Speaker 1: Zone Media, there's nothing wrong with your podcast feed. This
Speaker 1: is prop and I am invading that it can happen
Speaker 1: here podcasts. To the four or five of y'all in
Speaker 1: the subreddit that can't stand my voice and say I'm
Speaker 1: the most annoying person in the Cool Zone extended universe,
Speaker 1: I apologize.
Speaker 2: My mama used to say, be who you is, because
Speaker 2: who you ain't a who he is.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about some things, specifically coffee and how
Speaker 1: your children will probably never be able to drink the
Speaker 1: coffee that you have drunk because climate change of bounds.
Speaker 1: But before we do, I'm also realizing how many singers
Speaker 1: in the eighties was singing the teenagers to children. You know,
Speaker 1: the absolute banger of a song If I could fly,
Speaker 1: I pick you up, I take you into the night,
Speaker 1: great song right and show you that you da see?
Speaker 1: Do you know what the first lyric in that song is,
Speaker 1: she's only sixteen years old, leave her alone? Unless he
Speaker 1: wasn't a teenager just openly singing what was we thinking?
Speaker 2: Freaking bell Biv devout in Dude.
Speaker 1: Maybabe backstage, underage, gotta leg it fly.
Speaker 2: I like to do the wow thing. Oh you're we're
Speaker 2: just openly singing the kids.
Speaker 1: Let me get back on topic, because not only could
Speaker 1: it happen here, it is happening here.
Speaker 2: So you may or may not know me.
Speaker 1: I am Los Angeles born and raised, our host her
Speaker 1: Politics with Prop Coles on media team, and I am
Speaker 1: your resident coffee nerd, and a lot of that grew
Speaker 1: out of just a natural passion for coffee, which you
Speaker 1: will hear me gush about later. But I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna back into this topic with back that thing up
Speaker 1: with the story from a few years back.
Speaker 2: See a few years back, I had a.
Speaker 1: Chance to put out a poetry book called Terraform, building
Speaker 1: a Liverpool World. And Terraform also had four musical EP
Speaker 1: seven song EPs called The Sky, the Soil, the People,
Speaker 1: and the Possibility. And while I was working on the Soil,
Speaker 1: I had a chance to partner with one of the
Speaker 1: I mean really, it's like, I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: a better roaster in America called Onyx believe it or
Speaker 1: not in Northwest Arkansas and in a collab sort of
Speaker 1: coffee release we were doing in partnership with mir which
Speaker 1: is a drinkwear company.
Speaker 2: I'm also an ambassador for We.
Speaker 1: Had a chance to go to Columbia, and if you've
Speaker 1: if you've been to South America or anywhere close to
Speaker 1: the equator, it's I mean, you're walking into the Avatar,
Speaker 1: you know, minus the aliens. It's this raw sort of
Speaker 1: earth that us in the northern hemisphere. It's just colors
Speaker 1: of green that you just can't imagine that, Like our
Speaker 1: pantones have yet to match the type of green in
Speaker 1: a forest that has to be a certain amount of
Speaker 1: miles above sea level for it to grow coffee.
Speaker 2: So we fly into Bogata.
Speaker 1: We go about an hour and a half outside of
Speaker 1: the city, which normally when you go to Origin it's
Speaker 1: like you have to like take a rickety helicopter or
Speaker 1: traverse twelve hours into you know, an African jungle, which
Speaker 1: is like not the most plush riding, but it's just
Speaker 1: it's this beautiful South American, you know, Colombian road and
Speaker 1: then you go up this small sort of windy road
Speaker 1: and while it's sunny, beautiful, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: combination of indigenous African European settlers that just made whatever
Speaker 1: combination of human made these Colombians so beautiful. But there's
Speaker 1: not I mean everyone's beautiful. It is the most off putting,
Speaker 1: how gorgeous every human is there along with this plush green.
Speaker 1: You come over this hill and because of the way
Speaker 1: that this farmer going to is set inside in between
Speaker 1: in this small valley that's about four to five thousand
Speaker 1: feet above sea level, there's this beautiful fog that lays
Speaker 1: over the top of this just gorgeous, gorgeous rainforest.
Speaker 2: Right there's grape vineyards, there's a few of those.
Speaker 1: There's avocados, there's all these just beautiful multi Instead of
Speaker 1: a monoculture, a monoculture is a farm of just one thing.
Speaker 1: Is a multi culture place that this crew called lepama
Speaker 1: eltua kan that's who I was with, And all this
Speaker 1: beauty and vegetation that I'm describing, apparently twelve years ago
Speaker 1: was not a thing.
Speaker 2: This place was.
Speaker 1: The textbook like cartoonish level example of deforestation where all
Speaker 1: of this natural beauty was cleared out for cattle raising
Speaker 1: and the land was dead. But you would never guess,
Speaker 1: you would never guess that this was ever an issue, because.
Speaker 2: What I'm looking at is Narnia.
Speaker 1: So this group of local born and raised brothers came
Speaker 1: up with a business plan and started restoring this land.
Speaker 1: I can't overstate the before and after picture, like the
Speaker 1: land was dying them with their reginative. Like you know,
Speaker 1: farming practices made this a rainforest to get and that
Speaker 1: is now growing some of the best coffee on earth.
Speaker 1: So anyway we come in there, it's beautiful. Just there
Speaker 1: are no words to express how beautiful this is. I
Speaker 1: have a song called the Soil Is Sacred that I
Speaker 1: shot the video at that farm. So if you want
Speaker 1: to just go ahead and peep that, peep that to
Speaker 1: understand this place. This place is not only just a
Speaker 1: coffee farm. It's also a bike trail adventure place. It's
Speaker 1: a hotel. You stay in these bungalows that are like
Speaker 1: up on sticks, and then the shower is outdoors, just
Speaker 1: covered around bamboo sticks.
Speaker 2: That like hei the thing, and it's got like the
Speaker 2: what we like to call the anti black shower heads.
Speaker 1: You know that those are the I don't know if
Speaker 1: y'all notice, because black people don't always like to wet
Speaker 1: our hair in the shower.
Speaker 2: We wash our hair much less than y'all do.
Speaker 1: But if you got that waterfall shower head, then that
Speaker 1: means we got to tilt our heads back a little bit,
Speaker 1: or make sure we got a shower cap. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know any black women, but you don't
Speaker 1: wet my hair in.
Speaker 2: The shower anyway.
Speaker 1: But you're showering out there, and it's just beautiful. You're
Speaker 1: in the rainforest. You can hear the animals and it's
Speaker 1: just this gentle breeze is blowing. And then around eleven.
Speaker 2: Thirty the fall kind of clears out. You get to
Speaker 2: sit down.
Speaker 1: You're having some breakfasts that's just chopped up papaya and
Speaker 1: mango that they grew right there, right God, I could
Speaker 1: see the mango tree, it's right there. And then they'll
Speaker 1: fry up some plantain from the plantain tree right there,
Speaker 1: scrambling up with some eggs from the chicken.
Speaker 2: Nest right there, right Just it's a dream.
