely, like our music,
like our slang, like our style address.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
You're welcome, you know what I'm saying, but don't act
like this your house.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
You could put your flavor on it and we could
all enjoy. Because it was the Scandinavian countries that figured
out light roasting and a lot of the nerdery for
like the third wave specialty coffee that that you see
now that you're right, that's from Europe. Italy did not
discover coffee Italy did espresso. I'm thankful for that, but
(17:30):
they were only able to do espresso because of the
labor of people of color in the global South. You're
follow my metaphor here. Coffee got to the Americas via
the slave trade. But if you can just look at
a map, the jungles in Angola and the jungles of
Brazil are the same jungle. There's just the ocean in
(17:51):
between it. So of course when the Africans got there,
they would recognize the soil and be able to grow
the same things.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Are y'all following me?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
We're talking about an industry that makes four hundred and
sixty billion dollars globally every year and less than one
percent goes back to Africa. Less than one percent actually
goes to those that actually grow the product.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You are you following me on this metaphor?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Coffee has its own stock market because it's a commodity.
It's called the c market like it fluctuates like that,
you know when you look on a bag and it
says fair trade and direct trade.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Let me tell you what that means.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
The price per pound for coffee per pealate is set
at what they call a fair trade price. So there's
a coffee commission that sets what is a fair amount
for that coffee. So you're supposed to be it's like
a fair market value for a house. You know who
sets that? Germany. Here's the problem with that. Germany can't
(18:52):
grow coffee. How are y'all setting up for a farm
to be considered organic or meeting specialty?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Called somebody a farmer in Kenya? Oh they die.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Gotta fly somebody from Germany down today farm for them
to test they soil, to tell them that they soil
is healthy enough to.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Tell these people from Germany it can't grow coffee.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
I this was a So that's fair trade is if
Germany says that this price is right.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Direct trade is.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
When me, the American buyer, goes to the farmer themselves,
and I ask the farmer how much is it?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I direct traded with them.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The farmer tells us, Now, why I partnered with Onyx
and all the other people that you see me partnering with.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
First of all is because.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Whatever that price is, what Onyx does is they'll pay
thirty percent more. So that's to guarantee not only is
this a price that the farmer said, we're gonna pay
you even more than that. There's an understanding of value
in the fact that we don't have an industry without
you and sometimes work at this other crew crawled beckx
(20:01):
three sixty, which I'm gonna talk about a little later
at the end of this, I'm.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Saying, these are ways for you to be able to say,
because everyone should be able to drink coffee.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
These are ways for which you could say, I am
not being a part of the problem.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
In these ways, I could be part of the solution.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
But yes, a billion dollar industry created on the backs
of brown folk, controlled by white folks.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I'm just saying, it's a metaphor, billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
When's the last time you walked into a coffee shop
and thought, Wow, this is something invented, harvested, and nurtured
by people of color.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
No, you don't think that. People think it aly it's
such a metaphor.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
And now, because of harsh conditions, corrosive top soil, and
abusive practices, we only got twenty seven harvests left. Now,
let's get to the science and things we can do.
All right, let's go to some sort of ad break, Right,
how do y'all do them?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
At?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It could have in here supposed to do some sort
of like speaking of situation, I don't know. So I
think the best way to get into the science.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Of it all is to.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Maybe think about it through just the supply chain period.
For centuries, the coffee plant or even farm have been
just local indigenous rainforest living families. It's your grandma, and
I know this from my own experience. This is like
your grandparents' house. Like you inherit this farm, you know,
(21:43):
or you inherit this plot of land, and you got
a couple of coffee plants in the back. Now, us
being you know, in a neoliberal, globally connected, late stage
capitalistic society, how do you get that commodity if we're
not growing them in the heartland of them America. Well,
because we can't, Number one, we have to create a
supply chain. And the supply chain is just as industrial
(22:06):
as every other thing is. So from the origin, you
have a green buyer, and the green buyer is essentially
the middle person. So that person has all the relationships
with the farms.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
So they create these relationship with these farms.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Usually depending on your relationship with that green buyers, you
take orders from them. That sometimes depending on how big
or small that green buyer is. Some of those are
like multi state, multi country, like big old corporations that
you know, go across the world and they swoop up
in a Walmart of it all and like just like
buy up all these small farms. Now some of these places,
(22:47):
some of these green buyers own the farms because they've
bought them from the indigenous populations. And others are like, no,
we just have relationships and we pay. I got to
explained before fair market value, fair trade. And then I
on the other end, like let's just say, I'm you know,
I will use my own company terraform. This isn't the
process I use, but this is just the supply chain.
