Coffee Quality, Pt 3 — When the “quality” myth hits the farm

James Harper:

Welcome back to Filter Stories, I'm James Harper, and this is part 3 on a series on how we came to define coffee quality as we have. If you haven't heard parts 1 and 2, listen to those before you listen to this. So a quarter of a century ago, when the 2004 cupping form was being created, the form was given two major objectives.

The first was to help different people in the coffee supply chain talk to one another and describe exactly what a coffee tastes like, as Rick Reinhardt described it to me.

Rick Reinhart:

The desire to create a common language between buyer and seller.

James Harper:

But the form also had this other important objective. The search for positive nuance. Its creators, within the Specialty Coffee Association of America, wanted a form that would help them search for quality.

And it did that by introducing scores. The higher the quality, the higher the points. And this definition of coffee quality became almost universal.

And a lot of that is down to the fact that this form became the basis of the Q program. For 20 years, thousands of coffee buyers across the world would regularly pay over 1000 euros and devote weeks of their life to learn how to assess coffee quality in this way. Which is why even today, the word quality has taken on this mythical status as this state of coffee that floats above us all.

The perfection of coffee that we're all seeking. And it's in that direction we have to go. Even though the truth is that it was just the preferences of a small minority of people.

But a major reason there became even this perception of universal quality was because the people who embraced the form, used the form, they were, for the most part, coffee buyers. Coffee buyers, mostly in the global north. As in they are types of people who hold tremendous amounts of power.

In the vast majority of commercial relationships, the buyers are always the one who have more power than the sellers. But especially in coffee, the coffee market, it's a market where you have practically infinite numbers of sellers. Millions of coffee farmers selling their coffee, but only a very small number of buyers, roasters, importers, exporters.

And so in the coffee industry, buyers have tremendous amounts of power relative to producers. And so when they choose to use a form like the 2004 cupping form, then that was a definition of quality producers were going to have to work to. Now for the very small minority of producers who could get trained up on the form, many have attested to me that they have found it very valuable.

It's helped them in their commercial negotiations. They know what kind of flavors their buyer is looking for. Very helpful.

Great. But the fact is, most producers were not trained on it. We're talking 99.999% of producers were not trained on this form. If they had been trained on the form, then they would see, from the inside, this idea of universal coffee quality doesn't exist. But if you weren't trained on this form, and you were instead looking at the coffee industry from the outside, you would be forgiven for thinking coffee quality is universal. In this episode, I want to show you what that illusion of universal coffee quality actually does when it arrives on the hillside at a coffee farm.

I'm going to share with you two stories of coffee producers whose lives were impacted by this 2004 form. Now, in both cases, this perception of universal quality, it wasn't the sole reason why they had problems. But I think the belief that there is one fixed objective standard of quality, it can nudge producers in a direction that makes them worse off.

Voice Actor:

Captain Stefan Rasmussen has been in love with flying all of his life.

James Harper:

I'm the kind of person that loves to get obsessed by things. I fall down these rabbit holes like this, Mayday, air traffic investigations, these documentaries about plane crashes.

Voice Actor:

As his engines fail and his plane falls out of the sky.

James Harper:

And investigators try to figure out how did this happen?

Voice Actor:

What caused the most baffling accident in Sweden's history is nothing investigators could have imagined.

James Harper:

And what I find so fascinating about these documentaries, which are really just documentaries about failure, documentaries about where things go wrong, is that oftentimes when something goes wrong, it's not just because of one reason. For a plane to fall out of the sky, so many small little things had to go wrong at the same time.

Voice Actor:

What they finally uncover will strain Rasmussen's lifelong relationship with airplanes to the breaking point.

James Harper:

And in the case of this particular air crash in Sweden in the early 90s, where thank God everybody actually survived, it was ice in the engines that brought the plane down. But the question is why was the plane allowed to fly with ice on its wings? Well, for that we can blame a missed inspection, an imperfect checklist, a weird design quirk with the plane.

This plane came down because all three of those things went wrong at the same time. If just one of those things hadn't gone wrong, this plane would never have crashed.

Voice Actor:

In the wake of the crash, Scandinavian Airlines started training its pilots how to use the ATR system. They also implemented steps to ensure airplanes don't take off with clear ice on the wings.

James Harper:

Which takes me to the first story of a coffee farmer I want to share with you. A coffee farmer who failed. Like an air crash investigation, there are many reasons why this farmer failed.

