Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty, and the other walked away

James Harper:

Wow, walking along the country roads. It's beautiful. It's July 2024.

I'm in Colombia, walking along a dirt road, carved along a steep mountain. And behind this mountain is another, bigger, steeper mountain. And behind it, yet another, even steeper, taller mountain.

I'm in the middle of the Andes mountain range in Huila, a state right in the south of Colombia. And carpeting so many of these mountains are coffee trees.

Marco Marin:

Most of these producers here, they are selling their coffee right after they de-pulp it.

James Harper:

Right. And walking alongside me was the extremely knowledgeable Marco Marin of The Coffee Quest, my partner sponsor for the episode. He is The Coffee Quest's community manager and they are a specialty coffee importer, exporter based out of Colombia.

Marco Marin:

It's really about the time that they take to do the whole processing of a coffee.

James Harper:

Now, I was with Marco Marin up here in the mountains of Colombia because I was doing a story, a story about how coffee goes from these mountains down to the port. It's a really fun story. And I'm going to tell you about it in the next episode.

But the thing is, while I was here, up in the mountains, although we had this super hectic schedule, there was just one point in the day where we had 30 minutes free. And so, you know, when in Rome, I decided to indulge my curiosity, do something I had very rarely ever done. I wanted to meet a coffee farmer who doesn't grow specialty coffee.

I wanted to meet a farmer who prioritizes commodity coffee. Now, in the specialty industry, we always see these beautiful stories of farmers who are very dedicated, passionate about producing specialty coffee. But of course, for every farmer that's prioritizing specialty coffee, around their farm are loads of farmers, many, many more farmers who don't.

They mostly just grow commodity coffee. And I always wondered, like, who are they? And how are they growing their coffees differently?

So Marco and I were walking down the road, and then we spot some trees, which are a dead giveaway. This is a commodity farm. What are these trees here?

They look very productive.

Marco Marin:

Those are, I believe, Catimor. Catimor. They produce a lot of coffee cherries and are very hardy.

And it's also very dense. The way how you plant it is very dense. Look at it.

James Harper:

It's unbelievable. The trees are just stuffed full of cherries, and like one branch cuts into the next tree. You know, they're barely like a meter apart.

Marco Marin:

But their reputation is that their cupping score is very low. Right. So they are concentrated more in high production, but low quality.

Yeah.

James Harper:

This is my chance to meet a commodity focused farmer. I just need to meet the farmer who owns these trees. And fortunately, their house is right here.

And there are people there. So we go and say hi. We meet the mother of the household doing some washing in the back.

She says her husband is on a different farm right now, but her son, he also takes care of the coffee. And yeah, he's here. Talk to him.

Great. Speak to her son. And around the back of the house on the porch, I meet a young guy, early 20s.

I wanted to ask him some questions, you know, record the conversation, but his music was blasting really loud. And I feel a bit bad cutting off his afternoon music like this. So this producer, his name is Andres and his farm is called Finca Monte Bonito, which is a very apt name because this was indeed a nice little mountain we were on.

And he confirmed, yeah, he grows almost entirely commodity coffee. Andres is very kind with his time, gives us a tour of the wet mill. And as Andres is showing me Finca Monte Bonito's fermentation tanks, drying station, the washing station, a question starts to bubble up in the back of my mind.

Why is Andres choosing not to grow specialty coffee? I mean, to my mind, right? Specialty coffee is just a better way to go.

It's better for us, the drinkers. It's better for the environment. And it's better for the farmer.

We coffee drinkers get to enjoy beautiful flavors. Specially focused farms tend to treat the environment better. And farmers often sell their specialty coffees for higher prices.

It's just a no brainer. A win, win, win for everybody. And then at one point in the conversation, Andres mentions, yeah, he actually has tried to grow specialty before.

But it was clear to me that right now, specialty is not the focus for him. Everything he told me about how he produces coffee was all framed around conventional coffee production. He very rarely ever mentioned specialty.

