Ethical sourcing in coffee supply chains

Almost universally, western coffee companies (green bean importers, roasters, cafes) promote ‘ethical sourcing’ as being related to ensuring that source coffee communities receive ‘fair’ compensation for supplying coffee. Fairness in this sense usually means that coffee sourcing is not exploitative, promotes freedom of choice both in terms of participation in coffee supply chains and in terms of livelihoods, and that coffee sourcing activities generate positive benefits for coffee growing communities.

So what should we expect when we see the term ‘ethically-sourced’ in relation coffee?

Referring to the distinction between ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ [see here] we can see that ‘ethical-sourcing’ of coffee should:

• Reflect a common understanding of ethical actions

• Be widely accepted, and demonstrated, as being ‘ethical’ – i.e. there should be proof and reasoning over why actions related to coffee sourcing are ethical

• Ensure that actions taken by an organisation claiming ‘ethically-sourced’ should be clearly stated (this seems obvious, but it is actually really rare amongst speciality coffee organisations)

This means that we should expect to see details of coffee-sourcing activities that an organisation deems ‘ethical’ (so that it is clear what is being referred to here). We should also see citations or links to concepts that outline how those actions are ethical and/or a clear outline of how they act as ethical activities (i.e. generate positive social outcomes). Finally, would hope to see some evidence of impact (though this is known to be difficult).

So when you see ‘ethically-sourced’ claims associated with a coffee organisation you should also be able to easily find:

1. Actions that coffee organisation takes that make their sourcing activities ‘ethical’

2. Links or posts/information on why those actions are ethical with clearly stated linkages to widely accepted (i.e. reviewed, published) descriptions of how those actions or outcomes are ethical

3. Evidence related to that claim

Unfortunately, the majority of claims of ‘ethical sourcing’ provide no detail of specific ‘ethical’ actions, no evidence, and no outline of what they mean by ‘ethical’. In many cases where actions are stated, they relate to some notion of paying ‘more than market’ for coffee – a notion of ethics we generally debunk [here].

Our ‘ethical sourcing’ is clearly outlined in a range of posts that meet all of these criteria, some of which can be found in the posts below:

• What makes Intersection Traders different?

• The (ethical) objectives of Intersection Traders and why they matter

• How we aim to do business (and why we do so)

• Our long-term objectives

• Impacts and evidence

Remember, if you don’t see these kinds of details, or links to these kinds of details, for a speciality coffee organisation claiming to be ‘ethically-sourcing’ their product, you probably should just disregard that as ‘eth-washing’ (like ‘green-washing’ but for ethics). This doesn’t mean it is ‘bad’ coffee, it just means it probably isn’t ethical (but also it likely isn’t unethical either – see “What does ‘ethically-sourced’ even mean?”).