And I think one of the reasons has to do with this idea that coffee quality is this fixed objective thing that is shared by everybody. Of course, it's not the only reason. But could it be a critical reason too?

If this perception of universal quality didn't exist, could this farmer still be in business? Let me take you back to one of the first ever episodes I made on this podcast. Firefly.

Murray Cooper:

Link in the show notes. So it's a beautiful spot. Bought the farm for its beauty because it's on like a high ridge.

So you got like 300 degree view of mountains and lots of forest. And we see two volcanoes from the farm.

James Harper:

Firefly, it's a story of a South African, Murray Cooper, who sunk his life savings into a coffee farm in Ecuador.

Murray Cooper:

So this was kind of my nest egg. Something that would keep me happy and busy and doing something I love.

James Harper:

Murray, he comes from the world of conservation. He wanted his farm to be a biodiversity hotspot. He wanted to pay his people well.

But to be able to pay for this, he had to get higher prices for his coffee. He had to get into specialty.

Murray Cooper:

And I saw straight away that really the way to go was try and produce specialty coffee.

James Harper:

And to grow these really spectacular flavors that specialty roasters really prize, that would score very highly in the Q system, it required a huge amount of investment. He put so much of his own energy and time fermenting the coffees really carefully.

Murray Cooper:

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 Harper:

He told his pickers to pick very carefully and slowly, just so they would get the reddest, ripest cherries, which turned out to be very expensive because the minimum wage in Ecuador is actually very high relative to neighboring countries.

Murray Cooper:

You have to have, you know, three, four, $5,000 a week to be able to pay your harvesters.

James Harper:

But the problems came when Murray, having taken all this risk and extra expense, then tried to sell his coffee.

Murray Cooper:

And my main problem was price was selling. That's where the problems started to happen with, you know, the sales.

James Harper:

He sold almost all his coffee to just one specific specialty coffee exporter. Ecuador has a relatively underdeveloped specialty coffee market, and there are very few buyers for specialty coffees that producers can very easily sell to. Murray was getting paid mostly based on the Q score.

And for most of Murray's coffees, this exporter gave him an 86, which it turns out is suspiciously low.

Murray Cooper:

They gave me 86 points, but I had some coffees that were 90 points and by some of the top judges in the world.

James Harper:

When his coffee was evaluated by roasters in New York, some of those exact same lots that were getting 86 by the exporter were actually being graded as 90 point coffees.

Murray Cooper:

I also think they cupped really low, but that's, and it's pretty obvious that there's some examples here of coffees that were 86 with them and they got sent to New York and got 90, you know, and they were pretty professional people cupping in New York too. So it's obviously in the interest to cup a little bit low.

James Harper:

But to conclude on Murray's story, he ran out of money, ran out of cash, liquidity. He was forced to sell his farm and along the way, he lost a big chunk of his life savings. In that episode I made in 2018, as a documentary audio creator, I lay the blame for Murray's failure on coffee roasters.

I felt strongly this was a story that had to be told at the time because I found evidence that roasters were happily praising Murray as a producer, you know, putting out these glossy looking sustainability reports, yet he was not getting paid enough for his coffee. It felt like the values of fairness and equity and specialty coffee were just being spat on. But today, as an air crash investigator, I can pinpoint many reasons Murray failed.

He wasn't able to get out from under the thumb of a bad actor. He didn't find better buyers in time. He was also undercapitalized and he didn't have a way of securing loans to pay for his harvest.

So he ran out of money, liquidity. If he could have fixed just one of these issues, maybe he would still be in business today. But could there be another equally important but subtle reason he failed?

Voice Actor:

A fire in the engine could spread to the rest of the plane. Should I call? If Sadermark pulls the fire extinguisher in the left engine, he will never be able to restart it.

James Harper:

When a plane is falling out of the sky, pilots have this very short window of time to fix the problems, to save the plane.

Voice Actor:

Steer right, steer right.

James Harper:

One of the really tragic but also fascinating things about plane crashes is that oftentimes pilots make the wrong decisions in the cockpit. If they just pulled this lever instead, if they just spent a couple more seconds reading that instrument, they could have made it. In those critical minutes before a plane hits the ground, wherever the pilot puts their attention could save them or doom them.

