Alex's Coffee Adventure

Emerson tells us to “always do what you are afraid to do.” Thanks to the Dale family, I spent eight weeks very far outside of my comfort zone immersing myself in the world of coffee production. With no Spanish, little professional coffee tasting experience, and just the Whatsapp number of a guy who runs a coffee farm, I went off to Colombia. What I learned there has certainly changed the direction of my future.

And what an adventure it was! The stories I gathered, I’ll tell for the rest of my life; the knowledge I gleaned I’ll carry throughout my career, and the coffee I brought back is the utmost privilege to enjoy.

I spent my last week in Bogotá traveling the city (read: drinking coffee) and thinking about what’s next. In that time, I reconnected with Andrew Hetzel, who is largely responsible for setting me up for the summer, and a few other valuable connections in the industry, to talk about the coffee industry as a whole. This time, I approached learning from these experts from a new perspective, asking not about the function of the industry, but rather its challenges and its future.

It’s clear from these discussions and more reading that I’ve done that there’s really one central problem: the coffee price crisis. I wrote earlier about how the C price has collapsed, and has been virtually stagnant since 1970 (adjusting for inflation, it’s decreased significantly). 24 million coffee farmers around the world rely on the a fair price to feed their families and live their lives, yet a single good Brazilian season can cut their annual income in half. (Brazil is responsible for about half of global production.) Even more damning to me were the stories of how profitable coffee used to be for Colombian farmers. Miguel’s grandfather’s family lived comfortably as coffee farmers in the lowlands of Quindio. This area is almost entirely devoid of coffee trees now, having been replaced by pasture for cows, plantains, or other commercial development.

Where to go From Here

After getting Q certified and learning the intimate details of coffee production, I can genuinely say that I have professional qualifications in the industry. My problem now is in being a bit overwhelmed by all of the options I have before me, unsure of what future I might embrace. It’s clear to me that I have to use the resources I have to help others, and there are millions of coffee producers across the globe entirely at the whims of macroeconomic market forces.

One of the coffee podcasts I listened to (Ric Rhinehart’s speech at the Re:Co symposium this year) had a line that left an indelible impression on me, as the speaker talked about what commodity traders’ view on the price crisis can be: “the best cure for low pries is low prices.” The implication is that as coffee prices go down and farmers abandon coffee farms, a more limited supply will drive prices up in a natural market cycle. The obvious problem with this perspective is that it is entirely devoid of humanity, in that the human cost of “farmers abandoning their farms” is several years without their only source of income for millions of people.

So, price. That’s one idea. I could try to learn more about the industry’s response to the price crisis, as more and more influential groups devote resources to it.

At the same time, I’m halfway through a physics degree at Princeton with a certificate in sustainable energy – hopefully researching solar panels or battery tech. That’s a cool idea, and I’m really excited to keep studying it, and there are lots of important jobs in that area as well!

In thinking about my future, I think it is helpful to think about branches nested from a search tree. In that case, there are two master branches that are increasingly clear: working in coffee, or working in renewable energy. Before you ask – yes, there is probably some cool way to combine them from a sustainability perspective, and who knows, this could be cool too. But what’s most exciting is how many sub-branches are nested in each career path because of the rapid pace of development and growth of both industries.

I know that I don’t just want to open a fancy cafe. First of all, I kind of have already done this at the Princeton Coffee Club. Second of all, after seeing how little of the cost of a coffee trickles back down to producers, selling expensive coffee kind of rubs me the wrong way. Of course, not every cafe is bad – in fact, many of the expensive specialty ones are the good ones that pay farmers fair prices – but there needs to be some bigger change than opening another “woke” coffee shop with paper straws.

For now, I have another exciting semester at Princeton coming up with great physics classes and a fun coffee shop to run. I’ll have lots of chances to make lots of choices, and I will do so with a newfound understanding of the challenges of the coffee industry in a global marketplace.

Signing off for now – I may post here from time to time about coffee things that I learned. Thank you so much for following along, I really hope you enjoyed these updates.

Yours truly,

Alex

P.S. I cupped the pink bourbon yesterday – 86.25!