Wednesday, May 14, 2003


focus on sustainability

long-time readers have heard me go on and on about the world-price depression known as the coffee crisis and the human misery it brings to those who grow and pick coffee, even as we here are paying more and more for the supermarket can coffees and upscale starbucks frou-frou.

obviously such a difficult situation can only call for a multi-prong solution on many levels. one of those levels is aiming coffee agriculture at sustainable development, and getting the so-called big four global coffee companies -- kraft, sara lee, p&g, nestle -- to help. and obviously, this is not something they will be easily persuaded to do.

thus i was deeply interested to see today's article in the financial times in which a kraft representative appeared to hop on this bandwagon. or is it just saavy marketing? the problem is that those guys have a credibility gap deeper than the marianas trench.

since it's hard to read the full-text of ft stuff online, i've actually uploaded this article on my site. it's in adobe acrobat format, and will frankly take most people about 3 minutes to download (it has big pictures). still, it's an interesting read, and i highly recommend it.

speaking of starbucks, i had the great privilege today to stop by the starbucks at ground zero with the esteemed head of the scaa, ted lingle. his book on cupping coffee is it. he was kind enough to share a barely drinkable cappucino with me in all politeness in the middle of a super-busy whirlwind morning.

we were supposed to talk about our plans to help don schoenholdt of gillies coffee survive the ridiculous persecution gillies is experiencing from the city of new york, whose environmental division has claimed the perfume of fresh coffee -- that delicious scent coiling lazily from your cup -- is a horrible unhealthy pollutant morally equal to oh, gosh, the west nile virus or something.

what will the city protect us from next? the aroma of fresh-baked croissants wafting from jacques torres on a sunny spring morning? that horrid health hazard posed by the scent of roses drifting from the florists' shops?

but -- and this is another one of those signs about how great the coffee business really is -- our conversation soon moved into a meditation on love and compassion. ted lingle, a somewhat reserved man who went to west point, looked me straight in the eye: "you only get to keep what you give away," he said softly.

it was a pure erich schiffmann moment -- "love is what's left when you let go of everything you don't need," i replied. this is why i love coffee.

posted by fortune | 7:45 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments