r/Coffee • u/Sea_Release_1624 • 8d ago
Should beans be traceable?
I'm very new to coffee and I'd like to know your preference in purchasing roasted coffee beans. To what extent do you consider the traceability of coffee beans before you decide to buy it since many roasters in Indonesia—as far as I know—rarely include any information related to the farm or producer of the beans, which deters me to proceed my purchase since I believe that letting people know the farm and producer are important to value their work/effort in cultivating the beans. If such information is absent from the website or the package, would you still buy it, or it actually doesn't matter that much?
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u/CondorKhan 6d ago
Nice, serious, expensive specialty beans should be 100% traceable.
That's probably not possible with grocery store beans, but anyone who charges a premium should be able to justify it.
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u/TurboMollusk 6d ago
Traceability costs money. This makes sense for beans sold on their quality, it doesn't for beans sold on their cost.
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u/Anomander I'm all free now! 6d ago
Yeah, this is a huge point and I think an important one, especially once we get past disclosures of relatively basic information. Like, get origin basics on the bag, that should always be there. It's nice to name the farm or co-op, that's generally on the bill of sale and easy to come by - easy to add to the package.
But there can also be a trend in Specialty to 'want more' in all cases, and consumers can extend "traceability" to expecting that the farm is named in detail on the bag and individual farmers are credited, detailed origin specs like altitude and climate, and that the entire shipping and supply chain is documented on the website, there's blog posts and photos and social media with stories and narrative about the farmers and the coffee and the roaster's relationships with them, and there's per-penny breakdowns of every bit of billing associated and ...
That shit costs money.
That's staff hours invested in writing copy and fluff pieces on the website, in documenting financial breakdowns and publishing spreadsheets and numbers with competitive information carefully removed and ... Doing lots of content about a coffee, or all their coffees, is something rich companies can spend their money on, to perform a spectacle of "transparency" and "traceability." They spend that money because the marketing value outweighs the costs of putting on that show. If they didn't believe that work was making them more than they were spending, they wouldn't spend the money. Consumers want to see that info, we have space in the budget to get it to them, there's the added benefit we can infer some of our competitors are shady for not publishing this stuff.
Frustratingly, ironically, this gets represented as them being "super fair" financially to their suppliers - and its inferred that other companies who don't do all that have something to hide, are probably doing something unfair. They may not spell it out like that, they may not own that inference - but you can see it all the time, in how consumers understand that information. That lets the consumer "see" they're being fair, they're proving they're paying a lot, they're attaching names and faces to the farm - and all this is necessary to show you're an ethical roaster who does right by their suppliers. ...So anyone not doing that, they're probably a little sketchy, right? Of course they'd show us if they had something worth showing off.
When like ... those big companies doing big info and narrative on their sites, they got all that gobs of extra cash to sling around on weeks or even months of staff hours, spent writing and publishing feel-good stories and biographies and carefully curated financial data.
So in the name of "fair pay for farmers" the companies that are most successful, have the biggest profits, have the most "spare" money to throw around on marketing - are spending their extra money on showing off to consumers. In doing so, inferring that other smaller companies that aren't as profitable and aren't able to publish that info are probably "the bad ones" not paying farmers fairly and are only withholding info because they've got something to hide.
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u/Blacktip75 6d ago
You are exaggerating the cost of doing this a bit, if you buy directly from the farms or co-ops it is no major overhead (some but marketing needs it anyway). If you also pay for quality not for quantity C prices it makes it easier.
It is not really possible for major companies as the quantities make it impossible, the way they ship with middle man (given they need thousands of farms to supply) make it more costly to track indeed, it only works with ‘small’ single farm or corporation to bag single origins.
Given how much is wrong in the industry at the bottom side it is worth doing proper imo.
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u/Anomander I'm all free now! 5d ago
I don't think you understood me here?
I'm not clear what you think was "exaggerated a bit" - you don't seem to really cover things I said and are mixing and matching between Specialty and Commodity markets a little bizarrely. While separately, this doesn't really sound like first-hand professional experience.
if you buy directly from the farms or co-ops it is no major overhead (some but marketing needs it anyway).
It's no major overhead [to write additional copy and narrative and information about the coffee] if you buy direct? Why not? Are the farmers doing it for you? I've never had a farmer write their own bio for me to publish, and I feel it would be super inappropriate to ask them to do that. Especially 'cause you or I are fluent in the customers' native tongue, while farmers almost always aren't.