Before I know it, my little window of time, half an hour, it's up. We say goodbye to Andres and get back to the Jeep for our busy schedule. But this question keeps knocking around in my mind.

Why has Andres here chosen not to prioritize specialty coffee? And over the next nine months, I slowly unravel this question. Because I figure, if I could find a good answer to the question, it'll help me understand why more coffee producers don't grow specialty.

And so in this episode, we're going to zoom into the very specific situation of just two coffee producers here in Huila, Colombia. One who grows mostly specialty and Andres of Finca Monte Bonito, who grows mostly commodity. And what I discover is that some very simple, basic differences between these two farms translate to extremely different incentives for producers to get into specialty or not.

If we want to see more specialty coffee grown in the world, I found some clues as to what we, as a coffee drinking roasting community, need to do differently.

James Harper:

And no, it's not pay more. I'm James Harper, and this is Filter Stories. The untold stories hidden in your cup of coffee.

And this is my third series on the science of coffee. A journey.

James Harper:

So down in Huila, Colombia, I meet Andres on his farm, Finca Monte Bonito. And he was somebody who had tried to grow specialty coffee, but was prioritizing commodity coffee instead. I wanted to know why.

And my first thought was, well, maybe the costs are higher. Too high, in fact. To the point where it's just not worth it for Andres to get into specialty.

That was the thought that was kind of in my mind while I was there on his farm with the very limited amount of time that I had. And so when I was there, this plan formulated in my head. I was going to inquire, Andres, how do you grow commodity coffee?

Like, walk me through the steps. And then later, my plan was to go to visit a specialty coffee farm, contrast how they produce specialty coffee, and then see, you know, how much higher are the costs. Now, broadly, there are three steps to producing coffee on the farm.

One, you got to grow it. Two, you got to pick it. And three, process it.

Let's start with step one, growing it. And it really starts with a producer choosing the variety of coffee tree.

Andres:

Andres has actually planted quite a few.

James Harper:

But in terms of just a sheer number of trees planted, the vast majority are what are known in Colombia as conventional varieties. And like you heard earlier, these were the same ones down the mountain slope that I saw with Marco Medina of the Coffee Quest. Lots of small shrubby trees planted densely together, extremely productive, a lot of cherries on them.

But as we can see, a sea of red and green beans all the way down the mountain slope, so many.

Andres:

And now, step two, the picking.

James Harper:

Andres pays his pickers to try to prioritize the red ripe coffee cherry. But his pickers, they have to move really fast, so there could be some underripe greens and overripe blacks as well. And finally, step three, you have to process the coffee.

Remove all the juicy red flesh from around the coffee bean. And what Andres shows me is a very streamlined, very fast way of processing the coffee. So first, you have to strip off the red gooey coffee flesh.

And then this coffee sits in a fermentation tank for two days to ferment off any red gooey coffee flesh that's still stuck around the beans. And then what he has left is a green bean surrounded by hard yellow cases. This is coffee in parchment.

And he has to dry this parchment, so he spreads the parchment on the floor of his drying station, which is basically a greenhouse. In Spanish, it's called a secadora. And there, he dries it for 15 days.

Andres:

Puts them into some burlap sacks.

James Harper:

And that's it. This is a very streamlined, volume-oriented way of producing coffee. And in terms of flavors, Andres' coffee here, it's going to be mildly sweet, maybe some subtle, subtle hints of fruit.

But you're going to be hard pressed to get any particular distinctive coffee flavors, like, you know, oolong tea, red plum, fresh hops. So that's what it takes to grow commodity coffee here in Colombia. I then wanted to understand, cool, how is it done on a specialty coffee farm?

Where I was expecting the costs to be significantly higher. Butterflies dancing around the trees. So we hop in the car and drive to another part of Huila.

And quick aside, my god, the driver here, he had the best banging tunes. So a few hours later, we pull up by the side of a road. And the farm we have to get to, it is down the mountain, down a dirt track.

That is the only way to get to the farm. And I've got to say, it was quite a trek. We wandered our way past fences and animals.

