How Does Your Coffee Get to Your Cup?

A snap shot view of what happens to coffee after it leaves its origin and is ready for distribution.

by Slow Food USA staffer Julia De Martini Day

Last week I traveled to Newark, New Jersey to participate in the unloading of 20 tons of green coffee beans just off the boat from approximately 600 small farmers in the Mount Elgon highlands region of Uganda. This was the second shipment for Crop to Cup, a small, very young coffee business, and everyone was anxious to see whether the washed Arabica Grade A beans had become moldy or infested with bugs during the month long boat ride and New Jersey customs inspection.
The director of the terminal walked us through the aisles of the humid warehouse, which smelled sweet from the 50-foot columns of jute/burlap sacks lining the wide, dark walkways. The warehouse is certified organic, stores up to 750,000 bags of coffee at a time (each bag weighing over 130lbs), and is 1 of 4 the company operates along the east coast.

As we walked to the container we had to jump to the sides of the aisles a few times to avoid being hit by speeding forklifts transferring coffee. Larry, a worker opening the container, broke the wires holding the metal doors shut, letting bags of coffee spill onto the cement floor. Quickly he and another man began to "palletize" the bags – organize them into small pyramids the forklifts could pick-up, weigh, and put in storage before they are trucked and delivered to NYC roasters and markets.

While the bags were unloaded, the terminal director showed us how to take a sample of the green beans and ensure they are not rotten or damaged. Using a metal tool that looked like a narrow funnel, but that could be inserted into the burlap bag without tearing a hole in the side, he pulled out green beans from an assortment of sacks and put them in a Ziploc bag for us to examine back in the fluorescently lit office.
Looking consistently green, beautiful and healthy (no holes in the beans, not too many brown/black spots or cracks), we moved on to Phase II of the know-how-your-coffee-gets-to-your-cup daylong adventure: Roasting.

With 2 jute bags loaded into the trunk we drove to Raus Coffee, an even younger company than Crop to Cup that currently operates a roaster out of a home basement (shhh). The Raus Coffee roaster takes about 14 minutes to roast 4 pounds of coffee. Using this machine and a small counter top roaster, we roasted the coffee 5 different ways, altering the temperature and timing slightly to get darker or lighter, dryer or oilier, roasts.

The Coffee Cupping and small scale roasting atmosphere is vastly different at first glance than the coffee terminal/storage environment – in one the coffee appears to be a commodity and in the other a precious, specialty item. Instead of throwing bags of coffee around we now delicately measured and weighed green beans out for roasting. In a bright, ventilated room, we sat around a wooden table with small glasses and spit cups in front of us, smelling, tasting, and taking notes on the different roasts. Raus Coffee was experimenting with what worked best, and Crop to Cup was searching for the perfect roast (something they can take to a bigger roaster to be replicated).

That day we didn't completely and directly follow the coffee's path from farmer to co-producer, but we tried to get as close as possible to doing so without traveling to the equator.

To read profiles that the farmers who exported the coffee have written about themselves, click here.

Friday Links

1. A delightful little review of a deep-fried sandwich, notable both for the sandwich, yes (and YUM), but also for the intro paragraph which gets at the great food divide in this country–the growing interest in real, slow food and the consistent, persistent presence of fake, fast food.
2. A new survey shows that "consumers … want their foods to clearly display key information, including country of origin, so they can make more informed buying decisions."
3. The Washington Post covers how these three gals took the road less traveled, a slow bike journey across the country to "chronicle(d) a grass-roots movement seeking to change the way we put food on our table." Speaking of bike rides, check out this post from Grist on Kurt Friese's cross-Iowa ride…
4. Land-grant universities in this country are working towards addressing the world's food security issues. Read about how "land-grant institutions, including Texas A&M, play a vital part in international agriculture through providing developing countries with technical assistance, educational outreach, improved technology and agricultural practices, scientific training and research, and hands-on instruction."

Who Moved My (Fill in the Blank)?

One day one of our staff members brought in a bottle of name brand apple juice she'd been given at a conference that morning. The label read: "these apples are from…." and then listed SIX COUNTRIES. In this tiny bottle.

Sometimes there is a sticker on your food that says where it comes from, and sometimes there is not. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has created a nifty tool for learning about the origins of the produce you'll find in your supermarket. It's a great way to see which things are absolutely never produced here (bananas let's say), and which things the U.S. is a leading producer of (apples!).

Weekend Links

It's hot out there. Should you need to take a break from your gardening, farming, grilling, etc. this weekend, you can sit down at your computer with an ice cold lemonade and and check out the following:

1. Five Great Websites for Farmers, Wannabe Farmers, and Consumers

2. How to navigate the mysterious origins of those nuts you buy at the store.

3. Talk about rose colored glasses: Have you heard about this miracle berry that makes everything taste sweet?

Stay cool….

Sustainability Standards

Alas, we just found this call for applications to serve on the Standards Committee that will finalize a national standard for sustainable agriculture under the auspices of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The deadline is today.