So I would approach that green buyer. I go to
(23:08):
their website and say, hey, I want to roast a
Kenyon heirloom. That would be the varietal, like I want
to that's a type of being. I want a Kenyon airloom.
And I go, oh, dope, they got it at I'm
making up this number eighteen cents a pound.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
It's not like that. It's much more, but okay, dope.
So they get the order.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
On the other end, they see what they got in
stock or they got to go to origin, right, So
they go to origin, they get the thing, and then
some countries make you buy an entire shipping container because
it's just not worth it. If you're you know, you're
in Costa Rica, you're a farmer in Costa Rica. It
doesn't make any financial sense to try to ship out
(23:44):
just like one burlap bag. Like the cost is too high.
So it's like, yo, you got to buy a palette
or not a palate, you got to buy a shipping container.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So what most small like micro roasters do is they
buddy up with other people that are like, yo, let's
all do this. Will kind of go in on this
shipping container. So you have the farmer, you have the
green buyer, and then the green buyer makes the deal
with the shipment team. The shipping container gets filled, then
you got to pay the nation's tariff. So then that's
where the country comes in. Now, why some coffees cost
(24:16):
more than others, some of it has to do with
the tariffs. It's like Ethiopia charges some like fifty nine
percent tariff as they should because they tired of being
raped by white people, just like everybody else is from there.
Once it hits Land US as the roasters, we would
go divvy up the funds we've already paid them, and
(24:37):
then you go to your roasting facility. Now, if you
a big boy, you got your own roasting facility. But
most of the time, you know, a person may have
one machine in the back of their coffee shop, or
if they don't even have that, then they share a
facility where they roast a bunch of different roasters roasted
that one place. Once it's roasts getting in a bag
and into your cup. Now, this is the like specialty
(24:58):
coffee way. Now, if we talk at Startarbucks, Starbucks walks
over there and they say, hey, let me buy this city,
and they got their own shipping people in their own situation,
and then they roast in like something the size of
a mountain. Now, what I'm talking about is third wave coffee.
What that means is there is a lot of nerdy stuff.
That means it's first wave coffee. Is like the coffee
(25:18):
that your grandpa drank in World War Two. It's just
you know mud, you know what I'm saying. Even the
term Americano was because when the American Gis were in
Europe and they wanted a cup of coffee because in
Europe they drank espresso. The Americans was like, this is disgusting,
what is this? So they just add water to it.
So they called that an Americano because that's the type
(25:40):
the Americans like anyway. So that's first wave coffee. Second
wave coffee is like Starbucks or the coffee spots that
like have the ton of syrups in the back and
the name of their shop is probably some sort of
pun like in Friends, the Central Perk, Java Chip. Those
are the ones that, like the big suburb in churches
(26:00):
would have their own coffee shops, like corn and thea
House Hebrews, just some sort of corny that's second where
it's like, you know, that's your triple Machia too, you
know it's double pump all of the sweet fruitfru stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's second wave.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And then third wave is what we call specialty coffee,
and that's where the big bucks come in because you
can sell them at a higher premium. Now, for it
to be considered specialty coffee on a scale of one
nine hundred, you have.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
To grade that bean at an eighty or above.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Now, coffees that are graded in the nineties unless you've
been to Dubai or Qatar, you've never drank it. Those
go there because American we can't afford it, so the
farmer don't even show it to it. But the most
of the like if you go to like a good
coffee shop, you're drinking about an eighty three to a
eighty five. But it's not like their whole crop is that.
Most farmers are just small plots. So what do you
(26:55):
do with the rest of it, well, the rest of it,
which is the most of your harvest to make the
numbers round, And let's just say you have one hundred
coffee trees, maybe ten of them produced an eighty five, right,
so that's ten percent.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
So you've spent all year.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Fighting drought, fighting climate change, fighting excessive heat, fighting all
that only for of your whole plantation, only to get
ten percent of it to be actually be available to
sell the rest of it. It just goes to the stock
market and you just hope and pray that you're able
to sell it. But you have that three weeks to
try to make your year's salary. So what happens is,
(27:31):
since you can only sell ten percent, only ten percent
of it is even available to sell. Right, I'm talking
specialty cofee is where we are now. If in fact,
somebody comes in here and pays it, and then they
only pay fair trade rather than direct trade price, you're
getting a price set by Germany is not even enough
to pay the little kids that just miss school to
be able to pick your farm, because that's who actually
(27:53):
picks the cherries. This is daywork, just kids from the
farming community that come in there. They try to make
a day's wage to pick their things. What happens is
to be able to survive this how it is in Honduras.