Speaker 1: And as we're talking, as we're moving through this thing,
Speaker 1: the man that runs it, who like I wish I
Speaker 1: could have his baby. It was just the most gorgeous
Speaker 1: human I've ever seen, just flowing, flowing quafft hair, speaking
Speaker 1: English and Spanish. The guy could play seven instruments. At
Speaker 1: some point where we're cutting coffee, the dude breaks into
Speaker 1: a bachata and then some Coombia and he's just singing
Speaker 1: these Colombian folklore songs while flipping over a bucket and
Speaker 1: playing drums.
Speaker 2: It's just like you, guys, you're in a movie. You're
Speaker 2: in a movie.
Speaker 1: And then he casually drops, yeah, we only got twenty
Speaker 1: seven more of those.
Speaker 2: I was like, twenty seven more?
Speaker 1: What he goes, Oh yeah, part of the mission of
Speaker 1: this form is if we don't do something, there is
Speaker 1: twenty seven harvests left. I was like, of what he
Speaker 1: goes of top soil, Coffee's going to go extinct in
Speaker 1: twenty seven years. Sam talk about the possibility of a
Speaker 1: world without coffee, how we got here, and what people
Speaker 1: are doing to hopefully save the glorious being. All Right,
Speaker 1: I feel like coffee is like the perfect analogy, the
Speaker 1: perfect one to one ratio, or the ways for which
Speaker 1: the global North has treated the global South, specifically black people,
Speaker 1: but by and large just it's the perfect metaphor for
Speaker 1: the raping and pillaging of resources, including people, that has
Speaker 1: happened across the world. So coffee originates solely from Ethiopia, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's already it's black. This is the early fifteen
Speaker 1: hundreds legend is that some sheep farmers saw that their
Speaker 1: sheeps were going crazy, like just mad, mad energy after
Speaker 1: they had ate a particular cherry. Because again, coffee is
Speaker 1: a cherry, which is actually a very delicious cherry, you know,
Speaker 1: and the bean inside is not the bean, it's the
Speaker 1: pit or the seed that's inside of the coffee cherry.
Speaker 1: So yeah, legend is like that's how they figured it out,
Speaker 1: Like they eat these cherries and then they go crazy, like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's going to give us strength to
Speaker 1: you know. So it's originally discovered in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is
Speaker 1: the only natural place that coffee grows, and every other
Speaker 1: coffee bean across the world was propagated.
Speaker 2: From the Ethiopian one.
Speaker 1: It only grows between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic
Speaker 1: of Capricorn along the equator. That is the only place
Speaker 1: that it naturally grows. But because of climate change and
Speaker 1: because of you know, GMO and genetically modifying and all
Speaker 1: these different things that we've done with cross breeding and
Speaker 1: stuff like, you know, we've been able to grow it
Speaker 1: in in regions that aren't naturally the temperature and elevation
Speaker 1: that they naturally grow in. There are many different varietals
Speaker 1: of what we call that's what they're called, varietals of
Speaker 1: this particular cherry or plant. But overall, you can break
Speaker 1: the species of coffee plant into three types. So you
Speaker 1: have typica, which most people don't drink, unless like if
Speaker 1: you have a coffee farm that you actually export from,
Speaker 1: like a lot of times, the typical stuff is just
Speaker 1: the stuff that you keep for yourself, Like most coffee
Speaker 1: farmers have never actually tasted their best coffee because you
Speaker 1: ship that off to the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: make your money. Then there's robustica, which is like what
Speaker 1: most of the like instant coffee is made from. Really
Speaker 1: a lot of the world actually drinks that, but it's
Speaker 1: an acquired taste, like when you go through South America,
Speaker 1: Like I know, when I went to my grandmother in
Speaker 1: lost house, like she you know, she boiled the water
Speaker 1: with the canela the cinnamon sticks and poured instant coffee
Speaker 1: in and like as much of a coffee snob as
Speaker 1: I am, I'm like, that's the best.
Speaker 2: That's one of the best cups of coffee I ever
Speaker 2: had in my life.
Speaker 1: You know, people always ask me, what's the best cup
Speaker 1: of coffee ever had? And I'm like, honestly, it's the
Speaker 1: one in your hand that's the best cup. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's like a bell curve where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you discover it, then you hit this level of snobty.
Speaker 1: Then you become like a like a new Christian about it,
Speaker 1: and you're just like one of the evangelize and tell everybody,
Speaker 1: and you become just like a theological snob and you're
Speaker 1: just like, uh, are you putting cream like full extraction
Speaker 1: or die death over decaf? Like you become that dude,
Speaker 1: and then you just come over the other end of
Speaker 1: that hump and you're just like, dude, it's just coffee, man.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that's Robusticut, which, like I said, most
Speaker 1: of the world actually drinks that. And then the specialty level,
Speaker 1: the one that most of us are used to drinking now,
Speaker 1: is called Arabica, and it's kind of like it's the
Speaker 1: top tier based on whatever subjective scale we use to
Speaker 1: say what.
Speaker 2: Is the best coffee.
Speaker 1: But the fertile band, as what we call it around
Speaker 1: the coffee industry, is this span that you know, kind
Speaker 1: of belts around the equator. So that's why in Central
Speaker 1: and South America, in certain parts of Africa and in Asia,
Speaker 1: coffee can naturally be grown, it takes a particular elevation, right,
Speaker 1: And you can even follow the Transatlantic slave trade. You
Speaker 1: could follow the transit Lantic slave trade by following the
Speaker 1: distribution of coffee. How coffee got to the America's transatlantic
Speaker 1: slave trade. Anyway, there used to be this beef between
Speaker 1: Ethiopia and Yemen as to like who made coffee first,
Speaker 1: because without getting too much into nerdery, I want to
Speaker 1: stay in the narrative here, but coffee first from Ethiopia
Speaker 1: went to Yemen. And the argument with the yemen ease
Speaker 1: is that they were the ones that grounded it and
Speaker 1: made it into a hot drink.
Speaker 2: So that's their argument that the Ethiopians didn't do that first.
Speaker 2: But anybody that really knows it's it's like, dude, it
Speaker 2: originates in Africa.
Speaker 1: I'd be willing to bet too that if you kind
Speaker 1: of have developed somewhat of a palette for like a
Speaker 1: good clean cup of coffee, you would probably feel like
Speaker 1: Ethiopian beans are the best. And mostly it's just because like, well,
Speaker 1: that's where it's from, and they have like at least
Speaker 1: one hundred year head start in cultivating how to make
Speaker 1: a bomb. Being as a fun aside, if you get
Speaker 1: your hand on a Yemense bean, it's a flavor profile
Speaker 1: you've probably never had in your life. That's why if
Speaker 1: you ever go to a place and they have like
Speaker 1: a Yemen thesee geisha, it costs so much because Yemen
Speaker 1: has been with the Huthis and such like that have
Speaker 1: been locked into this civil war funded by America, Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: and Iran. You know, let's tie it all together, guys,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. It's a metaphor for everything. Why
Speaker 1: coffee can't get exported out of Yemen is because of
Speaker 1: this civil war. It cost so much to get coffee
Speaker 1: out of Yemen because of these you know, wars funded
Speaker 1: by Western countries.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So from Yemen it got to Turkey.