There's some chickens roaming around. Go to horse. A cow that looked kind of hungry.

Oh, it wants the fruit that's fallen off the tree. So I fed it some fruit that was lying on the ground.

Marco Marin:

Lucky cow.

James Harper:

The dirt path, it started out nice and dry, but then it gets muddier and steeper and more and more slippery. Macro's down, he's down, macro's down, he's down, man down. I'm good, I'm good.

10 minutes later, finally, we reach the farm of our specialty focused producer.

Eric Bravo:

Bienvenidos a la Finca El Chaferote de la familia Bravo Urbano. And showing me around is one of the family. Mi nombre es Eric Bravo.

James Harper:

Eric Bravo.

Eric Bravo:

Tengo 30 años.

James Harper:

30 years old, has a wife and a daughter. Oh, she misses her paps. Eric Bravo's farm, Finca El Chaferote, is a spectacular place.

Wow. We walk a few minutes and before long, we find ourselves on the edge of a really steep canyon. It's extraordinary.

It's like a deep valley that kind of like cuts left, right, left, right, and there's a river, a fast flowing river. I can see the rapids, the white foam of the rapids down in the distance. And Eric Bravo's coffee trees go right down the sides of this steep canyon.

One misstep and you are falling down the side of the mountain. You know, you're going to knock your head against some coffee trees and you'll keep falling down. Jeez.

Eric tells me it takes maybe half an hour to get to the bottom of the farm near the water. And almost two hours to get back up. Well, two hours an hour, relaxed walking speed.

Now, Eric Bravo's farm, El Chaferote, it's placed really well in many competitions over the years. The flavors of his coffees are gorgeous. One roaster describes them as having bright citrus, ripe stone fruit, berries.

But also, for us coffee drinkers, this coffee does cost us three times more than a commodity coffee. And so when I was here on Eric Bravo's farm, I was thinking to myself, hmm, surely specialty costs more to produce. And so I wanted to know how Eric produces his specialty coffee.

Where are the costs higher compared to Andres's commodity focused farm, Finca Monte Bonito? Now you might be thinking, hold on, hold on. These two farms, like, they're very different geographically.

And that's why the flavors are different. And generally speaking, yes, that is true. But here, this is actually a very fair comparison, geographically speaking.

For example, when it comes to altitude, which can have a major impact on flavors, they both have very similar altitudes. Both 1700 meters. So there's that.

But also, I know for a fact that Andres on the commodity farm could grow amazing specialty coffees because I saw it happen on his neighbor's farm. Just a stone's throw away. His neighbor, Jacinto Lazada, grows delicious specialty coffees.

And it's just a couple of minutes walk down the road. So yes, generally speaking, geography 100% has a huge impact on the flavors different farms produce. But like, down here in Huila, in this comparison, they both have the same potential.

It just comes down to how the farms are managed. Okay, so here we are with Eric Bravo on Finca El Chiafrote. Let's start this comparison looking at how he grows his coffee.

And compared to Andres' commodity farm, Eric's trees are more spaced apart. They're taller, more spindly. These trees are a different variety from the catimo we saw on Andres' conventional farm.

Eric Bravo's trees here, they're known locally as exotic varieties. For example, like Pink Bourbon. In terms of cost, yes, the seedlings, they are quite a bit more expensive.

But in terms of everything else, Eric was like, yeah, these exotic trees, they perform just as well as conventional trees. For example, in terms of productivity, like how many cherries these trees grow.

Eric Bravo:

Eric Bravo was like, yeah, they produce just as well as commodity trees.

James Harper:

Resistance to pests and diseases. Yeah, about the same. And the fertilizing regime was the same across both farms.

So as far as growing coffee is concerned, no big differences between specialty and commodity. All right. Well, then what about the picking?

And Eric Bravo said, yeah, well, we are much more careful and selective in picking only the very reddest, ripest cherries. Much more selective than, you know, our neighbors. So yes, when it comes to the picking, there is a difference.

It does take more time. And of course, time is money. So great.

