Firefly

James: Back in October 2017, a US specialty coffee roaster posted a photo on Instagram.

And the photograph is of Murray Cooper. A 6 ft, middle-aged white guy. He’s wearing a dirty white t-shirt and standing in-between….1,2,3,4,5,6… six buckets of coffee cherries.

This is what it read:

“HANGIN’ WITH MR. COOPER. Our newest coffee offering is a single-producer lot grown by Murray Copper in the Nenegal region of Ecuador. This is our first year purchasing from Murray, who grew up in Kenya and moved to Ecuador to become a forest ranger and photographer.”

But there’s a glaring mistake. Murray is not Kenyan. He is a white South African. A number of roasters were selling his coffee saying he was from Kenya. He tried to clear up the confusion by sending a bunch of emails.

Murray: Just saying “Listen, I’m proud of my South African heritage. And I’m a bit of an international figure because of my photography. I’m posting on Facebook where I’ve got a lot of followers and I’d like them to know I actually am South African and not Kenyan.”

But it wasn’t changed for a whole year and I was constantly being asked about the whole Kenyan story. So a lot of people thought I was bullshitting, trying to be a cool Kenyan coffee growing guy.

Or maybe it’s not cool to be South African. That’s the other one. “White apartheid bastard.”

James: Maybe in the same month as the Instagram post, you popped into a cafe and day and drank a latte made using Murray’s Firefly coffee. Now, I’m guessing you knew nothing about Murray. And even if you had heard his name, you were probably relying on your roaster to give you the facts.

These roasters got a pretty basic fact wrong about Murray.

Now that same roaster who published the Instagram post, also posted a transparency report in the same year. The subtext was “don’t worry, we’ve got our coffee farmers’ interests at heart.”

But let’s look again at that photo.

Those six buckets will make 250 espressos. Murray’s total profit from those six buckets would be $2.

Not $2 per bucket. $2 for all six.

How does one of the most famous coffee farmers in all of Ecuador earn just $2 profit from 250 espressos?

What’s going on here behind the scenes?

Well, for once, let’s hear the real story behind the glossy Instagram posts. Because the reality might change how you look at the next cup of coffee.

I’m James Harper, and this is Filter Stories. The untold stories hidden in your cup of coffee.

To fully appreciate what was happening behind the scenes in that Instagram photos, we need to start the story right at the time Murray leaves South Africa.

He’s in his mid-20s, behind a desk, super corporate marketing gig. He’s been doing it for five years and he realises it’s not for him.

Murray: Marketing is really just trying to bluff stuff you don’t really need.

And just took six months off work, six months turned into a year and faded away.

James: Okay, here’s a question for you. what would happen if you quit your job right now and you went travelling the world with no plans to ever go back?

I’ll try sum up 11 years of Murray’s life in two minutes.

Murray heads to California and falls in with a crowd of conservation activists. Think Green Peace, tree huggers. You get the idea.

And he asks them “what can I do to help the global conservation movement?”

Murray: And these guys said Ecuador. I came down to Ecuador and it all happened immediately. It was sort of destiny.

James: Murray lands in Ecuador and then he meets someone who knows someone who needs help to protect a rainforest. And before long, Murray is there, full time, managing a science base in the middle of the Los Cedros rainforest.

Murray: It’s where I ended up staying and living for 11 years.

James: Murray’s gone from a desk job to living in a jungle with no electricity for 11 years.

Murray: We had no power, no music, no lights, candles for 11 years. It was rough.

James: Murray helps the Los Cedros reserve grow from 80 hectares to over 6,000. And it became a legally protected forest.

And one point while living in the jungle, he also starts taking photographs.

Murray: I started taking a few pictures. And that was for fundraising. You could see I had a bit of an eye, people said “you take good pictures” or whatever. That’s being polite.

James: Murray goes on to become one of the most respected bird photographers in all of South America. His photos has appeared in places like National Geographic.

And at one point, he also finds love. He meets a local Ecuadorean called Patricia and she comes to live with him in his rainforest shack.

James: How did you end up going from Quito to the middle of a jungle?

Patricia: Because I love it. I’ve always loved the jungle. And that was my dream coming true.

James: For five years, Patricia and Murray live together in the jungle.

James: What compelled you to stay for over 10 years?

Murray: No, I mean, I think I’d probably would still be living there if I hadn’t started a family. My wife, she wasn’t keen on living the whole eight-hours-by-mule with kids.

James: This is when the story shifts from a never-ending career break to coffee.