Speaker 1: You know, this is around the time of like when
Speaker 1: the Islamic world was really the superpower of the planet.
Speaker 1: You know, with people like a Voez you could do
Speaker 1: your little history on that and just all of the
Speaker 1: most beautiful libraries, science, history, algebra, philosophy was all coming
Speaker 1: from the Muslim world. And it was through the Muslim
Speaker 1: world that coffee got to Europe. So at first Europe
Speaker 1: wouldn't drink coffee because they thought it was Muslim. That's
Speaker 1: what the dirty little brown folks is doing, right until
Speaker 1: it got to Belgium, which is one of the funnest
Speaker 1: stories to me again as coffee remaining this metaphor for
Speaker 1: the suffering of people of color everywhere.
Speaker 2: So anyway, remember Europe.
Speaker 1: Is a place for tea, but you know they got
Speaker 1: they tea from India. Anyway, So one of the archbishops
Speaker 1: in Belgium was presented this coffee thing, and because it
Speaker 1: was brought to Europe by the Muslims, the people they
Speaker 1: had thought they couldn't drink it. So this bishop was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me try it. So I don't
Speaker 1: think this might be folklore. But he drinks this coffee
Speaker 1: and he said, now I'm not gonna quote him direct,
Speaker 1: this is the part that I think is folks, this happened,
Speaker 1: but this is the part that says folklore. He was like, Uh,
Speaker 1: if this is evil, let's baptize it because we can.
Speaker 2: Make it for good. He was like, this is too
Speaker 2: delicious to let go watching the devil get all the
Speaker 2: good drinks.
Speaker 1: Yo, I'm said, I'm trying to drink good too, we
Speaker 1: could drink unto the Lord, all things was made for
Speaker 1: his glory, including this coffee.
Speaker 2: There used to be this.
Speaker 1: Argument over which one was better for you, coffee your tea.
Speaker 1: They even did this test with these prisoners where they
Speaker 1: gave one of them all coffee, the other one all
Speaker 1: tea to see who would live longer. And of course,
Speaker 1: since that is like the least scientific thing you could
Speaker 1: do possible, you know, even if the guy that coffee
Speaker 1: live longer, it don't matter because it's not real science. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I personally am very thankful that coffee got to Europe
Speaker 1: because again something that was discovered and came from Black
Speaker 1: people for which we're willing to share freely, like our music,
Speaker 1: like our slang, like our style address.
Speaker 2: You're welcome, you know what I'm saying, but don't act
Speaker 2: like this your house.
Speaker 1: You could put your flavor on it and we could
Speaker 1: all enjoy. Because it was the Scandinavian countries that figured
Speaker 1: out light roasting and a lot of the nerdery for
Speaker 1: like the third wave specialty coffee that that you see
Speaker 1: now that you're right, that's from Europe. Italy did not
Speaker 1: discover coffee Italy did espresso. I'm thankful for that, but
Speaker 1: they were only able to do espresso because of the
Speaker 1: labor of people of color in the global South. You're
Speaker 1: follow my metaphor here. Coffee got to the Americas via
Speaker 1: the slave trade. But if you can just look at
Speaker 1: a map, the jungles in Angola and the jungles of
Speaker 1: Brazil are the same jungle. There's just the ocean in
Speaker 1: between it. So of course when the Africans got there,
Speaker 1: they would recognize the soil and be able to grow
Speaker 1: the same things.
Speaker 2: Are y'all following me?
Speaker 1: We're talking about an industry that makes four hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty billion dollars globally every year and less than one
Speaker 1: percent goes back to Africa. Less than one percent actually
Speaker 1: goes to those that actually grow the product.
Speaker 2: You are you following me on this metaphor?
Speaker 1: Coffee has its own stock market because it's a commodity.
Speaker 1: It's called the c market like it fluctuates like that,
Speaker 1: you know when you look on a bag and it
Speaker 1: says fair trade and direct trade.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you what that means.
Speaker 1: The price per pound for coffee per pealate is set
Speaker 1: at what they call a fair trade price. So there's
Speaker 1: a coffee commission that sets what is a fair amount
Speaker 1: for that coffee. So you're supposed to be it's like
Speaker 1: a fair market value for a house. You know who
Speaker 1: sets that? Germany. Here's the problem with that. Germany can't
Speaker 1: grow coffee. How are y'all setting up for a farm
Speaker 1: to be considered organic or meeting specialty?
Speaker 2: Called somebody a farmer in Kenya? Oh they die.
Speaker 1: Gotta fly somebody from Germany down today farm for them
Speaker 1: to test they soil, to tell them that they soil
Speaker 1: is healthy enough to.
Speaker 2: Tell these people from Germany it can't grow coffee.
Speaker 1: I this was a So that's fair trade is if
Speaker 1: Germany says that this price is right.
Speaker 2: Direct trade is.
Speaker 1: When me, the American buyer, goes to the farmer themselves,
Speaker 1: and I ask the farmer how much is it?
Speaker 2: I direct traded with them.
Speaker 1: The farmer tells us, Now, why I partnered with Onyx
Speaker 1: and all the other people that you see me partnering with.
Speaker 2: First of all is because.
Speaker 1: Whatever that price is, what Onyx does is they'll pay
Speaker 1: thirty percent more. So that's to guarantee not only is
Speaker 1: this a price that the farmer said, we're gonna pay
Speaker 1: you even more than that. There's an understanding of value
Speaker 1: in the fact that we don't have an industry without
Speaker 1: you and sometimes work at this other crew crawled beckx
Speaker 1: three sixty, which I'm gonna talk about a little later
Speaker 1: at the end of this, I'm.
Speaker 2: Saying, these are ways for you to be able to say,
Speaker 2: because everyone should be able to drink coffee.
Speaker 1: These are ways for which you could say, I am
Speaker 1: not being a part of the problem.
Speaker 2: In these ways, I could be part of the solution.
Speaker 1: But yes, a billion dollar industry created on the backs
Speaker 1: of brown folk, controlled by white folks.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, it's a metaphor, billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you walked into a coffee shop
Speaker 1: and thought, Wow, this is something invented, harvested, and nurtured
Speaker 1: by people of color.
Speaker 2: No, you don't think that. People think it aly it's
Speaker 2: such a metaphor.
Speaker 1: And now, because of harsh conditions, corrosive top soil, and
Speaker 1: abusive practices, we only got twenty seven harvests left. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get to the science and things we can do.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to some sort of ad break, Right,
Speaker 1: how do y'all do them?
Speaker 2: At?
Speaker 1: It could have in here supposed to do some sort
Speaker 1: of like speaking of situation, I don't know. So I
Speaker 1: think the best way to get into the science.
Speaker 2: Of it all is to.
Speaker 1: Maybe think about it through just the supply chain period.
