If you pick up a bag of coffee from your local coffee shop—think an independent café known for serving specialty coffee—you might see a story about a farmer. Perhaps the café sourced this coffee from a small farm, and will tell a story about relationships; how their relationship with this farmer ensures that the coffee you’re drinking is both delicious and fairly sourced because of the relationship they’ve built with the farmer. The story might even include an anecdote or a photo about traveling to the farm, and how you, picking up this bag and drinking this coffee, are making a difference in the livelihoods of farmers around the world.
These stories make you feel good about drinking coffee. Like buying organic or from a local co-op, you can justify the added cost of specialty coffee because someone traveled to a coffee-growing country and brought back something that, when you drink it, is meant to enrich the livelihoods of farmers. In the industry, traveling to farms to purchase coffee is colloquially called “going to origin.” And while the promise of traveling to origin seems like it promises a better future for farmers, in practice it can perpetuate the oppressive systems of power that have kept coffee farmers poor for centuries.
Coffee has a complicated life story. It is grown between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, often in places that were formerly colonized by Western countries. Although there are farmers with huge farms and large estates, the majority of coffee is grown by small-scale farmers. After being picked (coffee as we know it comes from a plant—the coffee cherry—and we drink only the seed of the coffee cherry) coffee is then processed, milled, goes through an exporter, an importer, and often sits in a warehouse before a roaster even touches it. Coffee can either be sold on the commodities market (as of this writing coffee is being sold at $1/pound) or sold through direct relationships between farmers and roasters, which will generally fetch higher prices.
For many importers and roasters looking to sell specialty coffee, going to origin is seen as essential. “I think first let’s define the types of buyers that come to origin,” says Vava Angwenyi, owner of Vava Coffee, a social enterprise working to empower farmers in Kenya. “We have the newbies—those folks new to coffee or wanting to get into coffee and may have some cash to come explore for an investment…then you have the ones who are traveling to origin after this big revelation that they have been buying coffee at unethical and unsustainable prices through importers and now take a trip to origin to meet the producers and try do the right thing but are not sure how or don’t even know where to start…then you have those who come with their importers and really come as high class tourists.”
Most coffee buyers fall under the second category—people who recognize the flaws of the C-market and attempt to do more with their buying power. This realization doesn’t always translate to traveling to origin, although the practice has certainly become more popular over time. Before specialty coffee became as ubiquitous as it is now, traveling to coffee farms wasn’t a common practice. As more and more specialty roasters started popping up, folks used origin trips to differentiate themselves. Now, in the coffee world, your knowledge and experience surrounding coffee can sometimes be judged by whether or not you’ve traveled to origin, and many coffee roasters use their experiences at origin to validate their space in the coffee sector.
As part of her work, Angwenyi has hosted roasters in Kenya looking to make a difference with mixed results. “[People] really think that by virtue of spending some dollars traveling to origin they can wash off the guilt with photo ops, small tips, or gifts and promises they are not sure how they will keep, forgetting to understand that all we want is for them to buy the coffee, treat this as a business transaction, and let us run our business,” she says.
Angwenyi notes that buyers often misunderstand what a coffee-producing country looks like, or believe that they know more than the producers themselves. “[There’s] really no need for them to try give us a million suggestions on how we should do things or how they want to invest in our companies and dictate terms,” she says. “I remember one who thought he would be hosted in a tent outdoors as he had not been to Africa before let alone any origin so thought he would be sleeping outside in a camp with the danger of wild animals attacking.”
These systems continue because there is an imbalance of power. Traveling to origin to buy coffee can perpetuate that power imbalance—a coffee roaster or importer has the power to decide if they’re going to buy coffee from a farmer or not, and because the alternative (relying on the C-market) guarantees a lower price, farmers can be exploited by people with purchasing power. Prices that hit three to four times the C-market price seem astronomically higher than what a farmer makes on the open market, but often still don’t cover the farmer’s cost of production.
“I think there is a demand for easy, guilt-alleviating solutions to really complex relationships and issues here,” says Bani Amor, a writer with a focus on decolonizing travel culture. “I’m more interested in [buyers] understanding the inherent flaws in what is referred to as ‘fair trade,’ because a truly equitable relationship between producer – middle (white) man – consumer is impossible to attain when white Westerners hold all the power. That is, wealth.”
So what are the solutions? Angwenyi recommends trusting experts. “What can I say? When in doubt ask an African expert or a Latin American expert,” she says.
Being engaged with local farmers and communities involves more than a quick internet search or fluency in a local language. “Do some reading—not Lonely Planet reading, but perhaps read books from local authors or African authors to get a hang on the African situation. Educate yourself a little more by doing simple things like watch BBC news…Google influencers in Africa—there are many…speak to the real experts on the ground, folks who have lived and worked in these communities,” Angwenyi says.
Also consider how marketing tells stories about traveling to origin. “Stop relying on cause-related marketing to sell…products. That’s using images and stories of Black and brown farmers and producers in the Global South that communicate an automatic consent between that community and consumers, images that studies prove tug at the heartstrings of the ‘fair trade’ market and thus, gets them reaching for their wallets,” Amor says.
Remember that coffee bag you picked up? Does it have language that infantilizes farmers and paints coffee buyers as saviors? Perhaps a photo of a white, Western coffee buyer on a farm with producers? It’s time to consider where that rhetoric comes from and what stories we wish to tell.
“It’s when white folks use these images and their origin trips, narratives rooted in the white savior complex, to force a kind of authenticity that we see these practices are rooted in exploitation for profit,” Amor says. “Save the money those trips cost and pay producers more, I’d say.”
Lastly, consider transformation at home before even stepping on a plane—if, as Angwenyi notes, you trust local experts, you don’t ever have to travel to buy coffee and can instead focus on transformation from within. If issues of exploitation and colonization have never factored into your thinking, consider your surroundings.
“Are the majority of the people employed in your company white?” Amor asks. “Then that’s a part of the problem.”
Coffee buying has the potential to be better, but it’ll involve a vertical transformation of the supply chain and understanding the influence of power, wealth, and the effects of colonization on global exchange.
***
Bringing You the Bigger Picture
Many people like you read our stories to learn about the world beyond Top 10 lists or ‘where to go’ style articles.
Through our travel and food stories, we want to draw attention the bigger picture: to history, politics, social issues, and context. Our publication is free from advertising, so we can set our own agenda. Our readers are not limited by a subscription fee or membership, so they can read thoughtful stories about travel no matter where they live or what they can afford.
We try to include a wide range of opinions and diverse voices, including from emerging writers around the world. Every contribution we receive from readers like you, big or small, goes directly toward paying our writers. This support enables us to keep producing the stories you love – but we must maintain and build on it in order to exist in a world of clickable lists. Support Curiosity Magazine from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you and don’t forget to #beabettertraveler.