For specialty, picking costs more. OK, and now let's look at the final step, processing the coffee. And Eric does take an extra step that Andres doesn't.

Once the coffee cherries are picked, he submerges them in water first. That way he's able to remove the coffees which, you know, aren't as heavy, don't have as much sugar in them, therefore, you know, less potential for great flavors. But that extra step, it's not that much more expensive.

And then actually all the following steps, the process across both farms is basically the same. It's just that for Eric, everything takes a bit longer. An extra day or two fermenting the coffees, an extra week or two drying the coffees.

And his coffees, now in parchment, rest in plastic sacks on his farm for longer too.

Eric Bravo:

And then at the very, very end of this process, there is one extra step that is actually extremely laborious.

James Harper:

Eric hand sorts the coffee. They go through all the coffee parchment, picking out the bad beans one by one. So what's left is only the good beans.

And so after I left Eric Bravo's farm, El Chafarrote, the only big difference I noticed between his farm and Andres' commodity-focused farm was labor. It takes more time, care, and attention to produce specialty coffees. But now that question mark in my head just got even bigger.

Because why wouldn't Finca Monte Bonito, Andres' commodity farm, why wouldn't they want to grow specialty? Yes, okay, especially it takes more time and attention, but most years you can sell your specialty coffee for a much higher price. So you're going to get paid for that time.

And when I finally came home back to Berlin, I got stuck into the numbers and I found some intriguing answers that inflated that question mark in my mind even bigger. That's coming up next. So I came back to Berlin with a mystery on my hands.

The difference between these two farmers growing specialty coffee and not seems to be that one is prepared to put more time and attention into doing it than the other. But why wouldn't Andres from the commodity farm want to put in that time and attention? Well, to answer that, I need to know how much more profitable Andres' farm would be were it to get into specialty.

So I busted out one of my favorite apps in the whole world, Excel, and tried to get an answer. And let me tell you, this was such a complicated calculation, over 250 rows. And my biggest issue was actually just trying to get good production cost figures.

Because the thing is, I couldn't ask Eric or Andres for this information because, frankly, they didn't have it. They, like most family farms in Colombia, just don't keep this sort of detailed information on a readily accessible spreadsheet. So what I did instead was spend hours trolling the internet trying to find estimates, which I did finally get.

And if you want to see all my calculations as well as my sources, check out the link in the show notes. What the numbers suggested to me is that taking 2023 as the example year, because that's the year where I have the most data, Eric Bravo on Finca El Chafarrote, the specialty farm, his farm was twice as profitable overall growing specialty coffee compared to commodity. Double the profit!

Like, I know that specialty takes more time to produce, but jeez, if you're going to be able to earn double the profit, surely that's worth your time, no? And the story gets even better for Andres' commodity farm, Finca Monte Bonito. My calculations suggest switching a specialty, they'd be two and a half times more profitable.

Hmm, no, something fell off. It must be missing something. And then I thought, well, perhaps Finca El Chafarrote, Eric Bravo's specialty farm, maybe actually the picture isn't as rosy as it looks in my Excel spreadsheet.

Is it really the case that specialty is twice as profitable as commodity? So the wonderful Marco Madin of The Coffee Quest, he opted to call with me to help me out on the Spanish. And yeah, we got on the phone again with Eric Bravo of the specialty coffee farm El Chafarrote.

And as I was chatting with Eric, I realised there was a big thing I'd missed in my calculations. Eric Bravo told me that climate change was becoming a big issue. And that's the reason so much of the farmland is actually devoted to forest.

And it took me right back to when I was on his farm. And I remember the fact that for a lot of the time, we weren't walking through coffee bushes. We were in the middle of a forest.

So here's the thing. Eric Bravo's family actually owns eight hectares of land, of which only five and a half have coffee. The rest is just a forest reserve.

Oh my God. I am getting trapped in the vines here. And Eric tells me that to grow specialty coffee, he needs this forest reserve because it keeps his farm cooler.