Speaker 1: For centuries, the coffee plant or even farm have been
Speaker 1: just local indigenous rainforest living families. It's your grandma, and
Speaker 1: I know this from my own experience. This is like
Speaker 1: your grandparents' house. Like you inherit this farm, you know,
Speaker 1: or you inherit this plot of land, and you got
Speaker 1: a couple of coffee plants in the back. Now, us
Speaker 1: being you know, in a neoliberal, globally connected, late stage
Speaker 1: capitalistic society, how do you get that commodity if we're
Speaker 1: not growing them in the heartland of them America. Well,
Speaker 1: because we can't, Number one, we have to create a
Speaker 1: supply chain. And the supply chain is just as industrial
Speaker 1: as every other thing is. So from the origin, you
Speaker 1: have a green buyer, and the green buyer is essentially
Speaker 1: the middle person. So that person has all the relationships
Speaker 1: with the farms.
Speaker 2: So they create these relationship with these farms.
Speaker 1: Usually depending on your relationship with that green buyers, you
Speaker 1: take orders from them. That sometimes depending on how big
Speaker 1: or small that green buyer is. Some of those are
Speaker 1: like multi state, multi country, like big old corporations that
Speaker 1: you know, go across the world and they swoop up
Speaker 1: in a Walmart of it all and like just like
Speaker 1: buy up all these small farms. Now some of these places,
Speaker 1: some of these green buyers own the farms because they've
Speaker 1: bought them from the indigenous populations. And others are like, no,
Speaker 1: we just have relationships and we pay. I got to
Speaker 1: explained before fair market value, fair trade. And then I
Speaker 1: on the other end, like let's just say, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I will use my own company terraform. This isn't the
Speaker 1: process I use, but this is just the supply chain.
Speaker 1: So I would approach that green buyer. I go to
Speaker 1: their website and say, hey, I want to roast a
Speaker 1: Kenyon heirloom. That would be the varietal, like I want
Speaker 1: to that's a type of being. I want a Kenyon airloom.
Speaker 1: And I go, oh, dope, they got it at I'm
Speaker 1: making up this number eighteen cents a pound.
Speaker 2: It's not like that. It's much more, but okay, dope.
Speaker 2: So they get the order.
Speaker 1: On the other end, they see what they got in
Speaker 1: stock or they got to go to origin, right, So
Speaker 1: they go to origin, they get the thing, and then
Speaker 1: some countries make you buy an entire shipping container because
Speaker 1: it's just not worth it. If you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica, you're a farmer in Costa Rica. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make any financial sense to try to ship out
Speaker 1: just like one burlap bag. Like the cost is too high.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yo, you got to buy a palette
Speaker 1: or not a palate, you got to buy a shipping container.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So what most small like micro roasters do is they
Speaker 1: buddy up with other people that are like, yo, let's
Speaker 1: all do this. Will kind of go in on this
Speaker 1: shipping container. So you have the farmer, you have the
Speaker 1: green buyer, and then the green buyer makes the deal
Speaker 1: with the shipment team. The shipping container gets filled, then
Speaker 1: you got to pay the nation's tariff. So then that's
Speaker 1: where the country comes in. Now, why some coffees cost
Speaker 1: more than others, some of it has to do with
Speaker 1: the tariffs. It's like Ethiopia charges some like fifty nine
Speaker 1: percent tariff as they should because they tired of being
Speaker 1: raped by white people, just like everybody else is from there.
Speaker 1: Once it hits Land US as the roasters, we would
Speaker 1: go divvy up the funds we've already paid them, and
Speaker 1: then you go to your roasting facility. Now, if you
Speaker 1: a big boy, you got your own roasting facility. But
Speaker 1: most of the time, you know, a person may have
Speaker 1: one machine in the back of their coffee shop, or
Speaker 1: if they don't even have that, then they share a
Speaker 1: facility where they roast a bunch of different roasters roasted
Speaker 1: that one place. Once it's roasts getting in a bag
Speaker 1: and into your cup. Now, this is the like specialty
Speaker 1: coffee way. Now, if we talk at Startarbucks, Starbucks walks
Speaker 1: over there and they say, hey, let me buy this city,
Speaker 1: and they got their own shipping people in their own situation,
Speaker 1: and then they roast in like something the size of
Speaker 1: a mountain. Now, what I'm talking about is third wave coffee.
Speaker 1: What that means is there is a lot of nerdy stuff.
Speaker 1: That means it's first wave coffee. Is like the coffee
Speaker 1: that your grandpa drank in World War Two. It's just
Speaker 1: you know mud, you know what I'm saying. Even the
Speaker 1: term Americano was because when the American Gis were in
Speaker 1: Europe and they wanted a cup of coffee because in
Speaker 1: Europe they drank espresso. The Americans was like, this is disgusting,
Speaker 1: what is this? So they just add water to it.
Speaker 1: So they called that an Americano because that's the type
Speaker 1: the Americans like anyway. So that's first wave coffee. Second
Speaker 1: wave coffee is like Starbucks or the coffee spots that
Speaker 1: like have the ton of syrups in the back and
Speaker 1: the name of their shop is probably some sort of
Speaker 1: pun like in Friends, the Central Perk, Java Chip. Those
Speaker 1: are the ones that, like the big suburb in churches
Speaker 1: would have their own coffee shops, like corn and thea
Speaker 1: House Hebrews, just some sort of corny that's second where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, that's your triple Machia too, you
Speaker 1: know it's double pump all of the sweet fruitfru stuff.
Speaker 2: That's second wave.
Speaker 1: And then third wave is what we call specialty coffee,
Speaker 1: and that's where the big bucks come in because you
Speaker 1: can sell them at a higher premium. Now, for it
Speaker 1: to be considered specialty coffee on a scale of one
Speaker 1: nine hundred, you have.
Speaker 2: To grade that bean at an eighty or above.
Speaker 1: Now, coffees that are graded in the nineties unless you've
Speaker 1: been to Dubai or Qatar, you've never drank it. Those
Speaker 1: go there because American we can't afford it, so the
Speaker 1: farmer don't even show it to it. But the most
Speaker 1: of the like if you go to like a good
Speaker 1: coffee shop, you're drinking about an eighty three to a
Speaker 1: eighty five. But it's not like their whole crop is that.
Speaker 1: Most farmers are just small plots. So what do you
Speaker 1: do with the rest of it, well, the rest of it,
Speaker 1: which is the most of your harvest to make the
Speaker 1: numbers round, And let's just say you have one hundred
Speaker 1: coffee trees, maybe ten of them produced an eighty five, right,
Speaker 1: so that's ten percent.
Speaker 2: So you've spent all year.
