Certifications

Fair Trade looks good on paper. So does Organic. So does Bird Friendly.

This is where I’ve wrestled for years. As a shopper, I value having choices at my local grocery store. I understand the appeal of standing in front of the produce case and choosing organic tomatoes over conventional ones, especially when the price difference is minimal. That logic makes perfect sense at retail.

But as a business owner particularly in coffee I’ve seen the other side of certifications up close. The costs are real: roughly $0.15–$0.19 per pound. On a 40,000-pound container, that becomes significant very quickly. The paperwork is relentless. The liability often sits squarely with the farmer, though we carry our share of documentation and traceability requirements as well. And as scale becomes the priority, standards have a tendency to soften. Certifications are built for comparability and throughput, not for the messy, weather-driven realities of agriculture or the fragile economics of a small farm. They serve large end users well especially those checking a box in a well-intentioned but often short-sighted corporate sourcing program that is, at its core, cost averse.

Coffee isn’t tomatoes on a grocery shelf. You can’t scale terroir, and you can’t wish away weather risk. Yet certification systems often treat coffee like a shelf-stable commodity, engineered to fit neatly into consumer decision-making rather than reflect the volatility and nuance of production. Over time, I’ve watched certifications shift from tools meant to improve quality and livelihoods on the ground to mechanisms that ensure “good enough” uniformity, just enough consistency to move large volumes efficiently through global supply chains.