To be able to survive, you go get a loan
from the government to be able to make your money
for the year and then hopefully off that harvest you
can pay that loan back and make enough for the
(28:15):
next year so you don't have to get a loan.
The problem is they're charging these farmers thirty percent interests,
so they're locked into this situation that says I can't
even afford to even keep my family plot because I'm
just staying in debt. So then what do you do,
governor a dumb They'll re up your loan. So they're like,
oh cool, no problem, We'll just we'll re up your loan.
(28:37):
These So these farmers end up being hundreds of thousands
of dollars in debt and it's adding every year because
they can never catch up, which is bonkers. Considering how
much coffee we drink across the world, one would think
they would be fine. So I mean, what's your option.
You sell the land or remove the coffee, just yo,
(28:58):
get some cows, beef, right d forest? I mean there's
money to make there, or you sell it to a
big conglomerate. And what does the big conglomerate do burn
down all of the forests and create a monoculture, right,
and a monoculture are like what you would pitch what
we do in America for corn or all through the
Amazon rainforest. And if you know, obviously you've seen a
(29:20):
force monoculture. Ain't how earth works. Right, The diversity of
plants becomes its own fertilizer. But if you don't have that,
if you don't have chickens that survive off the avocados,
and you know, I'm pulling things out of nowhere. But
like the point I'm trying to make is when you
create a monoculture, you have to also create a way
to sustain that, and the only way to sustain it
(29:41):
is destructive. One cup of coffee in this way releases
was it eighty grams of co two? I mean it's
like driving half a mile, Like your cup of coffee
is a half a mile full of poison if done
the way that most of the bigger names in the
industry do it, which is now rising our carbon right.
(30:02):
And if you're going to do that, then that means
you need a gang of fertilizer, right, which is bad
for the soil. And then you also need to use
way more water than naturally required. Matter of fact, according
to the UN, one cup of coffee uses one hundred
and thirty liters of water. If you're doing this like
monoculture style, right, that looks like farming the way we
(30:25):
do it here, one cup of coffee one hundred and
thirty liters of water, which is a bathtub.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's like a bathtub full.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Of water to create this one cup, so obviously multiply
that times a billion. Not only is this practice like
everything else in this neo capitalistic world, the demand was
so big and the desire to get the most amount
of money with the least amount of price is destroying
the very thing that makes the product possible. Now, the
(30:54):
rest of the world isn't stupid. We understand that this
process is not right. We're killing the soil, we're killing
the land. Everybody knows that. So the EU passed this
law that says, if you're going to import any sort
of commodity, including coffee, you have to prove that it
didn't come from deforestation, right, So this is them trying
to do their best. The only problem is, if I'm
(31:18):
an indigenous farmer on a small plot, I don't even
have access to deforestation. But the only way for me
to prove that is, like I said before, with the
fair trade, I have to fly somebody down.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It's on my own dime.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
It's because the EU doesn't understand regenitive practices because they
don't know any indigenous people, right, So this is now
adding a double burden to the farmers that are actually
doing it right, who can't possibly do the volume of
the people that are doing it wrong. So the first
problem is like the system is not even financially sustainable,
(31:52):
Like i'n't even got to the specifics of the deforestation
and all those things that have caused this problem. Now
According to Bloomberg's twenty twenty two study of tropical cash crops,
included arabica as well as avocado and cashew, are probably
the most vulnerable to climate change because the regions that
are suitable for this production continue to shrink because of
(32:14):
why heat. It's too hot, which means that Arabica won't
be able to grow. So we'll probably have to start
drinking robustica. Right. It's estimated that in thirty years from now,
basically fifty percent of lands that can grow coffee will
not be able to grow coffee anymore if we don't
do anything fifty percent. You think theyn't make it fun
(32:37):
of you for your twelve dollar cup of coffee?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Is crazy? Now listen.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Nestley reports that there are more than six thousand cups
of nest Cafe coffee drink every second. Are y'all following
me every second? That's how much coffee we drink. Now,
granted that coffee is not a rabica, it's robustica. Robustica
is what really most of the rest of the world drinks.