Speaker 1: Fighting drought, fighting climate change, fighting excessive heat, fighting all
Speaker 1: that only for of your whole plantation, only to get
Speaker 1: ten percent of it to be actually be available to
Speaker 1: sell the rest of it. It just goes to the stock
Speaker 1: market and you just hope and pray that you're able
Speaker 1: to sell it. But you have that three weeks to
Speaker 1: try to make your year's salary. So what happens is,
Speaker 1: since you can only sell ten percent, only ten percent
Speaker 1: of it is even available to sell. Right, I'm talking
Speaker 1: specialty cofee is where we are now. If in fact,
Speaker 1: somebody comes in here and pays it, and then they
Speaker 1: only pay fair trade rather than direct trade price, you're
Speaker 1: getting a price set by Germany is not even enough
Speaker 1: to pay the little kids that just miss school to
Speaker 1: be able to pick your farm, because that's who actually
Speaker 1: picks the cherries. This is daywork, just kids from the
Speaker 1: farming community that come in there. They try to make
Speaker 1: a day's wage to pick their things. What happens is
Speaker 1: to be able to survive this how it is in Honduras.
Speaker 1: To be able to survive, you go get a loan
Speaker 1: from the government to be able to make your money
Speaker 1: for the year and then hopefully off that harvest you
Speaker 1: can pay that loan back and make enough for the
Speaker 1: next year so you don't have to get a loan.
Speaker 1: The problem is they're charging these farmers thirty percent interests,
Speaker 1: so they're locked into this situation that says I can't
Speaker 1: even afford to even keep my family plot because I'm
Speaker 1: just staying in debt. So then what do you do,
Speaker 1: governor a dumb They'll re up your loan. So they're like,
Speaker 1: oh cool, no problem, We'll just we'll re up your loan.
Speaker 1: These So these farmers end up being hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars in debt and it's adding every year because
Speaker 1: they can never catch up, which is bonkers. Considering how
Speaker 1: much coffee we drink across the world, one would think
Speaker 1: they would be fine. So I mean, what's your option.
Speaker 1: You sell the land or remove the coffee, just yo,
Speaker 1: get some cows, beef, right d forest? I mean there's
Speaker 1: money to make there, or you sell it to a
Speaker 1: big conglomerate. And what does the big conglomerate do burn
Speaker 1: down all of the forests and create a monoculture, right,
Speaker 1: and a monoculture are like what you would pitch what
Speaker 1: we do in America for corn or all through the
Speaker 1: Amazon rainforest. And if you know, obviously you've seen a
Speaker 1: force monoculture. Ain't how earth works. Right, The diversity of
Speaker 1: plants becomes its own fertilizer. But if you don't have that,
Speaker 1: if you don't have chickens that survive off the avocados,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm pulling things out of nowhere. But
Speaker 1: like the point I'm trying to make is when you
Speaker 1: create a monoculture, you have to also create a way
Speaker 1: to sustain that, and the only way to sustain it
Speaker 1: is destructive. One cup of coffee in this way releases
Speaker 1: was it eighty grams of co two? I mean it's
Speaker 1: like driving half a mile, Like your cup of coffee
Speaker 1: is a half a mile full of poison if done
Speaker 1: the way that most of the bigger names in the
Speaker 1: industry do it, which is now rising our carbon right.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to do that, then that means
Speaker 1: you need a gang of fertilizer, right, which is bad
Speaker 1: for the soil. And then you also need to use
Speaker 1: way more water than naturally required. Matter of fact, according
Speaker 1: to the UN, one cup of coffee uses one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty liters of water. If you're doing this like
Speaker 1: monoculture style, right, that looks like farming the way we
Speaker 1: do it here, one cup of coffee one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty liters of water, which is a bathtub.
Speaker 2: That's like a bathtub full.
Speaker 1: Of water to create this one cup, so obviously multiply
Speaker 1: that times a billion. Not only is this practice like
Speaker 1: everything else in this neo capitalistic world, the demand was
Speaker 1: so big and the desire to get the most amount
Speaker 1: of money with the least amount of price is destroying
Speaker 1: the very thing that makes the product possible. Now, the
Speaker 1: rest of the world isn't stupid. We understand that this
Speaker 1: process is not right. We're killing the soil, we're killing
Speaker 1: the land. Everybody knows that. So the EU passed this
Speaker 1: law that says, if you're going to import any sort
Speaker 1: of commodity, including coffee, you have to prove that it
Speaker 1: didn't come from deforestation, right, So this is them trying
Speaker 1: to do their best. The only problem is, if I'm
Speaker 1: an indigenous farmer on a small plot, I don't even
Speaker 1: have access to deforestation. But the only way for me
Speaker 1: to prove that is, like I said before, with the
Speaker 1: fair trade, I have to fly somebody down.
Speaker 2: It's on my own dime.
Speaker 1: It's because the EU doesn't understand regenitive practices because they
Speaker 1: don't know any indigenous people, right, So this is now
Speaker 1: adding a double burden to the farmers that are actually
Speaker 1: doing it right, who can't possibly do the volume of
Speaker 1: the people that are doing it wrong. So the first
Speaker 1: problem is like the system is not even financially sustainable,
Speaker 1: Like i'n't even got to the specifics of the deforestation
Speaker 1: and all those things that have caused this problem. Now
Speaker 1: According to Bloomberg's twenty twenty two study of tropical cash crops,
Speaker 1: included arabica as well as avocado and cashew, are probably
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable to climate change because the regions that
Speaker 1: are suitable for this production continue to shrink because of
Speaker 1: why heat. It's too hot, which means that Arabica won't
Speaker 1: be able to grow. So we'll probably have to start
Speaker 1: drinking robustica. Right. It's estimated that in thirty years from now,
Speaker 1: basically fifty percent of lands that can grow coffee will
Speaker 1: not be able to grow coffee anymore if we don't
Speaker 1: do anything fifty percent. You think theyn't make it fun
Speaker 1: of you for your twelve dollar cup of coffee?
Speaker 2: Is crazy? Now listen.
Speaker 1: Nestley reports that there are more than six thousand cups
Speaker 1: of nest Cafe coffee drink every second. Are y'all following
Speaker 1: me every second? That's how much coffee we drink. Now,
Speaker 1: granted that coffee is not a rabica, it's robustica. Robustica
Speaker 1: is what really most of the rest of the world drinks.
Speaker 1: It's us again, being a part of the northern hemisphere,
Speaker 1: being a part of the global north that like the
Speaker 1: Pristine kind of good, shiny type. Right. The problem is
Speaker 1: our insatiable desire to consume things as fast as we can.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to blame I'm not blaming the
Speaker 1: victim here. I'm just saying it's impossible to do the
Speaker 1: volume is the argument.
Speaker 2: How do you do this volume that we all.
Speaker 1: Want in this global supply chain and the way for
Speaker 1: which we've set this up. How do you do this
Speaker 1: volume and still keep the price where the price is?
Speaker 1: And you know what the solution has always been, You
Speaker 1: just rip off the farmer and destroy the earth. So
Speaker 1: deforestation giving us too much carbon, which has made the
Speaker 1: weather erratic, which means that some years the crop is
Speaker 1: flooded and it doesn't grow right because it's too much rain.
Speaker 1: Other years it's complete drought and you have to dig
Speaker 1: even further into the ground to try to get the
Speaker 1: amount of water that had we not raised the temperature
Speaker 1: one point five degrees celsius, had we done some changes,
Speaker 1: the earth would be the same. So Brazil is the
Speaker 1: biggest coffee producer in the world, right and this year
Speaker 1: this year was the worst drought they've had in seven decades,
Speaker 1: with above average temperatures and one of the biggest producers
Speaker 1: out there. Associated Press interviewed him Silvio Almeda and that
Speaker 1: fool's coffee plantation.
