The green coffee value chain is broken...

Bold ideas and actions are needed to fix it.

But a thorough understanding of the context is
required for any efforts to be successful.
​
Most of us in the coffee industry know that something is very wrong when producers are often forced to sell their harvest below cost and stuck in cycles of poverty and scarcity, while the downstream industry experiences record profits and growth.

There is more interest than ever in "sustainability", but brand reputations are constantly laundered via anecdotal gestures and billions are spent on aid efforts to temporarily treat symptoms rather than root problems. On the other hand, scapegoats are blamed for problems they did not cause and absolved of others that they continue to profit from.

Change, restructuring, and conscientious participation from all stakeholders are needed if coffee farming is to be a viable livelihood for the next generation and part of the solution to the climate crisis that is upon us. In order to design and execute the necessary restructuring, geographically and culturally distant actors in the value chain must learn to respect and empathize with each other. All must have a thorough understanding of the context, structures, and systems that govern that sector today.

If we continue to act to treat symptoms without understanding the full context of the problems, we only waste resources, effort, and trip over our own feet. 

This book aims to provide a broad explanation of the economics, mechanics, and power structures that define the industry today. It is a readable and digestible synthesis of thousands of pages of academic literature and expert interviews from disciplines ranging from economics to anthropology and from environmental science to history.

It busts myths, tells hard truths, highlights positive innovations, and provides readers with the foundation necessary to be an integral part of the charge toward an emerging new, inclusive, respectful coffee trade. 

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Karl Wienhold
Author

Karl is a consultant, researcher and organizer of postcolonial rural development and agricultural value chains. He is dedicated to trying to better understand and undo extractive economic power structures that have oppressed people and degraded ecosystems to enrich others since colonial times. He is particularly keen on regenerative agriculture, the solidary economy, tropical cash crops, circular economies, and generally fitting square pegs through round holes.

He was once a management consultant and mercenary for global capitalism, focused on international trade and competitive strategy. In 2013, he decided to repurpose this weapon to empower marginalized smallholder coffee farmers in Colombia to participate actively in the international trade of their produce, founding the farmers' collective Cedro Alto.

Roast Magazine
Publisher

Roast is a leading coffee industry publication, fearlessly and gracefully taking on the technical, social, cultural, and environmental aspects of the coffee industry. They don't shy away from disruption and innovation, and as such, enthusiastically assumed the task of helping to create and share Cheap Coffee.

​Subscribing to the magazine wouldn't be a bad idea.

T E S T I M O N I A L S

I'm looking forward to Cheap Coffee to provide much needed clarity to the complex economic systems dictating how thousands of people in the coffee world live and make a living.

C'pher Gresham
SEED SPOT, Washington DC