Murray: So, welcome guys.

James: I’m with Murray in his ten-year-old Nissan Patrol and we’re driving into the farm. I’m here to learn why he started the farm and how we ended up owning just $2 profit for six buckets of coffee cherries.

So I step out of the car and just …wow!

Murray: So it’s a beautiful spot. I bought the farm for its beauty because it’s one a high ridge. So you got 360 degree view of mountains, lots of forest. You can see two volcanoes.

James: Murray called this Farm “Firefly” because at night a thousand little lights flicker in the dark.

Murray and Patricia bought this 30 hectare piece of land with the leftovers of Murray’s savings from South Africa and a generous donation.

The year is now 2010 and Murray is taking a look into the future.

Murray: You know, I had a piece of land, a farm. I wasn’t really using it. Then I started looking at what would grow here and coffee was the one thing…it was the perfect climate for coffee.

James: But what about photography? Why doesn’t he just stick to taking photographs of birds?

Murray: I preferred coffee farming to photography. It is a most noble retirement for myself. That’s so sort how I sort it, it is my retirement plan. I don’t have medical and retirement or any insurance. I’ve always worked for myself. And so I have no nest egg for the later years.

So this was my nest egg. Something that would keep me happy and busy and and doing something I love without having to get in a car and drive around and airplanes that’s associated to photography

James: But relying on the farm for his retirement is a big risk. Back in 2010, Ecuador hardly grew specialty coffee and there were so few people Murray could turn to for advice.

Murray: Well, my initial thing was I had come from conservation, so it was all organic.

James: And right at the start, he makes a big mistake.

Murray: What’s the word? I had technical advice from a local guy who was unfortunately the most really radically organic coffee farming guy in all of Ecuador. I didn’t know that at the time. So he had me with so much shade I could never have produced coffee under that stuff.

James: when did you get your first harvest?

Murray: Three years? But there was the first sign of organic because at three years you should be harvesting something. They say two pounds a plant. And we were just getting grams, you know, so there was just not much coffee on the trees.

So it cost us probably quite a bit of money there.

James: Murray has now wasted a good chunk of his savings. And it’s around this time that Murray learns something very important.

Murray: It’s all to do with la tasa, the cup. It’s all to do with points and where you are in your points.

James: Specialty coffee is all about points. The better your coffee tastes, the more points it’s going to get and that means you can earn more money.

Murray: And I saw straight away that really the way to go was trying to produce specialty coffee. Even though it’s gonna cost me a little more time, but I can always sell my coffee and hopefully for a premium price.

James: And so for the next harvest in 2016, Murray focuses on increasing his points. What will the coffee world say when they finally get to taste Murray’s improved Firefly beans?

It’s now lunchtime on the farm. Murray grates an onion, mixes it together with freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice. And then he pours it over tender raw fish and squeaky popcorn.

Murray: This is a Ecuadorian Ceviche from Monavie.

James: The year is now 2016. Murray’s hoping that his coffee tastes great so he can get paid amazing prices. And there’s really good news. The best roasters from across the world start buying Murray’s Firefly coffee. They come all the way to Ecuador to see his farm.

And Murray cooks delicious meals for them, just like he’s doing for us right now.

Murray: It’s good. It’s good. Nobody’s gonna be bitching.

It has taken us a while to find specialty coffee from Ecuador.

James: Murray is reading from the website of a large specialty Australian roaster, where they chose his coffee as their coffee of the month in December 2016.

James: What does it make you think?

Murray: It makes me feel like we had decent coffee, you know, it wasn’t Nescafe. That’s for sure.

James: One of the reasons Murray’s coffee tastes so great is because he’s managing the farm incredibly well.

I speak with Juan Carlos Vega, a senior consultant hired by the Ecuadorian government to assist farmers like Murray with technical issues.

I ask him how Murray’s farm compares to others he has seen in the region.

Juan: I would say at least in the top five. He put so much emotion and so much heart into the work and at the end, he got one of the best coffees in the region. I mean the results was amazing.

James: Murray has cracked it! From the outside, it looks like he’s figured out how to run a successful specialty coffee Farm. Except, well, he hasn’t.

Murray: The tech people give you the math. So you’ve got this very clear thing of where you going to go with this. And then at the end of harvest, it just doesn’t… the sums don’t add up, you know? The maths is wrong.

And my main problem was the price I was selling. That’s where the problem started to happen with the sales.

