By Taskeen Khan

A cup of coffee in Bella’s backyard (Photo credit: Bella Black)

Most people are 75% water. Bella Black is 75% coffee. Head of Coffee at Kavnia, Bella met with me to share the inside scoop on sustainability and coffee. From what consumers should look for when shopping to what her own company is doing to go green, Bella had the tea on the coffee industry. So, grab your cappuccino or cup of joe, it is time to take the first sip into the world of coffee.

Bella has worked in the specialty coffee industry for sixteen years and believes that if we want to have coffee to drink for years to come, sustainability must be emphasized.

Bella explained that for coffee to be part of a sustainable food system the environment, community, and economy need to be considered. This means not only focusing on green growing practices, but also making sure farmers have health care, education, equitable working conditions, job security, and other resources.

The Story Behind The Price

Bella explained that because the journey that coffee takes from farmer to roaster to seller to consumer is not very visible, consumers often don’t fully understand how much effort goes into producing it. A coffee plant needs to grow for three to five years before its fruit can be harvested. Each tree produces one pound of finished coffee per year. If a person uses one, one pound bag of coffee beans each week, they would need 52 trees to support a single year of their coffee drinking habit. Imagine scaling that up to provide enough coffee for your neighborhood, or state, and how much work it takes to care for that many trees.

“When I hear folks say "$2 for a cup of coffee, that's too much!" I get so frustrated” says Bella. “But I can't blame them because as an industry, we've disconnected a lot from the product. It's gone through so many hands, transformed so many times from plant matter, to raw bean, to roasted bean, to espresso, to a fancy pumpkin spice latte. Of course it's value has been obscured.”

To emphasize the importance of understanding where coffee comes from, Bella shared the story of a grower, Sakami Coffee Farm, a husband and wife run farm in Kenya. Their coffee trees are planted alongside macadamia nut and avocados trees, which supply the growers with food, and can be sold for additional income. The water from processing the coffee beans is reused to irrigate fields that cattle graze on, and the manure from the cattle as well as the depulped coffee cherries are used to fertilize the trees. And to top it off, the farm’s washing station and irrigation is powered by solar energy. Sakami coffee is more expensive, but when buyers learn the story behind it, they are better able to understand what they are paying for.

What To Look For When Shopping

For buyers who want to support sustainably grown coffee, Bella’s first suggestion is to check if roasters provide information about their growers. Smaller roasting companies may not have detailed information about growers on their website or coffee bag. So, Bella suggests reaching out and asking for information about their growers. If roasters know their growers, there is a greater chance they have a positive, collaborative connection with them. Secondly, research individual roasters to determine if they are paying fairly for their beans. Finally, verifying if roasters are working with philanthropic organizations that are local to their farmers is another way to see where their values lie.

Endorsements such as USDA organic, Smithsonian Bird Friendly, and Rainforest Alliance Certified are also good signs. Bella took a moment to break these down.

Farmers who use organic growing practices can pay an inspection fee to be organic certified. Once certified, they are paid a premium for their beans. However, the fee can be a barrier for small farms. Smithsonian Bird Friendly coffee is organic, grown in a way that provides birds habitat, and farmers who take part have free access to sustainability training from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Bella’s favorite certification is through the Rainforest Alliance. There is a fee for farmers but the certification ensures they have access to community development, workers rights resources, housing, and PPE for applying chemicals. As importantly, the coffee is grown in a way that conserves forest and builds climate resilience.

Bella also suggests checking if your coffee is shade grown or sun-grown. Shade grown coffee is cultivated under the canopy of other trees. This provides habitat for wildlife and reduces the need for fertilizer and pesticides. Coffee trees grown this way are also less sensitive to climate change, since the forest-like conditions act as a buffer to extreme weather. In contrast, sun grown coffee is cultivated in monoculture rows, which are more efficient for harvesting, and result in a cheaper product, but require deforestation.

Giving Back

The onus to support sustainable coffee is not only on buyers, but also coffee roasters and sellers. Bella also has experience with this side of the equation. In her previous role at an organic coffee company, Bella was involved in a program that purchased coffee from women growers in Peru and donated money back to them. The growers used the funds to build a trout aquaculture system. This provided their community a year round source of protein and additional fertilizer for the coffee trees. One of the most important aspects of the project was that the growers self identified a concern (food insecurity) and designed their own solution (trout aquaculture). For Bella, this was a way to decolonize coffee and create a positive relationship between farmers, roasters, and sellers.

More recently, Bella has had a chance to delve into sustainable packaging. As Head of Coffee at Kavnia, Bella is helping to develop their new ice packs, which are used to keep the cold brew coffee they ship cold. Each ice pack is a compostable plastic liner filled with frozen coffee grounds, a byproduct of creating their cold brew. This gives the coffee grounds a second life, and the grounds can have a third life if the recipient adds them to their compost bin or garden.

Bella emphasized that the overall goal is paying farmers more and providing them the resources they need, so they can continue supporting themselves. Vital to this is teaching buyers the story of where their coffee comes from, and encouraging them to seek out this information when purchasing coffee.

Thanks to our conversation, I now know how important it is to understand where a coffee bean has been when approaching the issue of sustainability. I’ve learned a latte, and can’t wait to see what the future of sustainable coffee looks like.

To learn more about Bella and Kavnia coffee, check out @pentagrampotager and @kavnia.coffee on Instagram.

Brewing Up Sustainable Coffee

The Story Behind The Price

What To Look For When Shopping

Giving Back

@FarmerNickNYC