It's us again, being a part of the northern hemisphere,
(33:06):
being a part of the global north that like the
Pristine kind of good, shiny type. Right. The problem is
our insatiable desire to consume things as fast as we can.
And I don't want to blame I'm not blaming the
victim here. I'm just saying it's impossible to do the
volume is the argument.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
How do you do this volume that we all.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Want in this global supply chain and the way for
which we've set this up. How do you do this
volume and still keep the price where the price is?
And you know what the solution has always been, You
just rip off the farmer and destroy the earth. So
deforestation giving us too much carbon, which has made the
(33:52):
weather erratic, which means that some years the crop is
flooded and it doesn't grow right because it's too much rain.
Other years it's complete drought and you have to dig
even further into the ground to try to get the
amount of water that had we not raised the temperature
one point five degrees celsius, had we done some changes,
(34:13):
the earth would be the same. So Brazil is the
biggest coffee producer in the world, right and this year
this year was the worst drought they've had in seven decades,
with above average temperatures and one of the biggest producers
out there. Associated Press interviewed him Silvio Almeda and that
(34:37):
fool's coffee plantation.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
The AP just reported this.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Was expected to harvest one hundred and twenty sacks of
coffee beans, but they only got one hundred and then
their quota, saying, given the conditions here in twenty twenty five,
crop is already affected, he told Associated Press, pointing out
that part of his plantation where flower buds have already
died before blooming. I won't say it's doomed, because God
(35:00):
can do anything, but based on the situation, it's already compromised.
What these people were saying is like next year's crops
already dead. This where we are, y'all. Are y'all hearing
what I'm saying. He's saying, we ain't gonna have no
coffee next year. It's already dead.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Remember when Robert read off his little book, you know,
the whole started off, the whole, it could happen here
thing and in one of them places. After the Civil
War and went down, coffee was something you had to
smuggle into the country like a drug. This is what
he talking about that ain't gonna be no coffee, y'all.
I was at an event two years ago. It's called
the Color of Coffee Collective. It was for the black
(35:43):
people in the coffee industry. And of course this is
stretch to the whole diaspora. So you know, Central and
South American just ultimately people of color in the coffee
industry connect, you know, plot strategize, have some transparency in
our supply chains. A lot of us in America in
the West scream you know, pro black, pro black, We
(36:03):
for the culture, we for the people, and like to
put you know, the faces of our farmers on our
bags in you know, part of the marketing. But most
people who are in the coffee just have never gone
into source, so you don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
It'sally you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
You don't know Tabby who like is actually like growing
your coffee.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
It's just a name on a spreadsheet brought into you
from an importer. Right anyway, So there was a panel
discussion about about climate change and about ways for which
we can do better. So they had a bunch of farmers.
I remember it was a farmer from Kenya who.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Gave us these just heaters just these heat rocks, these
bars during this panel discussion, and after I show these bars,
I'm gonna go for a break, and then I'm gonna
tell you about people that are doing things better in
ways for which we can maybe save our soil so
that your kids can possibly enjoy coffee.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Also, so someone asked, I believe it was a roaster
from Puerto Rico, was like, hey, so, what are some
of the ways that you're adapting and hoping to mitigate
climate change? Like how are y'all dealing with climate change?
So he was asking this Kenyan farmer, like what's he
doing for climate change? And his answer was, I mean,
you tell me we're at source. He's like, we're a
(37:24):
third world country. We didn't cause climate change.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You did. What are you doing?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
He's like, we're the ones suffering, and not only are
we suffering from the effects of climate change in our
own life, because of your greediness, you created the climate
change that is causing the problems in the very crop
that you're trying to get from us. So because of
your problems, this is why he's explaining it. I now
can't grow something that we've grown for hundreds and hundreds
(37:52):
of years. And you asking me what I'm doing for
about it? No, what are you doing about it?
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Ouch?
