Sustainable means an on-going commitment to supporting farmers who grow quality coffee and are socially responsible. It begins at the farm, using patio drying, bird friendly, shade-grown organic methods, and a non- reliance on pesticides. It continues with the support of Fairly Traded companies.
Long-term success in coffee is quality. Many Fair Trade companies travel the world each year seeking out family farms and cooperatives that meet their quality standards. Personal relationships with farmers who support investment in the land and local people, insures consistency and reliability in organic products. Long-term fixed prices ensure that growers stay in business and are profitable enough to continue to invest in their farms, future production, and contribute to a stable credit history. Superior coffee can only be created if the land and people who grow it are respected.
The production of premium quality coffees and the education of coffee drinkers lead to stability and a better life for these farmers. There are several organizations that certify organic coffees. However, working with a particular method of certification by trying to decide what is “fair”, narrows the number of growers. Many growers do not qualify under a particular group’s standards or may not be able to obtain certification for a variety of social, economic or geographic reasons.
This problem needs a solution to benefit all involved farmers and Fairly Traded companies.
Archive for May, 2009
Only A World Without Walls is Sustainable…
Coffee Joe says:
Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving.
Organic Tea, Another Fair Trade Beverage
Fair Trade organic tea is popular and getting more so. From spiced to iced, from plain black to sweet and milky chai, from a flowery pick-me-up to a healthy herbal, no other organic beverage has had such an impact.
As there is no grading standard for conventional or organic teas, the origin, variety, altitude, how it is picked and finally, the manufacturing after harvest is the only way. Organic Black teas are produced using mostly two methods. The traditional means is by hand plucking the top two leaves and the bud, then rolling them, which leads to all sizes and grades of whole leaves. This is more sustainable as it benefits the farmers directly. The newer, more modern system of crush, tear and curl is used for mass production, often neglecting the small farmer. However, it lets organic tea leaves either be picked by hand or machine, but always in broken sizes. Odd names for the grading include Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, the highest quality, then Broken Orange Pekoe, Pekoe Fanning, and finally, Pekoe Dust, the lowest quality, quite literally called “the sweepings. Both are just as good.
Organic Green and Oolong tea grading tends to be priced according to variety, area where grown, and the picking. Each country grades its own, taking into consideration the age of the leaf, style, district and cup quality. Fair Trade Organic Teas are a welcome alternative to coffee as there are thousands of combinations available making it possible to find just the right blend that suits your fund raising to a tea!
This Business of Roasting……
…. Fair Trade Organic coffee consists of cleaning, roasting, cooling, grinding, and packaging. Bags of organic green coffee beans are opened, emptied into a hopper and screened to remove any foreign objects. They are then weighed and transferred to storage hoppers. From there, the organic green beans are sent to the roaster. Roasters typically run at temperatures between 370 and 540 °F (188 and 282 °C), and the beans are roasted ranging from a few minutes to around 30 minutes. The machines are normally horizontal, with rotating drums tumbling the organic green coffee beans in a current of hot gases; they come in either batch or continuous mode, indirect or direct-fired.
Indirect-fired roasters have a burner flame that has no contact with the beans, but the gases do. Direct-fired roasters do have contact with the beans from both the burner flame and the gases. At the end of the roasting cycle, the beans are dumped into a cooling table and put through a ”destoner”. A destoner is an air vacuum that removes stones, metal pieces, and any other waste product not found during the first screening. The roasted organic beans are then either processed in grinders or packaged as whole beans. Un-roasted beans have all of coffee’s acids, protein, and caffeine—everything but taste. It takes heat to start the chemical reaction turning carbs and fats into fragrant oils, burning off moisture and CO2, breaking down and building up acids, all combining to bring forth good coffee flavor.
During roasting, the organic green coffee bean increases to nearly double its size, changing in color and mass. As heat is absorbed, the color alters to yellow, then to light cinnamon brown, and finally to a darker color, sometimes with an oily surface. The roast will continue to darken until removed from the heat. At lighter roasts, the organic coffee bean will exhibit more of its regional qualities created in the bean by the soil and local conditions where it was grown. Organic Fair Trade coffee beans from Java, Kenya, Hawaiian Kona, and Jamaican Blue Mountain are generally roasted lightly so their specific traits can highlight each flavor.
As the beans darken, the original tastes of the organic bean are overcome by the flavors created from the roasting process itself making it difficult to decide which beans were used. These are then sold by degrees, ranging from “Light Cinnamon Roast” through “Vienna Roast” to “French Roast” and beyond. Gaining popularity now are mail order sales, or the use of organic Fair Trade coffee as a fundraiser, knowing it is a “fresh from the roaster” product, easily transported, that virtually sells itself.
This explains why the roasting process is essential to producing a memorable cup of coffee.
The Great Caffeine Debate……
Science has examined the relationship between coffee drinking and many medical conditions. Most studies can’t decide if coffee is beneficial or not in determining the effects of coffee use. It has been suggested that it could reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cirrhosis of the Liver and Gout. However, this study is only a theory. Most medical opinions about caffeine in coffee have only observed those who drink caffeinated coffee. Coffee’s negative slant is mostly discussed for its high percentage of caffeine. Science also is looking at how drinking regular coffee may cause a temporary stiffening of arteries, or how any excess may lead to a vitamin deficiency, or have mixed effects on short-term memory, but nothing has been proven.
