Good Work in Coffee

This short essay was originally published in the 14th issue of Coffee People Zine (September 2021) and is used here with permission.

My name is Matthew Ehresman and I am a coffee roaster. I have been working in this capacity for some sixteen years and it’s the closest thing to a “calling” that I’ve ever known.

I find beauty in its complexity. In its diversity. In its ability to connect people a world away. Yet, this too is why I find my work to be troubling. For as I find peace in the process; I am also aware of my complicity in the commodification of agriculture. I am aware of the immensity of waste in my work, both here as well as at origin. I am aware that in speaking of “origin” I am speaking of a global industry that on its whole cares seemingly little of its impact on local ecosystems or of the people that work that land on which coffee grows.

Yet still I feel at home in my work. I feel value in my efforts to do good work in my own community as well as in my efforts to purchase coffees from peoples and communities who think likewise. To live and work within my means. To showcase frugality over lavish wastefulness.

But my impact is minuscule and the industry continues to ravage native biodiversities both here at home as well as, to perhaps a greater extent, abroad with oppressive acts of waste and pollution; all in the perpetual search for profits.

So then, are my efforts to do good work little more than self-congratulatory vanity? Is it even possible to do good work in an endeavor that necessitates a global exchange of goods?

Alas, to these questions, I do not know.

However, I do know that, as an industry, we must do more to end our complicity in acts of waste, pollution, and inequality.

Together we have marched against oil companies… Yet we continue to subsidize them by powering our machines with their product and by lining our green, roasted, and brewed coffee in their byproducts. We have marched against inequalities in the supply chain… Yet we continue, in many cases, to pay farmers (even with our “premiums”) well under cost of production. We have marched against the use of pesticides and deforestation… Yet we continue to purchase coffees that are grown with these methodologies.

I ask here that we use our cumulative purchasing power to move the needle towards true sustainability and away from these eminently avoidable acts of waste, pollution, and inequality.

In short, we must learn to value this good work as much, if not more, than how much we value a point improvement in cup quality.  To this end, let us all (myself very much included) stop writing of our company’s “sustainability efforts” and truly do the good work necessary to just be sustainable. Today.