Writing
Much has been written about what it means to be “authentically” specialty, often without any acknowledgement that authenticity is a construct: there are no clear, objective criteria that qualifies something as “authentic.”
Publisher
Standart: Standing for the Art of Coffee | Issue 13
Luke Adams, Editor
Illustrator
Excerpt
Engaging with music is a multi-layered, socio-cultural process—asking questions about how we use music, why we use it in certain ways, and what it means to us both personally and as a community can shed light on what we value and how we interact with each other.
I spend a lot of time thinking about music and, in particular, the music I hear in coffee shops. It’s kind of a personal quirk—I’m a recovering ethnomusicologist, having abandoned academia for coffee what feels like a long, long time ago—but it turns out I’m not alone in my musical musings.
It’s not as if we don’t already acknowledge the subtle importance of music within our industry: why else would World Barista Championship competitors bring their own soundtrack to shape their judges’ experience on stage? We talk a lot about music as a community, too—whether in person or on social media, baristas craft, share, and regularly debate playlists designed to set a particular mood or vibe.
But if music is so important to us, is it important to our customers, too? Is there some sort of special relationship between music and coffee that goes beyond the superficial ‘starving musician barista’ stereotype? Why should music matter? Why does it matter?
“It’s important to acknowledge that the way we tend to ‘give more’ celebrates the act of philanthropy without questioning how individuals or companies have so much to ‘give back’ in the first place. (Hint: it’s that extractive model of production.)
Publisher
Design
Excerpt
25 | Issue 12 | Specialty Coffee Association
The current price crisis has happened before, and it will happen again unless we seek transformative change.
On the surface, coffee price crises are tied to volatile swings in supply and demand, with high prices reflecting a shortage in coffee supply and low prices, a glut. But even in times of high prices, many producers simply aren’t benefiting from the swing upwards. Higher coffee prices and premiums often aren’t enough to cover the cost of sustainable production and dignified livelihoods for coffee communities, and this is particularly true of quality premiums that use the C market for price discovery. Coffee’s extractive model of production—depleting the soil, relying on forms of unpaid and sometimes even forced labor—often bridges the gap between the achievable prices and the cost of doing business.
This is a chronic problem, and current efforts are insufficient. Right now, the capacity of industry actors to invest in sustainability projects often directly correlates to their ability to increase the profit margin on coffee purchases. Most of these investments seek to optimize producers’ behavior to drive higher yields to ensure greater financial return. Metaphorically speaking, if the problem we’re trying to solve is to make sure that producers receive more for their efforts—to get a larger slice of the “pie”—you could say that this kind of approach seeks to “increase the size of the pie” to make sure there is more to go around. These models not only risk further oversupply—perpetuating low prices—but haven’t ever managed to deliver fully on a vision of long-term dignified livelihoods. These kinds of efforts don’t address the root causes of the problem; they often reinforce them.