Determined by the type of coffee and preparation, the caffeine content of a single serving can vary. The average for a single cup of coffee of about 7 fluid ounces (207 ml) or a single shot of espresso of about 1oz (30 ml) should contain the following amounts of caffeine:
- Drip Coffee: 115–175 mg
- Espresso: 100 mg
- Brewed/Pressed: 80–135 mg
- Decaf, Brewed: 3–4 mg
General coffee usage, typically, equals about one third of normal drinking water intake in most of North America and Europe. Therefore, if we accept the standard opinion of health experts who say that drinking three 8-ounce cups of coffee per day (believed to be average or moderate) does not have a significant risk for adults, coffee is here to stay!
How Is It Made?….
Known as “coffee berries”, these seeds have to be processed through many stages before they become the roasted coffee we all know and love. Initially, the berries are generally hand picked. Next, the pulp of the berry is separated, usually by machine, and beans are then fermented to remove the glue-like substance still on the bean. When that step is finished, the beans are washed with lots of fresh water to remove any remaining residue, creating huge amounts of highly polluted coffee sludge. At last, the beans are dried, sorted and marked as green coffee beans.
Now, they can begin the process of roasting of the green coffee. Coffee is usually sold in a roasted state, and all coffee is roasted before it is consumed. Roasting changes the coffee bean both physically and chemically. Loss of moisture during the process causes the bean weight to decrease, but increase in volume, making it less dense. The actual roasting begins when the temperature inside the bean reaches 200 °C (392 °F), though different varieties of beans roast at different rates. Intense heat breaks down the starches in the bean, changing them to sugar that browns, changing the color of the bean.
Depending on the color of the roasted beans, they will be labeled as light, cinnamon, medium, high, French, or Italian roast. Darker roasts are generally smoother, because they have less fiber content and a more sugary flavor. Lighter roasts have more caffeine, resulting in a slight bitterness, and a stronger flavor from acids and oils destroyed during longer roasting times.
Coffee Joe says:
Coffee berries start as green berries in early stages of growth, turn yellow, red, then dark crimson, and finally ripen to yield the best coffee. In fact, according to the rule of “FIVE”: An Arabica coffee plant takes about “FIVE” years to mature and produce its first crop. A healthy coffee tree will produce only about “FIVE” pounds of green beans per year, but only about “ONE-FIFTH” of a pound meets the rigid sorting standards to be sold as “Specialty Coffee.”
“It’s Not Easy Being Green……
……or organic. Until lately, coffee was just “coffee”. A beverage people started their day with, and drank more during and after work. However, a revolution was apparent when no longer could you order plain coffee. Words like “latte”, “espresso”, “gourmet” and finally, “specialty” became the signature of each individual company.
One of the sectors is using the expression “organic”. Accordingly, this should mean that the plants were grown to maturity without pesticides in an earth-friendly way. Nowadays, a large number of people demand genuine goods free of additives. For coffee, the intention is for it to be pure, untainted, but good tasting as well.
However, sellers found out that it didn’t quite translate into a well-made product. Other factors, including poorly paid workers, unsanitary sites and a lack of recycling for the coffee slag, became evident. To correct this, a new process and word was invented – Sustainable.
This coffee is made through careful planning with agriculture and community support. It has to appeal to those who can afford it, and it has to have a great taste. Previous to this end, the coffee is shade-grown, under trees at high altitudes, which yields a superior grade of coffee. The beans are better for having matured slowly, retaining higher sugar levels and density.
It starts with basic commonsense – coffee forests eliminate the need for chemicals, supplying all the necessary nutrients through nitrogen, compost, birds and insects, all coming together to produce the most efficient soil. Shade-grown is more important than ever due to the emphasis on sun-growing processes that are currently becoming more popular. The drawback here is the need to clear away the old coffee forests in order to grow these hybrids in indirect or direct sunlight. Without the diverse reactions of nature, chemicals are input to assist growth. The coffee, then, is of a lower quality, grows more quickly, will make money faster, but the health of the worker suffers as does the ecosystem. The coffee plants deteriorate at an advanced rate, the land doesn’t replenish itself readily, and erosion sometimes takes place, making sun-growing an economic menace to the traditional shade-grown methods.
This is where sustainable involvement comes to the rescue providing better ideas for increasing yield, becoming more competitive, and using proper management. The hope is to promote farms and people who only treat their workers well. Many companies will only buy direct from these producers who sell in the spirit of fair trade. Minimum set prices, including a surcharge over the world market, supporting programs dedicated to aiding the local society and lengthy purchase agreements are all excellent examples of looking for new and improved ways to enhance the coffee business overall.
Cowboy coffee
Coffee Joe says: Cowboy coffee? Supposedly, it was made by putting ground coffee into a clean sock, immersing it in cold water, then heating over a campfire. When ready, they would pour the coffee into tin cups and drink it.
Fairly Traded Farmer First Coffees
Pistol & BURNES Coffee Roasting Company has been criticized and penalized for our simplistic approach. As the first roasting company in Western Canada to join Trans Fair and the first in Canada to pull out, this action caused four results.
- Oxfam Canada cancelled our contract.
- CAW tried to unionize our roasting company.
- Grocery Stores would not carry our product.
- More importantly, we were forced to go solo and develop our own relationships.
In my opinion, Trans Fair is similar to a union. Its goal is to provide a minimum price for coffee to its farmers (1.24/lbs) plus a small premium for certified organic. This established unnatural price, virtually unchanged over a dozen years, does nothing to make up for the current dynamics that actually influence a farmer’s business i.e. cost of living, interest rates, currency devaluation and the availability to secure an operating line of credit.
We now have a template for success with a proven track record. As our demand increases, we will look for new farmers in different countries.