James: Murray needs to sell his coffee for a high price and get paid fast. But the specialty coffee middlemen that Murray was selling to, couldn’t pay him high and fast. They can pay fast or they can pay high, but not both.

And that’s because they are facing problems of their own. Very few people want to buy Ecuadorian coffee.

Gil: Because of costs. Because the production costs are really high, so Ecuadorean coffee is really expensive.

James: This is Gil, a founder of one of the smaller companies buying green coffee in Ecuador.

Gil: …and in comparison with Colombian coffee, with Peruvian coffee, with Central American coffee, for the same quality our coffee is more expensive, so obviously buyers, they would say “no”.

Murray: Yeah. That’s the biggest problem in the whole deal is really that Ecuador is expensive to produce.

James: Murray is spending $2.20 to produce one pound of coffee.

Murray: Colombia’s like $1.40. Africa’s like 60 cents a pound. Nicaragua is like $1. I can’t remember exactly the details, but it’s like we are the most expensive after Hawaii or something, you know?

James: And one of the biggest reasons Ecuadorian coffee is so expensive is because hiring people is not cheap anymore.

Murray: That was also the stage where labor became more expensive and the government just got a really strict about that. So you had to have your workers with Social Security, all that stuff. And it was huge fines if you didn’t.

James: Murray doesn’t want to break the law. But more importantly, he wants to do better than the minimum wage.

Murray: I paid above the standard wage, always, like $100 more. I was happy to have a little less profit myself so that some people could have a lot better life.

James: So Murray is now paying about $20 a day to each of his workers. Now that is double what that same worker could earn in neighboring Colombia.

What is the impact of paying a little bit extra?

Murray: And there was a family that started working me, the kids weren’t even in school. And now the whole family has a motorbike and they fixed their farm up and they fixed the house up and I gave him a piece of land and they’re really set up.

So I know I changed one small family’s life, you know, in a big way.

James: But Murray is not getting paid any extra for the fact he’s changing people’s lives.

And his costs are really high, especially during harvest time.

Murray: So you have to have you know, $3/4/5,000 dollars a week to be able to pay your harvesters. So that’s a big problem. Yeah.

James: So I mean, how do you keep this going cash flow wise?

Murray: Eh….scraping! What I didn’t do is go out on the street and try to sell my arse. But just doing whatever. It was hard.

James: Murray gets so desperate, he begins to sell whatever he can.

Murray: the time I didn’t have money for fertilizer, we just sold the car. And that was a damn nice Volvo that I had. Kind of old-ish, but it was in really good shape. And I didn’t get any money for it because it was a stupid thing to sell. And I sold it for shite because I needed the money quick. So the first guy, I was just like “dude, whatever you want to give me,” you know?

James: Murray is realizing a painful reality about the specialty coffee world. Buyers are only interested in getting the best quality for the lowest price.

But what about the fact Murrays workers could send their kids to school? What about the fact his was so ecological? Surely, that’s worth something in the specialty coffee world?

Murray is clearly seeing roasters are not putting money where their mouths are.

For these roasters, their number one priority is a good tasting coffee at the lowest price. If there’s something good to say about ecology and farmworkers, then they’ll include it as a bonus.

But if there’s nothing good to say, they’ll say nothing.

And all the while, they would come to visit him on the farm.

Murray: There’s a lot of people that come to visit you. I’m like this famous farm now, you know? And I had from the whole globe, unbelievable.

James: They would take photographs, then splash them across Instagram and talk about how much they have the farmers interests’ at heart.

Murray: And they all promise all kinds of stuff and then nothing seems to materialize…

James: And all the while, Murray is going broke.

I want to get up close and see for myself what a well-managed farm looks like. So, after lunch, we stroll through Murray’s neatly pruned rows of coffee trees.

We pick off dark red coffee cherries, and they are so good. It’s just like apricot candy.

And then overhead fly a flock of parrots, their feathers a deep blue with flashes of yellow.

Murray: Bronze winged parrots.

James: These birds. These ecologically friendly coffee trees. The happy workers. Why aren’t roasters paying more this?

A few hours later, darkness descends on the farm and a thousand fireflies come out to dance.

The year is now 2017. Murray’s entire life savings are in this farm. It’s the only property he owns in the world.

Murray: I’m just going to do everything I can to make it perfect.

James: His plan is to increase the quality of the coffee even more. And maybe, just maybe, earn enough money to keep the farm alive.

Murray: So I was doing a lot of… I’m a worker, so I had my own jobs there and I was working 15/14 hours a day.