Voice Actor:

Just 500 feet above the ground, Captain Rasmussen lifts the plane's nose to slow it down, hoping to soften the crash landing.

James Harper:

And re-listening to this story with Murray, I wondered, huh, could the same thing be happening here as well? Murray's farm started nosediving in 2016, and he had two harvests to figure out what to do. For me, it's very clear.

This exporter is able to get away with undervaluing Murray's coffees because there are very few other buyers. What Murray has to do is find a way to get his coffees sold more directly abroad, which he could do. He's a white South African man who speaks English.

He's a world-famous photographer. He has connections across the world. But that's not what he did.

When he was stressed out, working 14-hour days, not sleeping, Murray instead decided to prioritize growing higher quality coffee. This is what he reflected to me as we were sat on his front porch. Look, James, for the first six years I had the farm, I managed to turn this cow pasture into a specialty coffee farm producing 86 points.

And if I could just keep going and produce even higher quality coffees, then that specialty exporter I'm selling to can finally pay me the prices I need to make this whole thing work.

Murray Cooper:

So if I could have done that in six years, it's not exactly like brain surgery. I mean, it seems like I would have been able to maintain it. And in 10 years time, I would have been getting the 90s permanently and probably have been one of the top producers and on a world level, a very good producer and get the money for it.

James Harper:

That decision to prioritize higher quality coffees, coffees which would cost him even more time and money to produce in those critical months when his farm is in a nosedive, this to me seems like another of those clear reasons why the farm failed. If he had made a different decision in that critical window of time in the cockpit of his farm, he might still have it today. Here's where I wonder whether this notion of universal coffee quality as defined by the 2004 form is actually dangerous.

What the Q form did was tell him at exactly the wrong moment that there is only one path to survive, that he has to get a higher quality score. If instead we lived in a world where it was clear to producers like Murray that actually different people define quality differently, quality is not universal, then he might have decided, oh, then I shouldn't be chasing points, but rather I should be finding different markets that value my coffees more. Because the truth is for Murray's beautiful 86 point coffees, he could have got much, much better prices just by finding different people around the world, different roasters, buyers, who for all sorts of reasons would be prepared to pay more for those coffees.

Producing higher quality is just one of many ways you can get more money for your coffee. Murray himself wasn't trained on the Q system, just like the vast majority of producers out there who cannot afford to do it themselves. And that is one of the reasons he believed in this illusion of universal coffee quality.

And as his plane was falling out of the sky, that illusion narrowed his perceived options. The myth of universal coffee quality can convince producers that there is only one way to survive, when in fact, there are many. In Murray's case, that decision was to work himself into the ground, chasing 90 points instead of using his last fuel to escape a bad buyer.

Now here's a second story that really opened my eyes to some of the barriers producers face, caused in part by this appearance of universal coffee quality. One big thing that's happened since 2004, when the cupping form was established, is that we are in the opposite situation of where George Howe found himself in the 90s, where very few producers were willing to grow interesting specialty coffees. We are in a world where we are awash with all sorts of fascinating novel flavour profiles.

How did this form in its later days define quality, when coffee flavours were becoming so remarkably varied, so different from one another? Well, in practice, what happens is that you create categories. For example, in the Cup of Excellence today, you have washed coffees in their own category and naturals in another category.

You judge similar coffees together, and the scores are only relevant compared to other coffees of the same type. But the problem is that it takes years and years and years before a new category can be established. And so what happens to producers who are ahead of the curve, the first ones to make a new kind of flavour?

Well, I spoke to a producer who is in this predicament.

Coffee producer (Puerto Rico):

And when we started doing all these post-harvest processes, nobody knew what a seven-day anaerobic fermentation from Puerto Rico was supposed to taste like.

James Harper:

Now quick note, as part of my policy, you know, before I release an episode, I send the draft to everybody who's featured in a prominent way. And this specific producer, they wanted to remain anonymous. And so what you're hearing is an actor.

But, you know, this is interesting in its own right. That power imbalance I mentioned at the beginning, look, here it is playing out again. This producer was fine telling me in confidence how they felt, but as soon as they get their name attached to it, they didn't want to be singled out as saying anything critical or negative towards coffee buyers because it might hurt their sales.

Okay, so this coffee producer, they are a trailblazer, an experimenter. They were taking risks to produce really interesting flavours. The problem is on their island of Puerto Rico, there is a very standard type of coffee that's always produced a quote-unquote classic island profile, sweet, chocolatey, low acidity, big body.

