By Etelle Higonnet
Coffee. Nectar of the gods. Lifesaving energy booster that helps many of us start our days. Ubiquitously consumed around the world by people like me – without my beloved morning brew I am something of a discombobulatedgrumpyhedgehog. And yet, this top, globally traded agri-commodity is also a major driver of deforestation, mass extinction, child labour, slavery, and other abuses.
Few consumers realise that between only 1-10% of coffee’s retail price ends up in the coffee farmers’ hands, most of whom do not earn a living wage, and are subsisting in grinding poverty. (Sorry for this downer, please don’t read any further till you’ve had a good strong cup to brace for the rest!)
How coffee industry drives deforestation
Coffee is thought to be one of the top seven commodities driving deforestation worldwide – not as bad as cattle, but right up there with cocoa, rubber, and wood fibre; sometimes even nipping at the heels of the notorious palm oil industry. Coffee replaced about 1.9 million hectares of forest from 2001 to 2015. Coffee doesn’t just kill forests though. Pesticide-soaked monoculture coffee is a significant contributor to the mass extinction we are in, especially the insect apocalypse.
Bizarrely, almost no NGOs work to document abuses in the coffee industry, but thanks to some fearless journalists, we know quite a bit about abuses in coffee supply chains from Mexico to Vietnam, Guatemala to Ethiopia, Brazil to Cote d’Ivoire, Honduras to Indonesia. Despite valiant efforts by some pioneering investigators though, not much is said however about horrific conditions in the coffee industry, compared to palm oil, cattle, or even cocoa.
So, to sum things up, we know the coffee industry is rife with abuses, which get short shrift in public discourse. But how big of a problem is this, really? The answer: it is a BIG problem. With circa 500 billion cups of coffee consumed annually, the global coffee market size was valued at $127bn (£100bn) in 2022. When coffee production is harmful, it affects a large portion of our global population, because coffee is produced by 25 million smallholders and it’s thought 125 million people worldwide depend on coffee for their livelihoods.
Coffee needs regulation
My next real question is: who will fix the problem? The bitter answer is that lawmakers in the USA and UK have turned their backs on any responsibility to step in and regulate.
The proposed FOREST Act in the U.S. which was just introduced a few weeks ago in the Senate would do a beautiful job regulating palm oil, cocoa, rubber, cattle, and soy – but not coffee. America is also not alone in turning its back on the coffee industry’s dark crimes. Also in December, the U.K. finally announced details of its long-awaited deforestation legislation, but you guessed it: the regulation doesn’t cover coffee, either.
On the bright side, the European Parliament stepped courageously up to the plate with their beautiful new law called the European Deforestation Regulation. This EUDR targets coffee alongside cattle, cocoa, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood. Unfortunately, though, the EU only consumes around 30% of global coffee. If 70% of the global market experiences little or no accountability, there’s not much hope for system reform.
The inescapable conclusion is that if other coffee consuming countries – or coffee producer countries – don’t step up to regulate, the industry will continue to enslave and abuse its workers and kill forests.
It’s time for regulators around the world to wake up, recognise the urgency, and do the right thing: regulate coffee.
This article is republished from Mongabay under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