Speaker 2: The AP just reported this.
Speaker 1: Was expected to harvest one hundred and twenty sacks of
Speaker 1: coffee beans, but they only got one hundred and then
Speaker 1: their quota, saying, given the conditions here in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: crop is already affected, he told Associated Press, pointing out
Speaker 1: that part of his plantation where flower buds have already
Speaker 1: died before blooming. I won't say it's doomed, because God
Speaker 1: can do anything, but based on the situation, it's already compromised.
Speaker 1: What these people were saying is like next year's crops
Speaker 1: already dead. This where we are, y'all. Are y'all hearing
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. He's saying, we ain't gonna have no
Speaker 1: coffee next year. It's already dead.
Speaker 2: Y'all.
Speaker 1: Remember when Robert read off his little book, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole started off, the whole, it could happen here
Speaker 1: thing and in one of them places. After the Civil
Speaker 1: War and went down, coffee was something you had to
Speaker 1: smuggle into the country like a drug. This is what
Speaker 1: he talking about that ain't gonna be no coffee, y'all.
Speaker 1: I was at an event two years ago. It's called
Speaker 1: the Color of Coffee Collective. It was for the black
Speaker 1: people in the coffee industry. And of course this is
Speaker 1: stretch to the whole diaspora. So you know, Central and
Speaker 1: South American just ultimately people of color in the coffee
Speaker 1: industry connect, you know, plot strategize, have some transparency in
Speaker 1: our supply chains. A lot of us in America in
Speaker 1: the West scream you know, pro black, pro black, We
Speaker 1: for the culture, we for the people, and like to
Speaker 1: put you know, the faces of our farmers on our
Speaker 1: bags in you know, part of the marketing. But most
Speaker 1: people who are in the coffee just have never gone
Speaker 1: into source, so you don't know.
Speaker 2: It'sally you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You don't know Tabby who like is actually like growing
Speaker 1: your coffee.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's just a name on a spreadsheet brought into you
Speaker 1: from an importer. Right anyway, So there was a panel
Speaker 1: discussion about about climate change and about ways for which
Speaker 1: we can do better. So they had a bunch of farmers.
Speaker 1: I remember it was a farmer from Kenya who.
Speaker 3: Gave us these just heaters just these heat rocks, these
Speaker 3: bars during this panel discussion, and after I show these bars,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go for a break, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you about people that are doing things better in
Speaker 3: ways for which we can maybe save our soil so
Speaker 3: that your kids can possibly enjoy coffee.
Speaker 1: Also, so someone asked, I believe it was a roaster
Speaker 1: from Puerto Rico, was like, hey, so, what are some
Speaker 1: of the ways that you're adapting and hoping to mitigate
Speaker 1: climate change? Like how are y'all dealing with climate change?
Speaker 1: So he was asking this Kenyan farmer, like what's he
Speaker 1: doing for climate change? And his answer was, I mean,
Speaker 1: you tell me we're at source. He's like, we're a
Speaker 1: third world country. We didn't cause climate change.
Speaker 2: You did. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: He's like, we're the ones suffering, and not only are
Speaker 1: we suffering from the effects of climate change in our
Speaker 1: own life, because of your greediness, you created the climate
Speaker 1: change that is causing the problems in the very crop
Speaker 1: that you're trying to get from us. So because of
Speaker 1: your problems, this is why he's explaining it. I now
Speaker 1: can't grow something that we've grown for hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of years. And you asking me what I'm doing for
Speaker 1: about it? No, what are you doing about it?
Speaker 2: Ouch?
Speaker 1: So here's some things that are being done next.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1: The wildest thing about how complicated any of these solutions are,
Speaker 1: which are you going to take many, many decades to
Speaker 1: actually see the difference in the actual top soil. The
Speaker 1: most bonkers part is the fact that like the solutions
Speaker 1: by and large are kind of the same across any
Speaker 1: world problem. It's mutual aid, it's collective, communal, collaborative work
Speaker 1: among every part of the supply chain. It's so in
Speaker 1: some senses it's so beautiful that like, really the solution
Speaker 1: is us. I say that to not grossly oversimplify, but
Speaker 1: I say that to say that there's hope. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to introduce you to a couple programs and a
Speaker 1: couple of farms and sort of some things to look
Speaker 1: for in your coffee purchasing, because you guys want to
Speaker 1: see the world be better. Also, first thing is farms
Speaker 1: going back to indigenous practices. Now, two I know personally,
Speaker 1: and one I'm going to tell you about from Ecuador.
Speaker 1: This there's a whole documentary on it. If you look
Speaker 1: up on YouTube. It's called How Climate Change Threatened Coffee
Speaker 1: Production by DW Documentaries, And I mean right like pretty
Speaker 1: on the nose. So a coffee collective in Ecuador called
Speaker 1: Vila Cory. It's their Kichua language. It means green gold
Speaker 1: in their indigenous language. And they're doing something very similar
Speaker 1: to my friends in Hondoras called Kadacha Coffee. Now, what
Speaker 1: they are are cooperatives on the business side.
Speaker 2: So I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get to the business cooperative side after
Speaker 1: I explain to you the indigenous practices, even though all
Speaker 1: of these things are related. So what they do is
Speaker 1: something that's so obvious, which is like, you got to
Speaker 1: stop doing monocultures. First of all, it makes sense financially
Speaker 1: because now you're diversifying your commodities.
Speaker 2: So you have your coffee plants.
Speaker 1: If you see a coffee plant, coffee plants are pretty short,
Speaker 1: like they don't grow taller than six foot normally. So
Speaker 1: since the climate is so hot, what is the natural
Speaker 1: way to shade them? Well, the natural way to shavee
Speaker 1: them is trees. So if you plant them among trees,
Speaker 1: the types of trees that first of all naturally fertilize
Speaker 1: the soil. Number two, they produce fruit. Number three, they
Speaker 1: produce raw materials. Right, So these people have planted trees
Speaker 1: that are indigenous to the area. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times in coffee places like there are certain species of
Speaker 1: beans that really only grow in particular regions. But the
Speaker 1: only reason they grow in those particular regions is because
Speaker 1: of the mineral the way that the minerals are in
Speaker 1: the ground in that area. So if you can mimic
Speaker 1: those minerals, if you bring those minerals to this place,
Speaker 1: you could grow that bean. So technically, and if I
Speaker 1: have the my minerals, I can be in Costa Rica
Speaker 1: and grow a Rwandan coffee because it's just the Rwandan
Speaker 1: soil in Costa Rica. And you could still argue that
Speaker 1: it is this is some of the future of like
Speaker 1: if it do ever.
Speaker 2: Get so bad.
Speaker 1: Right when they grow in coffee in Sacramento, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying in Vancouver in some sort of building,
Speaker 1: it's because we just gathered the minerals that we've destroyed
Speaker 1: and put.