James: Murray is working so hard to produce high-quality coffee that it’s even affecting his sleeping.

Murray: I was waking up… I still can’t sleep very well because 2017, with the ferments, I just decided to do as much as I could.

James: Murray wakes up multiple times a night, gets out of bed, walks down to his shed, and grabs a stick. Red-eyed and half awake, Murray stirs these big vats of coffee as fireflies dance all around him.

He is hoping to balance out the fermentation just a little bit. And with every circle he draws in the water. Murray is hoping to up his points to earn just a few cents extra per pound.

Murray: And everyone sort of said that was crazy, but that’s what they said I should do. So I was doing that for, you know, four months, waking up three times at night and not sleeping.

James: Murray is beginning to think he needs to quit.

Murray: I just started, you know…I had a good look into the future and decided that okay, if I’m not going to make it this year…

James: But then, the world finally gets to taste Murray’s coffee. And it’s exceptional. It’s so good that the Ecuadorian barista champion chooses Murray’s coffee to represent Ecuador on the world stage.

Mario: So the first person that I approached to produce this coffee was my dear friend Murray Cooper.

James: This is Mario Idrovo, the 2017 Ecuadorian Barista Champion, and he’s showcasing Murray’s Firefly coffee to a panel of expert judges at the World Barista Championships.

Mario: So guys, I want you to write the following down: you will perceive an aroma of cinnamon, notes of raspberries and green apple.

James: Let’s take a second to put this in context. Just seven years ago, Murray started a farm from nothing. And now, he’s producing coffee with flavors of cinnamon, raspberry and green apple.

These are flavors you would have struggled to find in Ecuador just 10 years ago.

And now, with the marketing push of having his coffee at the World Barista Championships, I mean, it’s one of the highest accolades in the specialty coffee world.

He might have roaster calling him every single day, fighting amongst themselves to have his coffee.

And Murray might finally start to get really good prices.

But, as Murray is stirring these vats of coffee in the middle of the night, there’s a thought that just won’t go away.

Murray: I got some honest coffee growers who told me honest profits that they were getting. And it just wasn’t much, you know?

James: What’d they tell you?

Murray: You know, he makes 2,000 hectares hectare profit, at the end of it all. Maybe you can get $20,000 or $30,000.

James: Murray is facing another difficult reality about specialty coffee. Coffees that can be used for the World Barista Championships need even more work. And Mary is spent, tapped out, physically exhausted.

In total, he produces about a hundred kilos of the Barista Championship Coffee. But there isn’t any extra to sell to get the very high prices. This means his total maximum can only be $2,000 a hectare.

I mean, that’s fine, if you want to live a very simple life in rural Ecuador.

Murray: Unfortunately, it all goes back to lifestyle choices. And if I was living on a farm, my family were going to the local government school that doesn’t cost anything and we were growing a few veggies and living off $500 a month, we could do it.

James: And back in the early days, they did try to do it. He lived with his family on the farm. They even sent their son to the local government school.

But it was not working out. Here’s Murray’s wife, Patricia.

Patricia: He’s a gringo. He looks like….he’s blonde and white. But [other] friends, local people, [don’t] accept him because he’s different.

James: And that was not the end of Luke’s problems either.

Murray: So there were some big scandals, just while we were there. Kind of abuse and stuff like that. Pretty bad.

James: Patricia and Murray wanted what was best for their kids. You know, just a decent education, in a safe space.

And so they rented a house in the capital Quito and sent their kids to a decent school.

But all of this costs a lot of money.

Murray: But yeah, on $30,000 would be really hard.

James: So remember the Instagram photo at the beginning, you know the one of Murray standing in-between six buckets of coffee cherries? What you can’t see in that photo is the most important thing in Murray’s life: his family.

Murray has a dilemma. He cannot afford to give his kids a decent education and at the same time produce some of the best coffee in Ecuador.

Murray: And I just figured that if I keep holding on to this, it’s like flogging a dead horse, you know? It felt like I was doing that. And if I kept holding onto it and then what would happen is I’d be like totally bankrupt.

So I just saw that it was going downhill and I needed to try and sell the farm while I was still looking good.

I’d rather not have done it with now that I’m selling the farm and everything. I’m going to get something back for it, but not really. I’m not really going to cover my investment. It’s not like I’m going to make anything really of it…So… yeah.

James: We wake up very early on Firefly Farm. A farm that Murray does not own anymore.

