When Coffee Certification Becomes the Product part I

Coffee certifications are generally born from good intentions.

Fair Trade. Organic. Rainforest Alliance. Regenerative agriculture. The ideas behind these programs are easy to understand: put more in farmers pockets, protect workers and the environment, give consumers a way to support better practices with their dollars. What could possibly be wrong with that?

The problem is that coffee is an extraordinarily complicated agricultural and economic system, (cashews are a close second to the complexity of coffee production- but I digress with a weird particle of knowledge I have).  We have increasingly tried to solve that complexity with certificates, audits, databases, forms, pretty packaging with important looking  logos.  Makes you woinder, is the coffee or the certification is the product being sold?

Certification is peace of mind

Certifications “work” because they make an incredibly complicated question an easy box to check for a consumer. There is obvious value in that simplicity. Certification creates standards, establishes expectations and gives buyers a mechanism for verification…right?

Fairtrade, for example, operates with minimum prices and premiums, while USDA Organic certification requires inspections and ongoing compliance, heavy on paperwork.

But simplicity for the consumer means complexity somewhere else in the supply chain.

The more requirements we create, the more documentation somebody has to produce to demonstrate compliance.  There’s a cost to that distraction.

Paperwork

Consider what certification actually looks like inside a supply chain.

The certification process, for example, involve application/registration, risk assessments,  authorized auditors, data verification and ongoing traceability. Certified supply-chain organizations are required to record purchases and sales of certified volumes in the traceability system.  Those systems exist for legitimate reasons. Traceability and accountability.

But there is a fundamental economic question hiding underneath all of that:

How much of the money and human energy spent proving that something is sustainable actually makes the farm more sustainable? Or puts more in the pocket of the people doing the lions share of the work?

Rainforest Alliance acknowledges that farmers can face audit and compliance costs, along with the costs of changing farm practices or infrastructure to meet certification requirements.  This doesn’t mean certifications are useless.  It means certifications have a cost.  Who should carry the burden of  that cost, who benefits from it and does all the paperwork produce more value at the farm level.