Speaker 2: Them in a laboratory. That's not good for the earth.
Speaker 1: That's that's an invasive not only invasive pieces, an invasive mineral.
Speaker 1: So you're completely changing the biosphere of that land just
Speaker 1: to grow that one crop.
Speaker 2: That's absurd. The land already does what it needs to do.
Speaker 1: So what these guys do in Ecuador is the same
Speaker 1: thing they do in Colombia in Zipa Coln that was
Speaker 1: the name of the city that they were in. Also,
Speaker 1: what's happening on doors is like you just let the
Speaker 1: land do what it does. What I learned on one
Speaker 1: of these farms is like the quickest way to know
Speaker 1: a place is not organic is there's no insects. Like,
Speaker 1: if there's no ants, that means the ground's poisonous. Right.
Speaker 1: The ants come out, they eat whatever waste is on
Speaker 1: the ground, whatever like natural waste is on the ground.
Speaker 1: They come back in, they go back into the soil.
Speaker 1: They're irrigating them soils themselves. You don't need lawnmowers if
Speaker 1: you have chickens, right, the chickens eat the thing. The
Speaker 1: shade of the trees keeps the temperature down. It produces
Speaker 1: fruits like avocado, papaya, Like I said before, mongos, plantains.
Speaker 1: These trees that naturally grow in this area keep the
Speaker 1: soil rich and the coffee strong. So you're keeping the
Speaker 1: temperature down, the land does what it absolutely does. So
Speaker 1: now you don't need pesticides. You also need less water
Speaker 1: because when the temperature being shaded and brought down, the
Speaker 1: water is not evaporating as fast. Whoa, and then the
Speaker 1: quality of the bean is higher. Now here's where the
Speaker 1: indigenous practices move from just the ground to also the community.
Speaker 1: Rather than having one hundred small farms compete against each other,
Speaker 1: they just work as a community. So rather than waiting
Speaker 1: for Johnny European to come down and say buy my beans,
Speaker 1: no by hes by my means, they're like.
Speaker 2: No, by our beans.
Speaker 1: They pull all the beans together, bring all of their
Speaker 1: crops together, and they say, yeah, maybe I can't produce
Speaker 1: whatever kilos that this person needs by themselves, but we
Speaker 1: can produce that. So that way, if there's a farm
Speaker 1: over here that's got a smaller crop because maybe you know,
Speaker 1: mother in law got sick so they weren't able to
Speaker 1: work as hard as they can for those beans, or
Speaker 1: maybe collectively again, heat dome was too high, there was
Speaker 1: too much of a drought. We really couldn't grow that
Speaker 1: much on our own. Together though we could meet this order.
Speaker 2: You follow me.
Speaker 1: And when that happens because again, who usually picks the
Speaker 1: beans are the community's kids. Now, if we can collectively
Speaker 1: fill the order right after we cup and we say
Speaker 1: collectively our.
Speaker 2: Coffees are good enough.
Speaker 1: And there's different types of species, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like this is a I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too much into nerdery, but each bean in each
Speaker 1: tree is a particular species. Maybe when we cup, we say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: this is the same thing that happened on Doris. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we sit around and we're tasting, basically doing
Speaker 1: a taste test these different batches of beans. I don't
Speaker 1: know which farm they came from. I know they're all
Speaker 1: a part of this collective. But if I say, yo,
Speaker 1: I want these, then when we pay, since it's not
Speaker 1: a middleman, it's a community.
Speaker 2: Now, the main load.
Speaker 1: Goes to the particular farm that it was ordered from,
Speaker 1: but the rest of it goes and it's spread across
Speaker 1: the entire community following me. Okay, now back to the
Speaker 1: soil situation. I feel like I'm all over the place,
Speaker 1: but you have to understand because the problem's all over
Speaker 1: the place, and a lot of these places are connected.
Speaker 2: So in Colombia, they kind of did the same thing.
Speaker 1: So La Pammel tu Acon is the place that everybody
Speaker 1: comes into. And since every individual farmer does not have
Speaker 1: connections across the world with bringing buyers in and there's
Speaker 1: no promise that they won't be taken advantage of and
Speaker 1: ain't gonna be able to sell but maybe five ten
Speaker 1: percent of the crop. The rest of it either goes
Speaker 1: to the trash or goes to the sea market. It's
Speaker 1: just the open stock market. You just hope somebody buys
Speaker 1: your beans. It's just no way to live. As I
Speaker 1: explained before, what Lapama ends up doing is this is
Speaker 1: they say, okay, well check this out.
Speaker 2: We'll buy your coffee, all of it.
Speaker 1: And not only will we buy your coffee because we
Speaker 1: know you need soil, we're gonna set you up with
Speaker 1: a business so that not only can you sell your
Speaker 1: coffee to us, you can also sell your fertilizer to us.
Speaker 1: And the fertilizer that you're creating, we're going to build
Speaker 1: that business for you. And how they do this is
Speaker 1: this thing called biochar. Now it makes so much sense.
Speaker 1: If you have donkeys and other places at pigs and
Speaker 1: other animals that have waste, you can make fertiliz.
Speaker 2: Duh, Right, So what they do is.
Speaker 1: This, They have these composts, these big old flat things
Speaker 1: that they build in front of you.
Speaker 2: They basically they build it for you.
Speaker 1: They went to all the local farms and they were like,
Speaker 1: we'll build this for you, right, and then we'll buy
Speaker 1: the product from you. So they build these flatbed things
Speaker 1: where you could take all the stuff that you would
Speaker 1: compost anyway and put it in this flatbed, cover it,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to give you this stuff called biochar,
Speaker 1: which is some of the dopest like Mother Nature showing off.
Speaker 1: So basically it's made from like you heat wood right
Speaker 1: at the highest of temperature with no oxygen, so once
Speaker 1: it becomes carbon, it doesn't turn to ash, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's almost like you know when you
Speaker 1: like after you light a fire when you hold the
Speaker 1: charred pieces, like how it crumbles away this one because
Speaker 1: you heat it at the highest of temperature without letting
Speaker 1: oxygen in, so like it doesn't become like a like
Speaker 1: a red fire.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And then you mix that into your compost and it
Speaker 1: just makes this pristine soil. So now guess what these
Speaker 1: farmers don't have to pay for soil. They don't have
Speaker 1: to pay for nutrient wrench soil. Matter of fact, they
Speaker 1: can sell off the excess. Their crop's already been sold.
Speaker 1: So you don't have to go get a loan from
Speaker 1: the state. You would need that loan to be able
Speaker 1: to set up your like your washing stations. Like how
Speaker 1: you get the coffee from a cherry to the roast
Speaker 1: or to the green bean is like, it's a long process.
Speaker 1: It could be very expensive. It's all good. The hommies
Speaker 1: down Narrow do that for you. We'll put you in
Speaker 1: this system, and we're gonna pay you even if your
Speaker 1: particular crop, your particular bean isn't sold, because we'll sell
Speaker 1: it somehow, Like if it doesn't sell on the high
Speaker 1: end eighty percent Arabica specialty coffee thing, we'll figure out
Speaker 1: a way to sell it. You're still getting paid anyway.