I grind some coffee in Murray’s old-fashioned metal grinder. We taste sweet caramel as we sip the coffee, staring out over the mountain peaks through the morning mist. This is the last coffee I will ever drink from Firefly farm.

I first heard Murray’s story in December 2017, when I spoke to Mario Idrovo, the Ecuadorean Barista Champion. What amazes me about his story was that, he could not have had a better chance of making this farm work. For example, he’s got white privilege, he is a world class photographer. He speaks perfect English and has connections with the best roasters across the world. And despite all of that, he failed.

No one roaster or middle man is to blame here. As an industry, we asked Murray to produce the best tasting coffee he could. And we expected him to take all the risk. He gave eight years of his life and put his entire life savings into the farm.

And as he was struggling to make it work, maybe you walked into a coffee shop one morning and ordered his coffee.

Fast forward a year later, you stroll into that same coffee shop again, and now Firefly has been scrubbed off the board and a new Ecuadorean coffee is written in chalk over the faint outline of “Firefly.”

He was forgotten as quick as it took you to finish your latte.

Other coffee farmers in Ecuador are following the path that Murray made. And for them, Murray is another example of failure that they’ll have to learn from to survive.

Maybe they will make it. Maybe they won’t. Maybe, it depends on you.

If you would like to help the situation, here are a couple of tips. Think for a second: what is your favourite coffee right now? Is the same thing Murray went through happening to the person who grew your favourite coffee?

Now, if you’d like to know, just Google the farm’s name — most larger farmers like Murray are very active on social media. Reach out to them directly, tell them what you thought of the coffee and ask what is their situation. Get the real story behind the Instagram post.

Then turn around and ask your cafes and your roasters to support this farmer by buying this same coffee next year, and the year after. Commitment. And if you are willing to pay more for this coffee, ask them to pay more for it too.

Murray: It seems like that these things should be able to work.

Okay, I bankrupted myself, but I’m still driving a car and I’m eating some decent food and I’m having a okay life. I can’t complain. I’m on the lucky side of the scale, really. There’s a lot of farmers out there that are really just managing to put food on the table and other stuff.

A lot the coffee buyers sitting down in Seattle, when they have their cappuccinos in the morning and the guy says “well, if you give me 20 cents more it’s going to make a difference back home,” they might put on the table.

But if they came down here and saw how people are living and saw the reality of some of the producers, I’m quite sure they’d be happy to put 50 cents more on a table just to make a difference in someone’s life. And it’s not a hell of a lot to ask and you can make a huge difference.

[Music credits]

James: If you’re a roaster or a cafe, I’ve written an article at Perfect Daily Grind about Ecuadorean coffee and ways you can support farmers like Murray in the future. Check out FilterStories.org for links.

Thank you for listening to the second episode of Filter Stories.

This episode was incredibly complicated to make. I easily put in more than 200 hours, including a very expensive flight to Ecuador.

So, if you want more episodes like this, please tell your friends about Filter Stories.

Also, did you know the most popular podcast player is Apple’s podcast app? Please spread the word today by writing a review on iTunes — it’s like an internet megaphone!

And now, people I need to thank:

The eye-popping Filter Stories logo was created by Headquarters, a very talented branding and packaging design team. Check out Headquarter’s other fantastic work on their website — www.headquarters.studio.

A big thanks to Dom Edgley for sound engineering this episode. Check out FilterStories.org to find his contact details if you need a sound engineer.

Now people in Ecuador I want to thank for offering me their time and trust: Murray and his entire family, Mario Idrovo, Gil Honegger of Four Worlds, a green sourcing company offering something closer to direct trade, Linda and helpful folk at Minka Hostel in Quito, Mario Herves, Benjamin Villegas, Gerardo Diaz, Jeff Meecham and Juan Carlos Vega and the many, many other people I spoke to regarding this story.

A big thank you to the people who provided editorial feedback on drafts of the show: Raymond Detweiler, Vasant Chari, Jake Warren of the Message Heard podcast, Jenn Rugolo, Melanie Boehme, the journalist behind Mel’s Coffee Travels blog, Jessica Greene, Ian Johnston, Howard Bryman, Phil Groves, Stuart Ritson and Josh Fontecha.

I produced, edited and wrote and performance the piano music.

Do you have a story idea for me? Email me at hello@filterstories.org. Follow Filter Stories on Instagram @ filterstoriespodcast www.instagram.com/filterstoriespodcast and visit Filterstories.org to sign up to the newsletter!

Until next time.