Coffee producer (Puerto Rico):

What I've noticed is that for a long time, there was this dynamic where you were expected to feed a specific island profile, what they call the classic island profile.

James Harper:

But this producer was creating stuff that tasted very different from that. Carbonic macerations that tasted super fruity, whiny. And when this producer brought these coffees to the island's coffee cuppers, the buyers, he was told these coffees were defective as in very low quality because they didn't fit into the category that already existed for Puerto Rican coffees.

Coffee producer (Puerto Rico):

But come on, it's impossible to feed us into that category, especially when the person judging has never tasted a cup processed, say with a seven day carbonic maceration. Let's say it tastes super whiny, fruity, whatever. If you've never tasted that before, you'll find a defect.

You'll think it's over fermented.

James Harper:

Now, I could totally see a situation where a coffee producer, they would have produced this funky coffee. They would have been told by the Puerto Rican cuppers that this coffee was defective. It would have been backed up by a low Q score and they would have stopped producing it.

But those exact same flavors tasted by somebody else in another part of the world could be considered high quality flavors and the coffees could receive great prices.

Coffee producer (Puerto Rico):

But we've had situations where our coffees are put up against coffees with flavor notes that in another part of the world, in another producing country, will score 90 points, 86 points, 87 points without a doubt. Lychee, jasmine, those kind of flavors. And yet ours gets scored super low simply because we're not the classic profile of chocolate.

Low acidity, balanced body.

James Harper:

This is the issue with this perception that there is one universal standard of quality. An outsider to this system, like a producer who is not trained in the Q system themselves, can make the assumption, which is wrong, that if their coffees are graded as defective by local cuppers, then these coffees will also be considered defective everywhere else in the world. And so this perception of universal coffee quality can create these unfair roadblocks for producers who are trying to get more money for the risks they've taken to produce interesting flavors.

Coffee producer (Puerto Rico):

Listen, we know customers are looking for differentiation. And if you give them a differentiated coffee, they're willing to pay for it. Classic coffees exist in huge quantities.

Good ones, bad ones, worse ones. So why stay stuck in that category?

James Harper:

Now, fortunately for this specific producer, they were able to invest the money to learn to speak the language of coffee buyers. That's what convinced us to get Q certified. And after they did the Q, they went from becoming outsiders to insiders.

And what they could now clearly see is that different people around the world can score the same coffee very differently. I mean, that's another massive issue with the Q system. How do you calibrate so many thousands of people in different cultures and sensory backgrounds?

As insiders to this system, this producer told me that doing the Q, it's helped them tremendously to earn more for their coffees because they're able to stand up to buyers and say, look, you think it's a defect? I don't think it is. It gives them the tools to define an entirely new category for Puerto Rican coffees that move beyond the classic island profile.

And as a result, earn more money. But why was it necessary for them to spend thousands of euros to do the Q certification to get to this place? When local cuppers give Q scores to producers who are outsiders to this system, it can appear like universal truth.

It's shut down innovation. It misprices their coffees. They don't earn as much as they should.

What if instead this myth didn't exist and producers knew, hey, local cupper, this is just your preference. Someone else might love this coffee. Let's zoom out and look back across this entire story.

I don't want you to get the impression that the 2004 cupping form was, you know, a villain, even though my piano playing might suggest it is. No, the 2004 form was what this young, insecure, specialty coffee movement needed 20 years ago. In a world dominated by commodity coffee, in a world where there's very little specialty coffee, it needed a tool to say, look, this is what we mean by good coffee.

But baked into the creation of that cupping form was a story that coffee quality can be specifically defined. That quality can be captured in a single number that floats above every coffee we brew. And when CQI developed the Q qualification, the foundation of the program was this form.

And that story about there being this definitive, universal definition of quality went stratospheric. It absolutely helped a lot of people enormously. It aligned roaster teams.

It gave buyers this common language. And for a very tiny minority of coffee producers who could afford to do the training, it gave them a way to see through the eyes of their buyers and negotiate better prices for their coffee. But for many other producers, though, this story of universal coffee quality created problems.

It could narrow their sense of what was possible. Because when their coffees get 86 points on that form, it looks like universal truth. And some could conclude the only way to earn more for my coffee is to work myself into the ground, chasing 90 points instead of trying to find other buyers.