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So here's some things that are being done next.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
The wildest thing about how complicated any of these solutions are,
which are you going to take many, many decades to
actually see the difference in the actual top soil. The
most bonkers part is the fact that like the solutions
by and large are kind of the same across any
(38:36):
world problem. It's mutual aid, it's collective, communal, collaborative work
among every part of the supply chain. It's so in
some senses it's so beautiful that like, really the solution
is us. I say that to not grossly oversimplify, but
I say that to say that there's hope. So I'm
(38:56):
going to introduce you to a couple programs and a
couple of farms and sort of some things to look
for in your coffee purchasing, because you guys want to
see the world be better. Also, first thing is farms
going back to indigenous practices. Now, two I know personally,
and one I'm going to tell you about from Ecuador.
(39:19):
This there's a whole documentary on it. If you look
up on YouTube. It's called How Climate Change Threatened Coffee
Production by DW Documentaries, And I mean right like pretty
on the nose. So a coffee collective in Ecuador called
Vila Cory. It's their Kichua language. It means green gold
in their indigenous language. And they're doing something very similar
(39:41):
to my friends in Hondoras called Kadacha Coffee. Now, what
they are are cooperatives on the business side.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
So I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I'm going to get to the business cooperative side after
I explain to you the indigenous practices, even though all
of these things are related. So what they do is
something that's so obvious, which is like, you got to
stop doing monocultures. First of all, it makes sense financially
because now you're diversifying your commodities.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
So you have your coffee plants.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
If you see a coffee plant, coffee plants are pretty short,
like they don't grow taller than six foot normally. So
since the climate is so hot, what is the natural
way to shade them? Well, the natural way to shavee
them is trees. So if you plant them among trees,
the types of trees that first of all naturally fertilize
the soil. Number two, they produce fruit. Number three, they
(40:34):
produce raw materials. Right, So these people have planted trees
that are indigenous to the area. So a lot of
times in coffee places like there are certain species of
beans that really only grow in particular regions. But the
only reason they grow in those particular regions is because
of the mineral the way that the minerals are in
the ground in that area. So if you can mimic
(40:55):
those minerals, if you bring those minerals to this place,
you could grow that bean. So technically, and if I
have the my minerals, I can be in Costa Rica
and grow a Rwandan coffee because it's just the Rwandan
soil in Costa Rica. And you could still argue that
it is this is some of the future of like
(41:15):
if it do ever.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Get so bad.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Right when they grow in coffee in Sacramento, you know
what I'm saying in Vancouver in some sort of building,
it's because we just gathered the minerals that we've destroyed
and put.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Them in a laboratory. That's not good for the earth.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's that's an invasive not only invasive pieces, an invasive mineral.
So you're completely changing the biosphere of that land just
to grow that one crop.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
That's absurd. The land already does what it needs to do.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So what these guys do in Ecuador is the same
thing they do in Colombia in Zipa Coln that was
the name of the city that they were in. Also,
what's happening on doors is like you just let the
land do what it does. What I learned on one
of these farms is like the quickest way to know
a place is not organic is there's no insects. Like,
(42:05):
if there's no ants, that means the ground's poisonous. Right.
The ants come out, they eat whatever waste is on
the ground, whatever like natural waste is on the ground.
They come back in, they go back into the soil.
They're irrigating them soils themselves. You don't need lawnmowers if
you have chickens, right, the chickens eat the thing. The
shade of the trees keeps the temperature down. It produces
(42:28):
fruits like avocado, papaya, Like I said before, mongos, plantains.
These trees that naturally grow in this area keep the
soil rich and the coffee strong. So you're keeping the
temperature down, the land does what it absolutely does. So
now you don't need pesticides. You also need less water
because when the temperature being shaded and brought down, the
(42:51):
water is not evaporating as fast. Whoa, and then the
quality of the bean is higher. Now here's where the
indigenous practices move from just the ground to also the community.