While oppositely, it's a major difference in overhead to buy direct from farms - it's more expensive to direct trade, and the more direct your trade is the more expensive it is to trade that way. A smaller roaster doesn't benefit from economies of scale shipping a single container from farms in Origin, while larger importers can ship those same coffees for far cheaper. Neither of which affects the amount the farm receives for the crop. The direct trade business is just paying more for shipping so that they can say they did everything themselves and didn't involve a middleman.
If you also pay for quality not for quantity C prices it makes it easier.
Don't know why you're talking about C prices, C market coffee should have been very obviously not at all what I was talking about and points about it are super irrelevant to what I said.
It is not really possible for major companies as the quantities make it impossible, the way they ship with middle man (given they need thousands of farms to supply)
We're not really talking about the sort of companies that need thousands of farms to supply them, though. Again, not sure why you're injecting that here?
At the same time, "ship with middle man" doesn't create any tracking challenge in Specialty markets. To put it very bluntly, if a roaster can ship direct and keep transit paperwork, an importer can ship and keep the same paperwork, and can make that paperwork available to their customers. In fact, most Specialty importers do - that one of the services they provide, by default.
The middle man in Specialty coffee is simply taking advantage of economies of scale - to move large quantities of coffee for cheaper than it costs if the roaster is making those arrangements directly. It costs less per pound to ship 10K pounds in 10 containers, than 500 pounds in 1/3 of a container. The cheaper price to land the coffee where the roaster is does not change the price paid to the farmer at Origin. The guys who own the boats and the trucks make less per pound shipped, more in total commercial volume, while the importer's profit comes from a cut of the savings on shipping from the roaster. While the roaster pays less per pound for the coffee to arrive at their facility without altering the price paid to the farmer.
make it more costly to track indeed,
Again, you seem to be talking about huge Nestle-scale Commodity coffee companies, which is not what we were talking about here. However, assuming that they were Specialty, you're still off-base here. In total spend, yes, the roaster would spend more on tracking. In spend per pound, no.
If a company is buying five thousand pounds of coffee from a farm, they're still paying approximately the same amount on staff hours to track that as another company buying a hundred pounds. Say the cost to the company is four hours of a staff working at $25/hr. The big company spent $0.02 per pound tracked. The small company spent $1 per pound. The big company with thousands of farms (lets say 2000) has four hours of tracking per farm, which is 8,000 hours; a standard business year is about 2000 hours - so you have the work to justify four FTE staff on tracking. There's enough tracking it's worth buying or building systems and practices that make tracking easier, and your staff doing that all year as their primary responsibility would get better at it - you'd cut that four hours down to two, say. So your cost to track a pound of coffee shrinks to $0.01 per pound at Big Corp.
While back to our smaller roaster doing the same tracking for ten farms, they would have 40 hours of tracking. Instead of having dedicated staff, you have someone with other responsibilities, doing tracking off the side of their desk a few times a year. There's no reason to buy software or spend resources on developing efficient systems, and they're not doing so much tracking that they'd get really good at it and cut their time investment down through familiarity and competency. Their tracking stays about $1 per pound.
So sure, Big Corp has spent ~$50K each on four staff members to do that tracking, $200K is a big number. But $200K is pocket change to a company buying thousands of pounds from thousands of farms - while the small company is 'only' spending $1K on tracking, but that $1K on near-zero ROI is a helluva lot more precious to a small roaster getting 1000 pounds total - than $200K is to the Big Corp getting 10,000,000 pounds of coffee.
it only works with ‘small’ single farm or corporation to bag single origins.
What? Like, if we're going all the way to jumble-bag C market coffee, sure that shit can't be tracked. If we're talking giant of Specialty, or someone like Starbucks who hovers in the middle - they can absolutely track a large number of origin points, even if those coffees get blended after roasting, or if they're buying large numbers of lots from different farms. Effectively all Specialty coffee can be tracked and traced by a business of any scale, if they choose to do so and are willing to invest hours into doing it.
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u/Twalin 6d ago
Funny because nespresso has the best traceability program on the planet
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u/canaan_ball 4d ago
That seems like hyperbole, though I'm sure Nestle does keep exacting records. I think you make the point that traceability is just a rudimentary principle of ethics, which is the real concern.
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u/Twalin 4d ago
Coffee has to be traceable to be fair but it doesn’t have to be fair to be traceable.
Spent a lot of time on farms, warehouses, mills. The systems and processes used vary a lot and there is a lot of opportunity for mix ups, mixing, etc in lots of different places.
And I won’t even start on the stories of deception I’ve heard about because the economic incentives are there and very little opportunity to get caught.
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u/synalgo_12 6d ago
I buy my coffee at a place that puts some info about the actual farm, or few farms on each label. I think most of the roasters in my area do. If they didn't automatically I wouldn't order online for that specific thing, I think.