Eric Bravo:

Which in turn helps his coffee trees to produce higher quality flavours.

James Harper:

So I realised I had to factor that into the calculations. Eric Bravo's family has made a choice to not produce coffee on two and a half hectares of their land. So although the farm is eight hectares in total, they grow coffee on only five and a half hectares of it, which means there's two and a half hectares of land that they are choosing to make no money on.

And Eric tells me that's a tradeoff you got to make if you want great specialty coffee flavours. And when I thought back to Andres' commodity farm, the thing that really stuck out to me when I visited...

Marco Marin:

Something else about them is that there is no trees. There is no shadow to the...

James Harper:

There are no shade trees, this is fully exposed. There were hardly any shade trees at all on his commodity farm. And so it's possible that if Finca Montepulito wanted to go into specialty, they would have to devote a lot more of their land to forest.

And so I ran the calculations again. Now remember, my early calculations suggested that Andres on Finca Montepulito, the commodity farm, their farm overall would earn over double the profit if they went specialty. But once you factor in, they might have to take a third of their land out of cultivation and plant forest instead.

Switching to specialty would increase their farm's profitability by two-thirds. Okay, sure, it's not more than double the profit, but still, it's two-thirds more profitable. Like if Andres chooses to grow specialty, he works harder, puts in more time, the entire farm would be two-thirds more profitable.

Surely that's worth the extra time, no? And so again, that question mark in my mind just ballooned bigger and bigger. Why doesn't Andres grow more specialty coffee?

Who wouldn't want to work harder to earn a salary two-thirds higher? Hell, if I had a boss and they said, Hey James, I want you to work harder and I'll pay you more, 70%. I'd be like, yeah, sure, I'll take that.

Well, then again, how much more work are we talking about here? I realized what I needed to do was speak to Andres again. Coming up next, that's what I try to do.

So Eric Bravo of Finca El Chaffarrote, the specialty-focused farm, I calculated that Eric choosing to grow specialty increased the farm's profitability by a lot. But he has to work harder for it. And so what I wanted to know from Andres from Finca Monte Bonito, the commodity-focused farm, why don't you want to work harder and earn maybe two-thirds more profit by prioritizing specialty instead?

What I needed to do was speak again with Andres and ask him a direct question. Why don't you produce more specialty coffee? Because here's the thing, I actually didn't ask him that question during my visit.

The visit was very, very short and it was an oversight on my part. And that wasn't the only mistake I made. I also didn't have his contact details.

So now here I was back in Berlin with the minor problem of not even knowing how to get in contact with him again. So I did a lot of googling. I was like, well, how do I find this guy?

I had his name, name of his farm, could not find him on Facebook or Instagram anywhere. So what I did was reach out to a neighboring farmer who did actually know Andres and gave me Andres' WhatsApp. And to help support me with the Spanish in this conversation was the extremely talented Lucia Solis of the Making Coffee podcast, who I've been talking to a lot recently because we're making a podcast series on coffee farming.

It's coming out next year. We're super excited for it. I think if you love this episode, you're going to love that series.

But anyway, Lucia and I are on the phone with Andres while he's in his car in the local city of Pitalito down in Huila. And I got to say, he was looking very sharp. Well-combed, slick black hair, a nice shirt.

Actually, he told me he was studying international business at university. So yeah, definitely looked the part. So finally, with this conversation, I could ask him directly, why don't you grow specialty coffee?

Now, as we heard at the beginning, he has tried to produce specialty coffee. 3,000 kilos of it. And he tells me what I already know, that it's more labor intensive.

But specifically for him, though, because this extra labor would fall on his shoulders and not on the shoulders of the four employees they have, the workers on the farm. Because specialty, it takes a lot of knowledge and care and attention. And he's not confident he'd be able to delegate that to his team.

And as he was telling me this, I thought to myself, OK, sure, I get it, a lot of work on your shoulders. But still, the farm could be two-thirds more profitable. But then he mentioned that trying to produce specialty, it's risky.