Rather than having one hundred small farms compete against each other,
they just work as a community. So rather than waiting
for Johnny European to come down and say buy my beans,
(43:12):
no by hes by my means, they're like.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
No, by our beans.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
They pull all the beans together, bring all of their
crops together, and they say, yeah, maybe I can't produce
whatever kilos that this person needs by themselves, but we
can produce that. So that way, if there's a farm
over here that's got a smaller crop because maybe you know,
mother in law got sick so they weren't able to
(43:37):
work as hard as they can for those beans, or
maybe collectively again, heat dome was too high, there was
too much of a drought. We really couldn't grow that
much on our own. Together though we could meet this order.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
You follow me.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
And when that happens because again, who usually picks the
beans are the community's kids. Now, if we can collectively
fill the order right after we cup and we say
collectively our.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Coffees are good enough.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
And there's different types of species, Like you know what
I'm saying, like this is a I don't want to
get too much into nerdery, but each bean in each
tree is a particular species. Maybe when we cup, we say, hey, listen,
this is the same thing that happened on Doris. It's like,
you know, we sit around and we're tasting, basically doing
a taste test these different batches of beans. I don't
know which farm they came from. I know they're all
(44:23):
a part of this collective. But if I say, yo,
I want these, then when we pay, since it's not
a middleman, it's a community.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Now, the main load.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Goes to the particular farm that it was ordered from,
but the rest of it goes and it's spread across
the entire community following me. Okay, now back to the
soil situation. I feel like I'm all over the place,
but you have to understand because the problem's all over
the place, and a lot of these places are connected.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
So in Colombia, they kind of did the same thing.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So La Pammel tu Acon is the place that everybody
comes into. And since every individual farmer does not have
connections across the world with bringing buyers in and there's
no promise that they won't be taken advantage of and
ain't gonna be able to sell but maybe five ten
percent of the crop. The rest of it either goes
to the trash or goes to the sea market. It's
(45:16):
just the open stock market. You just hope somebody buys
your beans. It's just no way to live. As I
explained before, what Lapama ends up doing is this is
they say, okay, well check this out.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
We'll buy your coffee, all of it.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
And not only will we buy your coffee because we
know you need soil, we're gonna set you up with
a business so that not only can you sell your
coffee to us, you can also sell your fertilizer to us.
And the fertilizer that you're creating, we're going to build
that business for you. And how they do this is
this thing called biochar. Now it makes so much sense.
(45:52):
If you have donkeys and other places at pigs and
other animals that have waste, you can make fertiliz.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Duh, Right, So what they do is.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
This, They have these composts, these big old flat things
that they build in front of you.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
They basically they build it for you.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
They went to all the local farms and they were like,
we'll build this for you, right, and then we'll buy
the product from you. So they build these flatbed things
where you could take all the stuff that you would
compost anyway and put it in this flatbed, cover it,
and then we're going to give you this stuff called biochar,
which is some of the dopest like Mother Nature showing off.
(46:33):
So basically it's made from like you heat wood right
at the highest of temperature with no oxygen, so once
it becomes carbon, it doesn't turn to ash, you know
what I mean. It's almost like you know when you
like after you light a fire when you hold the
charred pieces, like how it crumbles away this one because
you heat it at the highest of temperature without letting
(46:55):
oxygen in, so like it doesn't become like a like
a red fire.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
And then you mix that into your compost and it
just makes this pristine soil. So now guess what these
farmers don't have to pay for soil. They don't have
to pay for nutrient wrench soil. Matter of fact, they
can sell off the excess. Their crop's already been sold.
So you don't have to go get a loan from
(47:22):
the state. You would need that loan to be able
to set up your like your washing stations. Like how
you get the coffee from a cherry to the roast
or to the green bean is like, it's a long process.
It could be very expensive. It's all good. The hommies
down Narrow do that for you. We'll put you in
this system, and we're gonna pay you even if your
particular crop, your particular bean isn't sold, because we'll sell
(47:46):
it somehow, Like if it doesn't sell on the high
end eighty percent Arabica specialty coffee thing, we'll figure out
a way to sell it. You're still getting paid anyway.
We're buying your whole crop rather than the ten percent
that would happen. And like I said before, if your
beans aren't as good as they're supposed to be, these
programs by one hundred percent from these farmers, So these
farmers are able to sustain themselves. Right and now, you
(48:09):
can pass these farms down to your children.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Right because we're doing this collectively.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Since we're doing this collectively, especially it's what happens in Honduras,
a third of the money goes to the community itself.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
I've wrapped at a school that was built.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
By them selling the coffee like this, there's now a
medical clinic because a lot of times these farms are
hundreds of miles away from the city.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
You have to get airlifted as something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
And since these are indigenous communities, they're the most forgotten
oftentimes in these areas. So purchasing these coffees really at
a high price, which is what we're supposed to do,
guarantees that the individual farmer is paid, the community is paid.
