Just because it’s Organic doesn’t mean it’s the highest quality, tastes better or that it’s Fairtrade. Consumers’ knowledge and understanding about organic certified foodstuffs is surprisingly low. Organic products are grown with the minimal use of chemical inputs and production is highly regulated and audited for verification to ensure compliance with a defined set of organic standards.
However with coffee, some are grown in regions where no chemical fertilisers, herbicides or pesticides are applied but the crop itself is not certified organic. Often these coffees could be called "organic by default" where the farmer cannot access or afford chemicals, so it’s not a choice to be organic, but simple necessity.
Most of the coffee farms that fit this description are "non-managed farms", meaning the farmers do not tend the trees with pruning or fertiliser but instead just harvest the ripe cherries when they appear. An example would be our Yemen coffee.
An alternative example of 'default' Organic from our collection is our Zambia coffee from the Chisoba farm. Here all the fertiliser applied to the ground is from the cattle which are produced on the farm. This farm is extremely well managed, no synthetic chemical inputs are used but as the farm is not certified it cannot be described as organic.
For smallholder farmers who are members of a co-operative, they may wish to undergo organic certification to secure a higher price premium for their coffee. However, this can be challenging, since so many co-operatives lack sufficient funds to pay for conversion and certification. This can make it difficult because their main priority is to finance the harvest and ensure money is available to pay the farm workers at the time of coffee picking.
In many cases, we encounter tiny smallholder farms with depleted soils, old trees and lack of inputs so yields are very low. The farmers are unlikely to be members of a co-operative and would not be in a financial position to pay for certification. These are the most marginalised subsistence farmers who need a lot of support to enable them to move out of desperate poverty.
The coffee we buy from Rwanda, Kenya and Sumatra are examples of un-certified "organic" coffee. I commissioned a "Needs Assessment" with the smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda with the NGO, Africa Now. This is an academic social science participatory research study to determine what difficulties and challenges farmers say they experience. This can be more powerful than an external assessor who comes from outside and tells the farmers what they should do.
The farmers said they needed fertilisers if they could afford it, as this would significantly increase their yields and vastly improve their income. Here the use of fertilisers would be strongly advocated, as the environmental effect by non-application of chemicals cannot be matched by the impact on sustainable livelihoods and reduction of poverty. My opinion is that the discrete and defined use of fertilisers is good agricultural practice.
High quality coffee is grown at high altitudes of 1400-2000 metres. Coffee at this elevation does not usually require the application of pesticides and fungicides because pests which attack coffee trees do not thrive here so problems are rare in these settings.
Many of the farms that environmentalists promote for organic production are large farms, at lower altitudes in developed countries. This would not be high quality, specialty coffee but commercial grades for mass market brands. It is highly notable that the farms we work with are free of the need for pesticides and fungicides. However, they do need fertilisers so they cannot be certified as organic.
In general, farms that do convert to organic production for ecological and philosophical ideals experience a significant drop in yield and an increase in labour costs. High level of organic material is required to give nutrients to the trees.
I believe that the response of society towards the organic movement is analogous to a slowly swinging pendulum. Farming practices which utilise high levels of inputs and liberal application of chemicals for intensive production and maximum yields represents a swing in one direction. This is mass produced, homogeneous, highly commercialised, mostly processed foodstuffs – everything we stand against. The reaction to this is the opposite extreme for total elimination of all chemicals and zero inputs. However, a harmonious position is the central line only using inputs when and where specifically necessary, applied minimally for a specific targeted approach. This integrated pest management tactic, which is used at the Guatemala Santa Ana farm uses agricultural inputs with minimal impact, through recorded management systems. In this conservation area the approach is considered perfectly sound from an environmental aspect.
Nevertheless, the most important factor to us is the protection of farm workers from exposure to chemicals, which is why we ensure pesticides are very tightly controlled. These, together with herbicides, also cause greatest concern for the preservation of the ecosystem, health of flora, fauna, insects, wildlife and water quality. So for the farms we source from, this is where we focus our attention.
For you as the consumer, your concern is also to avoid ingesting synthetic chemicals. I certainly agree with this demand. Nevertheless, the minimal use of chemicals by the farmers we work with and the fact that coffee is the seed exposed by removing the outer pulp flesh, means it does not carry the risks associated with vegetables or fruit. Yet we routinely have all our green coffee tested for the presence of pesticide residues. Screening for 100 compounds each time we’ve never had a positive result.
In Conclusion
The Union Relationship model is created to look at sustainability in coffee farming as a holistic approach. We assess social, environmental, and economic factors, examining their interactions and impact. As a result, our model is constantly evolving. The environmental component is perhaps the weakest and this reflects our determination to get coffee farmers economically sustainable before developing our stance on what is achievable with regard to biodiversity and fertiliser use. I would like to believe this will be the most effective way to achieve the best result.