The fact is, there is no guarantee that, for one, his coffees are going to taste amazing out of the gate, two, that he will even be able to find buyers to pay high enough prices for his specialty coffees, and three, he's going to have to invest a lot of money to change the farm. So he has to pay off all those debts for getting into specialty in the first place, and basically just tells me it's a massive risk, a lot more time, just not worth it for me.

James Harper:

And there it is, I had my answer.

James Harper:

The question mark in my mind grew even bigger still. Because, OK, yeah, sure, I understand here how Andres, in his position, he has decided not to prioritize specialty, which is a sensible decision. But on the other hand, here I had this other farmer, Eric Bravo, with the specialty coffee farm Finca El Chafadote, and Eric decided to get into specialty to take the risk.

And so why did Eric Bravo take that risk, but Andres here is deciding not to?

James Harper:

That, coming up next.

James Harper:

So to understand why Eric Bravo took the risk to get into specialty, whereas Andres doesn't want to, the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of a microeconomics course I'd taken back at university, a course that explored the risks and rewards behind making a decision, the risk-reward trade-off. And so I got deeper into my Excel spreadsheets, added yet more rows to it, and when I started to factor in some really basic things like the size of the farm and also the amount of family living off the farm, all of a sudden I could see so clearly, financially speaking, why these two producers chose to get into specialty or not. If I was in either of their positions, I would make the exact same choices they have made.

So let's start with Andres from Finca Montepenido, the commodity-focused farm. OK, now here's the thing. His farm's actually pretty big by Colombian standards.

10 hectares. And his family, who lives and works on the farm, is pretty tight, pretty small. So the farm, it's a family business.

How much do they earn every year? Now, to take 2023 as like the reference year, because that's where I have the most data, I estimate roughly that they're living on about $10,000, maybe a bit more. That's their income for the year as a family.

OK, is that a high income? Is that a low income? How much is that relative to Colombian standards of living?

And actually, that work has been done by Fairtrade in partnership with other organizations. And they calculate that the typical Colombian farming family needs to earn about $7,000 per year to be kind of comfortable, enough to pay for shoes for kids to go to school, to have a modest family vehicle, put nutritious food on the table. Nothing fancy here.

Enough to get kids educated, get them to university. $7,000 per year. And by the way, most family coffee farms in Colombia don't earn that.

But for Andres' family, I calculate that they are comfortably above $7,000. They're earning $10,000. And in fact, Andres himself, he's going to university.

When I called him, he was in the family car. Like, this is the family that has a little bit of money behind them. They're setting one of the kids up, Andres, for a future.

And so, if you were in Andres' position, if you were his father, who most likely owns the farm, would you take that risk to do specialty and had all that extra work onto your shoulders when you already earn enough, more than enough, to get your kids set up for the future? And so, going back to that risk-reward trade-off, Andres' father could get in the specialty, earn two-thirds more. But is the risk worth the reward?

I wouldn't do it. Not in a million years. Would you?

Genuinely, would you? Like, if you think you would, please email me. Let me know.

Because I just can't imagine anyone taking that kind of risk in that situation. But why then did Eric Bravo on the specialty farm take that risk? Coming up, I show you how the size of a coffee farm and how it's distributed amongst the family makes an enormous difference to your incentive to take the risk to get in the specialty.

Okay, so as we saw, Andres on Finca Monte Bonito, commodity-focused farm. By doing commodity coffee, as a family, they're fine financially. The kids go to university.

They can afford a modest car. They're in a much better position than the majority of coffee farmers in Colombia. So from my perspective, it makes no sense to get in the specialty, because they'd have to take a huge risk, take a lot of debt, work so much harder to maybe earn two-thirds more profit.

I wouldn't do it. But Eric Bravo from Finca El Chafarrote, he has chosen to go all-in on specialty. So why did he take that risk?

And for me to understand this, I really had to take a step back and look at how his farm is structured. Who owns what? Now, this bit gets kind of complicated, but bear with me.

His farm in totality, right? It's eight hectares. Great, eight hectares.