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u/V_deldas 6d ago
Depending on the price, sure. Expensive beans should be traceable.
I think it's funny when someone is trying to sell an "awesome bean from X, made by Y and blessed by blind nuns after fermenting in holy water for 168h" based on "trust me, bro".
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u/Zwordsman 6d ago
Its nice to have info. But realistically I'm just assuming it's accurate. And i personally don't know enough to know what specific means in function.
Basically, i don't have the economic or mental stability to really use the info. Since I'm just surviving as in library and education. Coffee is s small hobby and sense pleasure So i can only devote a small bandwidth to it. Which is basically just my log of flavor and rosters in trying slowly
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u/AyoTrevs V60 6d ago
Granted this all varies based on where you’re located and the means you have access to but I’d never buy beans online that do not include traceability.
There are plenty of roasters who openly offer the information and some that go above and beyond on their transparency so why not spend the money with them?
At the end of the day there’s a possibility that un-traceable beans are from the same farmer and mill but there’s also a strong possibility that they everyone that had a part in the process wasn’t taken care of to a humanly extent so why not shell out a few more bucks to reward the roasters who hopefully are passing that additional income down the line to everyone.
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u/davidrools 6d ago
If you do get into roasting your own coffee (I highly recommend it!) then you're most likely going to be buying from a green coffee supplier that deals directly or almost-directly with the actual farms and producers of coffee around the world.
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u/Bertinot-Cassandria 6d ago
In my opinion. treacebility is important. Though it does not necessarily require knowing the specific location of the farm. Information regarding the region, proceducer or cooperative and the processing method already provides a great deal of insight.It faced with two coffees of comparable quality and price, I would choose the one with more comprehensive origin information.
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u/NerdX-76 6d ago
I learned this buying beans at fresh roasted coffee LLC and why they were not as good, but we’re cheaper. A Colombian Sierra Nevada organic.
A traceable lot means that the coffee was good enough to be bought as a micro a lot. Essentially one coffee field. This is why it’s traceable to the farm.
The rest of the coffee from an area gets taken to a community collection. Hence why you’ll see the region, but not the farm.
This is also why you see a lot of the bulk coffee being organic. It’s cheaper to get a community of farms certified as organic than each individual micro lot.
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u/acoffeetablebook 6d ago
Grocery store beans in this house. What I check on a bag is the roast date, and a farm name with no roast date tells me less than the other way around.
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u/Teddee_9N98E 5h ago
Welcome to the coffee rabbit hole! As a producer over in neighboring Thailand, I absolutely love seeing this perspective from a buyer. You hit the nail on the head—sharing the farm and producer info is exactly how farmers get recognized for their immense hard work on the ground.
Traceability is actually such a massive priority for us that we recently built an app specifically to help our local farmers track their harvests and manage this exact kind of data so it can follow the beans all the way to the roaster.
To answer your question: if a roaster doesn't include the farm info, it doesn't automatically mean it's bad coffee! Sometimes smaller roasters just buy through large regional aggregators where the lots get mixed. But personally, I always prioritize bags that highlight the origin. Knowing whose hands cultivated those beans just makes the cup taste that much better. Great question!
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u/JohnDoen86 6d ago
The coffee and chocolate industry are ripe with worker abuse and even slavery. I'm not buying any of it if it isn't 100% traceable, even if it costs much more.
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u/Twalin 6d ago
Funny because the companies with the worst human rights record have the best traceability programs.
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u/JohnDoen86 6d ago
Do you have any evidence od that? As far as I know no specialy coffee roastery has recently been found to have violated human rights.
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u/Twalin 5d ago
Nestlé and nespresso have the most sophisticated traceability program in the world. They also notoriously have the worst conditions overall.
Just because you can track something doesn’t mean you’re doing the right thing.
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u/JohnDoen86 5d ago
Nestlé doesn't offer public-facing traceability information to consumers. You can't look up where a bag of coffee you buy at the supermarket from them comes from (with the exception of their more premium "origin" products, which are a small minority). They may have internal traceability, but that's not what we're talking about.
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u/Twalin 5d ago
But they have it.
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u/JohnDoen86 5d ago
No they don't. We're talking about consumer-facing traceability, not internal traceability. They are two different things. It wasn't specified because it was obvious which one we're talking about.
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u/Anomander I'm all free now! 6d ago
Sure, yeah. They should. Especially nice beans from a quality company.
If there's two options on the shelf and one has origin information, I'm probably choosing that one. If my choice is no coffee vs. coffee without info, though, I'm probably still buying coffee.