It starts by having the guts to face the sad truth.

The sad truth is that there is no equality in the coffee industry. 70% of all coffee is still traded as a hollow commodity by men in suits who see only numbers, not quality, people or ecosystems. Certification is expensive and its impact questionable. Specialty coffee is an amazing tool to award farmers for quality, but leaves farmers vulnerable when traders don’t return year after year. Large coffee companies are not truly invested in empowering farmers - their measures taken to aid producers are more of a greenwashing effort than anywhere near a real solution. In fact, they continue to exploit farmers and are even starting to learn the language of specialty coffee, making it harder to distinguish good from bad. Since 2013s, we have proved that there are many people who want to use their purchasing power to change this reality. But with hardly any independent and transparent players in the market, how can we expect the final consumer to know how to do this?

If this reality continues and prices stay as they are, coffee lands will look very different in thirty years. With no means for farmers to invest, soils will deplete and erode, they will send their children to cities for hope of a better life, rely only on subsistence farming - or worse, resort to producing illegal crops such as coca and opium for drug lords. Beyond not having any coffee anymore, the world will have been responsible for a lot of poverty simply by not acting when we could have.

The coffee world today

farmers

and producer organisations represent 10% of the total value of coffee trade, even though they provide at least 50%.

traders

and the stock market exist mainly to exploit information asymmetry, in effect to build a wall between farmers and their customers.

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coffee industry

is increasingly consolidated, powerful, dictates all trade terms and can get away with ever lower coffee prices to increase profit.

Consumers

cannot see behind the wall that traders and the coffee industry puts up. Very limited traceability and communication with farmers.

If we want real change, we need to imagine a clear and bold image of the ideal coffee world - and work towards it.

In our eyes, the main issue in the coffee world is simple: as consumers, farmers and roasters, we don’t fully realise our power to create lasting change ourselves. Rather than a positive and powerful vision, there is a doomsday attitude about where the coffee world is headed, influenced by the media and dire reporting. This, to us is the biggest obstacle in creating change. What we need is to concretely imagine and draw out an equal coffee world, one where farmers and roasters are equally represented - and transparently work towards it. If we are true to our ideals in all our actions and the way we run our organisations, this vision will slowly manifest itself as reality.

Rather than believe labels and fall for fancy marketing, we must rediscover our common sense and our direct, human connection to everyone we buy from. Concretely, if we can’t see or don’t trust the source of our coffee, we just shouldn’t drink it. Eventually, we will attain a critical mass and poor farmers and degraded coffee lands will start to disappear. It sounds hard to imagine, but because we are showing that the alternative is real, it really is that simple.

The coffee world of tomorrow

farmers

earn an equal share of the industry’s profits. They make trade agreements directly and talk fluently with roasters and their customers and are fully responsible for social justice and ecology on their farms.

Facilitators

exist to transparently help farmers and roasters get in touch, solve logistics and gain access to finance. The stock market and trader models of old cannot defend their margins to the public, so disappears altogether.

 
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coffee industry

becomes master at selling the actual, verifiable story of their own quality and that of the value chain they work with. High consumer scrutiny means excessive profits disappear and high ethics become the norm.

Consumers

are fully aware of their power to change the industry as the effects of transparent trade become become apparent. The only way to supply them is to show real commitment to quality and social / ecological justice.

This Side Up is a proven blueprint of how to make it from today’s coffee world to that of tomorrow.

In all four corners of the value chain (farmers, facilitators, roasters and consumers), we provide working examples of how coffee trade can turn from today’s exploitative system to a fully transparent, equal and cooperative endeavour. We are not a trading company. Coffee traders, by definition, exist because they make money from an information imbalance between coffee farmers and coffee buyers. This Side Up was created to dissolve this imbalance and return power to the creators of your coffee. Along the way, we realised that we are building a community of likeminded coffee professionals everywhere along the value chain: people who understand that coffee trade can be an open endeavour, based on sharing instead of competition, based on humanity instead of simply making money.