Speaker 1: We're buying your whole crop rather than the ten percent
Speaker 1: that would happen. And like I said before, if your
Speaker 1: beans aren't as good as they're supposed to be, these
Speaker 1: programs by one hundred percent from these farmers, So these
Speaker 1: farmers are able to sustain themselves. Right and now, you
Speaker 1: can pass these farms down to your children.
Speaker 2: Right because we're doing this collectively.
Speaker 1: Since we're doing this collectively, especially it's what happens in Honduras,
Speaker 1: a third of the money goes to the community itself.
Speaker 2: I've wrapped at a school that was built.
Speaker 1: By them selling the coffee like this, there's now a
Speaker 1: medical clinic because a lot of times these farms are
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away from the city.
Speaker 2: You have to get airlifted as something's wrong.
Speaker 1: And since these are indigenous communities, they're the most forgotten
Speaker 1: oftentimes in these areas. So purchasing these coffees really at
Speaker 1: a high price, which is what we're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: guarantees that the individual farmer is paid, the community is paid.
Speaker 1: It's done in a way that's tied much more to
Speaker 1: the indigenous practices. And now collectively, because we're buying from
Speaker 1: responsible places that are locally grown. Now we can afford
Speaker 1: to bring the EU people down here to prove that
Speaker 1: this is not a process of deforestation, because they're moving
Speaker 1: collectively for real.
Speaker 2: It's just like fast fashion.
Speaker 1: It's like that T shirt only three dollars because a sweatshop,
Speaker 1: you truly do get what you pay for in a
Speaker 1: lot of way. And finally, I'm gonna tell you where
Speaker 1: tech is actually helping, and it's this program called BEX
Speaker 1: three sixty. They could use a little help on the marketing,
Speaker 1: but it's essentially they're using blockchain to create transparency and
Speaker 1: it's probably the dopest thing I've ever seen. And I
Speaker 1: saw it from wanted a supply chain to the other.
Speaker 1: So in this program, these local farmers right who just
Speaker 1: have these small home plots, who have been running these
Speaker 1: plots for centuries. This they grandfather's land, they you know,
Speaker 1: they grandmama's land that they got it, who don't have
Speaker 1: access to American and worldwide coffee buyers meet up with
Speaker 1: this collective, right the Karacha collective, that's one of them
Speaker 1: that I'm that I'm specifically talking about. And Karacha signed
Speaker 1: up with this thing called bext. And what happens in
Speaker 1: bext is, if you've ever been to developing countries, not
Speaker 1: everybody ain't got a smartphone. So in this thing, once
Speaker 1: the farmer harvest is alls beans, washes them and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I got these many kilos of this type of being,
Speaker 1: click opens his Bext app on his smartphone, takes a
Speaker 1: picture of it and puts the weights and the numbers
Speaker 1: so that we know everybody and everybody in the supply
Speaker 1: chain can see this. There's a QR code even on
Speaker 1: the bag. Once you buy the bag in Sacramento, there's
Speaker 1: a QR code on it, so you could see all this.
Speaker 1: So the kid from the farm snaps the thing. It
Speaker 1: goes to the exporter, which who just lives down the street.
Speaker 1: It's not like some you know, multi conglomerate company from
Speaker 1: the North. No, this lady lives down the street. She's
Speaker 1: born and raised here. She opens it up and she
Speaker 1: says to us, who flew in from America to be like, yo,
Speaker 1: we want to try some coffee. Opens the app and says, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the farmer, this where it is, this, how
Speaker 1: much he wants this, how much he asking for it?
Speaker 1: Here's our price. But I'm looking at the app, that's
Speaker 1: what he's charging. And then i know she's adding a
Speaker 1: third of that price because the other third of what
Speaker 1: she's asking for is literally paying for the hospital that's
Speaker 1: across the street. So it makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I know how much the shipping container costs because I'm
Speaker 1: seeing it.
Speaker 2: Of course I got to pay for shipping. What is
Speaker 2: you talking about?
Speaker 1: So it's all transparent, it all makes sense, and it's
Speaker 1: all regentitive financially in climate wise. Once we buy it,
Speaker 1: I can see if she paid the farmer, because that's
Speaker 1: also in the app. So once the farmer gets his money,
Speaker 1: takes a picture, got the money, screenshot received, and then
Speaker 1: a portion of that money is given in cash so
Speaker 1: that you could pay the kids that picked your farm.
Speaker 2: Click saw that. That's in the app.
Speaker 1: Right as that stuff is shipped across the country or
Speaker 1: across the ocean. You can put in all of the
Speaker 1: roasting notes, which are kind of lame if you're not
Speaker 1: really into stuff like that. And then finally the sealed
Speaker 1: bag that says here's one from Denver, Queen City, a
Speaker 1: collective coffee right that, hey, look, this is a Honduras bean.
Speaker 2: We bought it this price.
Speaker 1: And then when you pay it's called a third cost.
Speaker 1: When you buy the bag, there's an extra dollar added
Speaker 1: to the cost of the bag, and that extra dollar
Speaker 1: does not go to the roaster. It goes back to
Speaker 1: the farmer. You know how I know because there's a
Speaker 1: QR code. You could check it and the farmer can
Speaker 1: confirm if they got they money. It's transparency, it's us
Speaker 1: taking care of us. So obviously, because the world works
Speaker 1: the way it works. If this continues to be financially viable,
Speaker 1: here's some of the things we could do. One is
Speaker 1: we could start drinking more robustica like everybody else, and
Speaker 1: it's actually delicious if you could find a good roaster,
Speaker 1: and Tabi is a great roaster New Yen Supply. She's amazing.
Speaker 1: She does cold brew and like Vietnamese coffee. It's robustica.
Speaker 1: But then there's other spots across the world. It's going
Speaker 1: to cost a little more. But I'm telling you why
Speaker 1: it costs a little more because they come from a
Speaker 1: multicultured land that uses indigenous practices, that has lowered its
Speaker 1: carbon footprint, that is direct traded and has transparency. This
Speaker 1: is not a list of everybody doing this. These are
Speaker 1: the list of people that I know personally and people
Speaker 1: that have researched. So in North Cak and South Cak
Speaker 1: you got Black and White roasters, and you got Bridge
Speaker 1: City Roasters. Denver, there's Queen City Collective up in Sacramento.
Speaker 1: There's Old Soul Coffee, Onyx, Coffee Lab, Coffee Black that's
Speaker 1: there in Memphis. All these people you could order their
Speaker 1: coffees online don Cable Hall in New York. The transparency
Speaker 1: is there and is doing its best to make sure
Speaker 1: that this being stays on this planet. So I'll link
Speaker 1: in the show notes all of the data that I'm
Speaker 1: pulling this from and ways for which you can connect with,
Speaker 1: like very socially responsible and climate responsible coffee roasters, Geez
Speaker 1: only sixteen years old.
Speaker 2: Boy, I tell you that's the first lyric in That's all.
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