Or when a local cupper tells you that your experimental coffee tastes, quote unquote, defective and is backed up by the same Q system, that could be the end of your experiment. Even though someone in another country would happily pay a premium for those same flavors. And so for me, the takeaway from this story is this.

Quality is not this universal law of nature. It's a negotiated agreement between people with different tastes and different levels of power. And when we forget that, the people with the least amount of power, typically very small producers, they are the ones who can suffer the most.

And look, this is all now in the old era. We are now in the new era with a new system for assessing coffee, the CVA, the coffee value assessment. And in this new system, it really downplays the quality score.

It leans harder into describing the flavors of coffee and also gives a lot of space for non-sensory attributes that make a coffee special. Things like, is it organic? Did it come from a cooperative?

Whatever it is that people value. And look, it is not perfect. It will also have its own unintended consequences, just like the old form did.

But I understand that the SEA intends to iterate this form much more frequently. The SEA clearly learned a hard lesson that you can't leave a form sitting out there for 20 years untouched. My hope is that as we keep tweaking, revising this form, we keep two things in mind.

The first is no form will ever define quality for everybody. All it can do is honestly show whose preferences it's encoding. And the second is that the people with the least amount of power in the coffee trade, producers with 10 hectares, 1 hectare, half a hectare, they should not need a thousand-year course on how to use a form just to avoid being disadvantaged by it.

I would love to see a form where a farmer with just a single acre of coffee can sit at a table with a buyer. They could fill it in together and have a real conversation around flavor and value and avoid a situation where their life work is translated into a number that someone else invented on the other side of the world. If that's possible, it's on us, all of us who use these tools to let go of the myth of universal quality and embrace the beautiful messiness of the world we are actually in.

The huge diversity of flavors that different people like. There are countless things people look for in their coffee experience that actually have nothing to do with flavor. And let's bring that value back to the people who grew the coffee in the first place.

Thank you so much for listening. Would you believe me if I told you that this episode has been literally years in the making? At least two years of work have gone into this episode.

I first had a crack at it in the summer of 2023. I put a whole month of work into it and then I decided it just wasn't the right story. It needed more research.

And then a year and a half later, I tried again. And then gave up because I realized, okay, wow, this is so deep, so complex. I just need more time with this thing.

And then the last couple of months of this year, 2025, I really threw myself at it. I'm like, no, I'm going to make something out of this. And what you've heard here is my third attempt.

And what's crazy is that each and every iteration of this story has changed so much because we're touching on so many foundational things in specialty coffee. Questions of what are our values? What does quality mean?

How do you grade it? Global north-south power imbalances. I just really hope you like it and just appreciate just how difficult it has been for me to make this for you.

For this series, I've spoken to so many people. Professor Ted Fisher, an anthropologist, author of the book, Making Coffee Better. Noah Berger, a sociologist and researcher and writer.

Professor Kenneth Lieberman, a sociologist and philosopher, author of the book, Tasting Coffee. Professor Helena Hopfer, a food science researcher. Paul Katzeff, the founder of Thanksgiving Coffee and the man who held the moral compass of the SCAA for decades.

Danny Pang, a cup of excellence judge and Q trainer. Jen Rugello, the innovation officer at the SCAA. George Howell, a specialty coffee pioneer.

Rick Reinhardt, former SCAA executive director and CEO. Bram de Hoog, the founder of the producer-owned roastery, Paso Paso. André Mittas, a senior lecturer in hospitality studies in the Netherlands.

Rachel Peterson of the farm Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama. And so many more conversations with so many of you over the years as I've tried to figure this thing out. Look, if you found this episode helpful, if you value this work, please consider supporting me directly at ko-fi.com.

That's k-o-f-i.com. This episode was not sponsored and I want to make more episodes like this on topics that just don't easily align with a coffee company who can sponsor me. But for that, I need your support.

So please, if you can, click the link in the show notes to ko-fi.com. Did you know I actually go around the world quite a bit to different coffee trade shows? And if you'd like to meet up when I'm in your city, well, follow me on Instagram where I'll post about it.

You can find me at filterstoriespodcast. And if you are actually involved in a coffee trade show and you're looking for speakers, a moderator, a presenter, I would love to help you out. Hit me up on Instagram.

Filter Stories is made by me, James Halper. I write and I play the piano music. Thank you again for listening and I'll speak to you next time.