But remember, two and a half hectares of that land is forest. So let's shrink the farm down. So we only have five and a half hectares of actual coffee-growing land.

Now, I've been saying it's Eric's farm, but actually it belongs to his dad. And Eric Bravo's father made the decision to subdivide the farm amongst all his children and his wife and himself. So what that means is that Eric's portion of the farm is actually quite small, half a hectare big.

So Eric needs to make a living off a farm that is half a hectare. And things get even tighter still, because he has this arrangement with his father, his brother, and his sister. Where basically, the revenue he earns for his half hectare of land, a quarter of that revenue goes to him to live on.

A quarter goes to his dad, who pays for the fertilizer. A quarter goes to his brother, who helps him out with the trees. And a quarter goes to his sister, who does the cooking.

And so, of that half hectare of land that he owns, he actually only gets a quarter of the revenue for himself. Okay, and so now let's look at what Eric would earn if he chose to grow commodity coffee compared to specialty on his half hectare of land. I calculate that if he grew only commodity coffee on his half hectare of land, he would earn for himself, his partner, and his daughter, for the whole year, $500.

$500 for the entire year. That would be his major source of income for the entire year. But in 2023, I calculated that Eric going into specialty, his farm was twice as profitable, which means he earned $1,000.

He doubled his income. And so, from my perspective, I can understand why Eric would be prepared to put in that extra work, take the risk, because the difference living on $500 a year compared to $1,000 a year is huge. Let me help you conceptualize it, right?

Imagine if you're earning $100,000 a year. And if you are, good for you, send me a check. Now, by global standards, you are earning a lot.

And if you earn double that, right? Look, frankly, your quality of life, it ain't going to change that much. You're still going to be super comfortable.

If you live in a city, you know, hey, you might get an extra room in your apartment. It is not going to change your life in a meaningful way. But what if, for example, you were earning $15,000 a year and you lived in like a European or an American city?

$15,000 a year living in a big city, that's pretty tight. But if you were to double your income to $30,000, that would be a big change to your lifestyle. That could be the difference between moving out of our share flat and your infuriating flatmates who keep you up all night and getting your own flat where you can sleep peacefully.

Plus, you might be able to pay for a foreign vacation once a year. On top of all that, you can also put money aside for some savings to help you out during hard times. That's investing in a course to level up your skills so you can get a better job.

And so now, imagine the fundamental differences in your lifestyle between earning $500 a year and $1,000 a year. We're talking whether or not you can afford medicines that are going to keep you alive. Like that's the difference for basic, basic school supplies to keep your kids in school.

So for me personally, I would totally work harder to grow specialty coffee to make that kind of difference in my life. Now I should also say that Eric Bravo isn't only earning $1,000 a year from his coffee farm. He's earning money working the plots of land owned by his other siblings.

I suspect his partner also brings in income. And his food costs are pretty low because he grows a lot of his own food on the farm. When I was there looking at his coffee trees, I noticed blue strings hanging down to the ground where tomato vines had hooked on and were growing up and above the coffee trees.

And down below by the coffee plants, I saw squash and cucumbers nestled in the soil. Despite all this, it seems to me that that extra effort he puts in to grow specialty and earn more profit, that goes a long way in his life. And so there it is.

I think I finally had an answer I was happy with. An answer to help me understand why Andres on the commodity farm Finca Monteponito has chosen not to get into specialty and why Eric Bravo on Finca El Chafarrote has. This journey helped me understand that farm size and then how it's structured amongst family really changes how much you can earn and what the incentives are to put in the extra time and take risks to grow specialty.

And I think it's pretty clear that if we want to see more specialty coffee grown on farms like Andres', I think there's a part of him that would work harder to earn two-thirds more. But it's the risk that just kills it for him. And I think that is the key.

If we want to see more specialty coffee grown from a particular place, we need to take away that risk for producers. And this journey also made me reflect on some of the reasons that we hear in the specialty industry around why farmers choose to get into specialty or not. I, myself, used to write these tasting cards when I used to work for a well-known roaster here in Berlin.