It's done in a way that's tied much more to
(48:53):
the indigenous practices. And now collectively, because we're buying from
responsible places that are locally grown. Now we can afford
to bring the EU people down here to prove that
this is not a process of deforestation, because they're moving
collectively for real.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
It's just like fast fashion.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
It's like that T shirt only three dollars because a sweatshop,
you truly do get what you pay for in a
lot of way. And finally, I'm gonna tell you where
tech is actually helping, and it's this program called BEX
three sixty. They could use a little help on the marketing,
but it's essentially they're using blockchain to create transparency and
(49:41):
it's probably the dopest thing I've ever seen. And I
saw it from wanted a supply chain to the other.
So in this program, these local farmers right who just
have these small home plots, who have been running these
plots for centuries. This they grandfather's land, they you know,
they grandmama's land that they got it, who don't have
access to American and worldwide coffee buyers meet up with
(50:06):
this collective, right the Karacha collective, that's one of them
that I'm that I'm specifically talking about. And Karacha signed
up with this thing called bext. And what happens in
bext is, if you've ever been to developing countries, not
everybody ain't got a smartphone. So in this thing, once
the farmer harvest is alls beans, washes them and says, hey,
(50:26):
I got these many kilos of this type of being,
click opens his Bext app on his smartphone, takes a
picture of it and puts the weights and the numbers
so that we know everybody and everybody in the supply
chain can see this. There's a QR code even on
the bag. Once you buy the bag in Sacramento, there's
a QR code on it, so you could see all this.
(50:47):
So the kid from the farm snaps the thing. It
goes to the exporter, which who just lives down the street.
It's not like some you know, multi conglomerate company from
the North. No, this lady lives down the street. She's
born and raised here. She opens it up and she
says to us, who flew in from America to be like, yo,
(51:09):
we want to try some coffee. Opens the app and says, hey,
this is the farmer, this where it is, this, how
much he wants this, how much he asking for it?
Here's our price. But I'm looking at the app, that's
what he's charging. And then i know she's adding a
third of that price because the other third of what
she's asking for is literally paying for the hospital that's
(51:31):
across the street. So it makes perfect sense to me.
And I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, cool,
I know how much the shipping container costs because I'm
seeing it.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Of course I got to pay for shipping. What is
you talking about?
Speaker 1 (51:43):
So it's all transparent, it all makes sense, and it's
all regentitive financially in climate wise. Once we buy it,
I can see if she paid the farmer, because that's
also in the app. So once the farmer gets his money,
takes a picture, got the money, screenshot received, and then
a portion of that money is given in cash so
(52:05):
that you could pay the kids that picked your farm.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Click saw that. That's in the app.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Right as that stuff is shipped across the country or
across the ocean. You can put in all of the
roasting notes, which are kind of lame if you're not
really into stuff like that. And then finally the sealed
bag that says here's one from Denver, Queen City, a
collective coffee right that, hey, look, this is a Honduras bean.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
We bought it this price.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
And then when you pay it's called a third cost.
When you buy the bag, there's an extra dollar added
to the cost of the bag, and that extra dollar
does not go to the roaster. It goes back to
the farmer. You know how I know because there's a
QR code. You could check it and the farmer can
confirm if they got they money. It's transparency, it's us
(52:53):
taking care of us. So obviously, because the world works
the way it works. If this continues to be financially viable,
here's some of the things we could do. One is
we could start drinking more robustica like everybody else, and
it's actually delicious if you could find a good roaster,
and Tabi is a great roaster New Yen Supply. She's amazing.
She does cold brew and like Vietnamese coffee. It's robustica.
(53:16):
But then there's other spots across the world. It's going
to cost a little more. But I'm telling you why
it costs a little more because they come from a
multicultured land that uses indigenous practices, that has lowered its
carbon footprint, that is direct traded and has transparency. This
is not a list of everybody doing this. These are
(53:38):
the list of people that I know personally and people
that have researched. So in North Cak and South Cak
you got Black and White roasters, and you got Bridge
City Roasters. Denver, there's Queen City Collective up in Sacramento.
There's Old Soul Coffee, Onyx, Coffee Lab, Coffee Black that's
(54:00):
there in Memphis. All these people you could order their
coffees online don Cable Hall in New York. The transparency
is there and is doing its best to make sure
that this being stays on this planet. So I'll link
in the show notes all of the data that I'm
pulling this from and ways for which you can connect with,
like very socially responsible and climate responsible coffee roasters, Geez
(54:27):
only sixteen years old.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Boy, I tell you that's the first lyric in That's all.
Speaker 4 (54:34):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.