This could be a fascinating process, and it will be very interesting to see the outcome–is "sustainable" something that can be quantified? Will it have the same flaws that many organic farmers feel the codifying of "organic" had?

Let's follow this…

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Check out GOOD magazine for which big conglomerates own which organic food labels.

Notes from our department of incredulity

Note #1.

"Only in America," points out Slow Food USA staffer Cecily, "is the choice between rent and food turned into an advertising gimmick."

And a question: is just one person meant to eat the two breakfast sandwiches AND the four cinnamon buns? Just checking.

Note #2.

On Sunday, as we all know, the largest beef recall in history. And papers around the country now advising consumers to "Eat local meat." Novel! For a nicely-put Q & A with Michael Pollan via Newsweek.com, click here.

As NYC-based site Gothamist puts it, it is all a moo(t) point–much of the meat had already been eaten. The waste (of recalled meat) is staggering, the videos (and the reality they reflect inside slaughterhouses) are upsetting. Incredulity all around.

Weighing in on NAIS

Slow Food Chicago member Anne Marie Klaske of NA-DA FARM (near DeKalb, IL) wrote to us about her family's unexpected encounter with the NAIS system.

An interesting reverberation and consequence that none of us might have anticipated. Please do jump in with your thoughts on this one:

I wanted to share w/SlowFood USA our family's experience lately with NAIS. We are just a small farm, with backyard 'pets' that provide us with our own eggs, and a horse and the kids pony…they aren't looking to go anywhere except to show them at the 4-H Fair. However, 4-H has complied with the NAIS's voluntary request to make it mandatory for all livestock to have a premises I.D. (the start to NAIS). My little 9 year old girl had been preparing to show Lady (her pony) this year at the fair, and because we don't want to participate in NAIS at all- with any form- she is unable to show her. We contacted the local 4-H leader of our county, and to our dismay, she explained they had to participate in the NAIS request because that is where they get a lot of their grant money. We are not only disappointed in the complacency of 4-H, but also how people just don't understand NAIS is a request, at least for now, and the more people who go along with the request the easier it will be for NAIS to be implemented for everyone, even the single Grandma living on her family farm who only owns one goat!

The amount of paperwork, expense, and just plain intrusion into our private homes/farms, is just wrong. Hopefully, as with anything new, people are looking into NAIS, not forgetting to look into the problems with that kind of system, instead of just taking it for the face value of helping: "provides producers and owners like you with a uniform numbering system for their animals to help manage them more closely." Any livestock owner, whether big or small, will tell you they manage their animals just fine now, without the government interfering, and for my daughter showing her pony at the fair, it's just plain unfair.

“Naturally Raised”

Today is the final day to submit your comments to the USDA regarding their proposed label standard for meat as "naturally raised." We've all been marveling for a long time now at the emptiness of a phrase like "natural." When informed shoppers see that on food packaging they know that by this point it pretty much means nothing: a big zero.

The USDA label promises to be similarly hollow, referring only to the animals being hormone and antibiotic free. So, I guess if you think it's "natural" for animals to be industrially farmed, then great! If not, please take the next few hours to register your disapproval.

Please Note: All Comments Must Reference "Docket No. LS-07-16" by writing at the top of the letter or email "Re: Docket No. LS-07-16"

How Green is My Restaurant?

by Elizabeth Bird

Last week, an article caught our eyes in the Washington Post about the recent trend of restaurants who are seeking "Green Certification." These "green certified" restaurants are looking beyond the food they serve and whether it's organic, or even locally grown. They are seeking to be green businesses, creating efficiencies where there were inefficiencies, cutting waste, even striving to achieve "zero waste" through composting and using renewable energy sources or biodegradable products.

According to the Green Restaurant Association, a Boston-based non-profit, the restaurant industry accounts for a third of all energy used by retail businesses. Their research of the restaurant industry shows that the average restaurant meal served produces a pound and a half of trash, half of which is compostable food waste.

So what does it take to become green certified? The GRA, whose mission is to "create an ecologically sustainable restaurant industry," functions as a consultant to restaurant owners to help make the certification process more convenient and efficient. Covering everything from energy and water efficiency and conservation to using sustainable food products, composting methods, and incorporating green building design, the GRA's 12-step environmental guidelines give a systematic approach to redefining a restaurant as "green." The GRA will also do a cost-benefit analysis for the restaurant to help determine which areas of improvement will be most beneficial in the long-run for that restaurant, as well as linking member restaurants to manufacturers, distributors, waste collection companies and government agencies who also provide environmentally suitable products and services.

And the benefits? The Washington Post article quotes a report by the GRA that a quarter of restaurants surveyed plan to spend more on going green this year. Why? "Besides the environmental benefits, restaurant owners hope that such efforts can in the long run help them deal with increased energy and waste-management costs." Another tip sheet that might be helpful comes from the City of Irvine website on their Zero Waste initiative for the food service industry.

What do you think? Are you a "Certified Green" restaurant? Any inclination to go green in the future? We'd love to hear your thoughts.