These were the tasting cards that would accompany the coffees that we sold. I was just following the formula set down by the owner. And the reason we would write why farmers chose to get into specialty was always some combination of passion for specialty and a hard work ethic.

But this journey showed to me there is clearly so much more. And roasteries that only communicate hard work and passion overly simplifies a very nuanced, complex set of incentives. I think we can work harder to convey that nuance to coffee drinkers.

Because it's not just about hard work and a passion for specialty. It's about survival. It's about risk tolerance.

It's about making a decent income. It's about the next generation. And if the specialty community, you know, drinkers, roasters, if we understood this better and communicated it more, then I think there'd be more willingness from us, our community, to take away the risks that are stopping many farmers like Andres from embracing specialty cultivation.

And I still maintain that I would like to see a world with more specialty in it. Because I think it is great for everybody. It's great for us, roasters and drinkers, in terms of better flavors.

It's great for farmers in terms of better prices. And it also tends to be better for the environment. We just have to make it less risky.

So that's my sermon over. Coming up in the next episode, we go back to Eric Bravo's farm and we look at the journey his coffee takes from the depth of the valley where his farm is all the way through Colombia. Oh my gosh, so much dust in the air.

Look at those plumes of dust coming off the road. Down to the Caribbean coast. This is a wild journey where so many things can go wrong to ruin Eric's beautiful coffees.

Marco Marin:

It's a leap in the roof. Tripping on coffee bags.

James Harper:

Sometimes chip beans or broken beans.

James Harper:

Trucks could get stolen or robbed. This is the sort of adventure that every single coffee bean we drink in the morning has gone on. Oh my lord, here we go.

A story that really helped me just appreciate my morning cup of coffee so much more. Thanks so much for listening. The Science of Coffee is produced by me, James Harper.

I also write and play all that piano music you're listening to. If you enjoyed the episode, please spread the word. Share it on Instagram.

Take a screen grab of your podcast player, tag me at filterstoriespodcast and that way I can thank you personally. Also on my Instagram, you can see Eric Bravo's spectacular farm for yourself and Andres's densely planted commodity catimor trees. I handle again at filterstoriespodcast or follow the link in the show notes.

I want to give a big thanks to the coffee producer Jacinto Lozada of Finca El Paraíso. He produces gorgeous coffees. He was extremely generous with his time.

I learned a lot from him and he also connected me to Andres. And so what is left in this series? The next batch of episodes focus on the science of water.

I help you figure out what water you have and what water you want. And I take you into some fascinating tastings and the factory of BWT, the water filtration manufacturer. And at the cap of this season, we are taking a philosophical, anthropological, sociological deep dive.

Asking the question, what is specialty coffee? You're going to hear the inception story of specialty coffee from the people who made history. You'll hear where our industry's values came from and why they might be shifting.

Now, if you haven't heard it yet, in the first two episodes, we take a delicious stroll through the world of cold brew. And alongside Toddy, the maker of cold brew kits, I show you why cold brew is able to pull flavors from coffee that you just can't get with hot water. We then go deep into coffee roasting and I show you the extraordinary systems the roaster manufacturer Provat has created to get us consistent roasts at unbelievable scale.

And in the episode before this one, we do a deep dive into the business model of a specialty Brazilian coffee farm. In the farm we focus on, Fazenda Paraiso, we look at how they're trying to find better buyers, including using the services of Algorano, a green direct trade platform connecting producers with roasters.

James Harper:

Thanks again for listening and I'll speak to you next time.

_____

Below is a synopsis of calculations to estimate farm profitability for Finca Monte Bonito (Andres’ commodity farm) and Finca El Chaferote (Erick Bravo’s specialty farm). It ran to over 250 rows in Excel!

My two primary sources of farm costs come from these studies:

Informe Costos - Coffee Production Costs 2020 Colombia - Sustainable Trade Platform facilitated by Solidaridad

Fairtrade Living Income Reference Prices for Coffee from Colombia, updated December 2022