The influence of This Side Up

Farmers

become independent agro-entrepreneurs, capable of exporting and marketing, co-creating and diversifying their offer in cooperation with their customers.

 

Roasters

work together to tell the full and verifiable story of their coffees, create the best roast profiles, share roasting space, equipment and experience.

 
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Facilitators

create vertical and horizontal links between roasters and farmers and provide full transparency. The goal is to create a coffee trade system based on trust instead of greed.

 

ConsumerS

become a conscious community of coffee drinkers who demand ever more transparency and guide the industry forward through better purchases and choices.

 
 
 

  1. We are connected through trust

We do not depend on bureaucratic structure to justify cooperation with any of our partners but work together on the basis of trust, which we earn and deepen with every interaction, devising ever more ambitious social and ecological goals together as the "marriage" develops. We work together because we can make the biggest impact as a group. This brings us together naturally, but without obligation.

This also means daring to make ourselves redundant. If producers or customers get opportunities for development outside of our sphere of control, we will not try to stay in control at all costs, but instead put the interests of the system before our own.

 
 
 
 
 

2. We are accountable through transparency

An open and connected world means the producers of our coffee are no longer invisible. They have the right to be seen and to be contacted by whoever buys their coffee. We are not secretive about who our producer partners are and encourage communication within the chain and between chains. We not only pledge to, but are proud to show our direct relationship with the producers and the distribution of revenue throughout the chain. We also shed light on the complicated coffee trade process itself.

The direct result of accountability through transparency is that we cut out all middlemen that do not add value and that no one in the chain can get away with greed. We always provide a full breakdown of our coffee prices down to the payments to the farmers - available for everyone to see and backed up with official documentation.

 

 
 
 
 

3. Farmers are equal partners

The old development model is based on white folks telling coffee farmers how to run their lives. Instead of demanding a certain development path, we simply ask our producer partners what they would invest an extra premium in. Whether they want to become independent of banks or buy rural health insurance - if that's what your trusted partner wants, it's the right choice.

Ask yourself this: why do we talk about “living income” when talking about farmers and about bonuses when talking about coffee companies? We strive to confront the world with the inequality that is still rife in coffee, but instead of wining about it, provide a real alternative. We create a truly equal say in the coffee value chain for everyone we work with: coffee farmers become exporters, storytellers, marketeers, social media experts - everything you would expect from an equal partner.

 
 
 

4. We cooperate instead of compete.

 

We think a healthy business can grow simply by being true to a vision and by showing the world what it does, and thus attract the right customers. Only if you actively try to take customers from others, or fear that others will take your customers, will you feel competition - arising from fear and the illusion of scarcity. Without this fear, there is just cooperation with likeminded people, just community. By framing our message truthfully and boldly, our new customers switch from companies who consciously destroy livelihoods and ecosystems, thus fulfilling our objective without negative effort.

We built This Side Up not as a company, but rather a community inspired by the will to open up, share and create true relationships along the value chain.

 

 
 

5. We are inspired by nature.

We believe that when you respect the pace of nature, it will reward you with abundance. In the short run, a farmer might think that chemical pesticides and fertilisers will give better yields and more income, but in fact their farm slowly gets degraded and addicted to these inputs, resulting in even more problems in the long run. When everyone, farmers and roasters alike, understands and respects the natural way coffee wants to grow, we believe we can reeducate the market to consume less, but higher quality coffee.

We help farmers transfer to regenerative systems that make use of the land’s local species and features to make the best possible habitat for the coffee tree. Such a system is very knowledge-intensive but when done right requires less care, restores soils and biodiversity, balances the micro-climate, gives higher quality coffee, generates additional income and attracts more loyal buyers.

As for waste, this does not exist in nature. Although we realise that we still create waste and emissions, we strive to mimic natural cycles by using either compostable materials or by finding creative ways to repurpose undegradable packaging. We always try to rethink the value and waste flow in our own company and encourage all chain partners we work with to do the same.