Thoughts on coffee by Leanah Chestnut

How morning cups lead to abundance, gratitude, + progress

When I traveled to Kenya, I stayed for two weeks on the outskirts of Nairobi. I walked through slum villages built atop abandoned landfills where people sold street food, used clothing, and vegetables on dirt paths in the sweltering sun that shone off the variegated metal roofs. 

To get to these villages, though, a van traveled through streets with large, affluent homes guarded by fences and, at times, bodyguards. Surrounding these large homes were tea and coffee plantations. The dichotomy present in this severe wealth gap struck me: how similar it still is in the United States, particularly in the south where I live. 

Through my observations and interactions with Kenyan people, as I’ve noticed anywhere I’ve traveled, I realized how much of the world is the same. Wealth begets wealth, and the majority of humankind works hard to provide for their loved ones while that effort often pushes forward systems that grow wealth for the few and stagnate the masses. 

Ethics surround us. Every company and product is suddenly sustainable, reusable, renewable. Recently, discourse has become increasingly popular around ethical treatment of the planet, people, and the systems in place between those entities. We feel a distinct sense of ownership over our own set of ethics. 

But the truth is, ethical consumerism is foggy: in Westernized culture and capitalist or capitalist-inspired systems, any product or service that creates an easier or more efficient life for you most likely negatively impacts someone or something else, be it as abstract as environmental ecosystems or concrete as human communities. Things we do each day have insurmountable consequences, from what we eat and drink to what we wear. 

Look around you and observe the unethical practices that create your surroundings. Where I am, I see plastic blinds on hotel windows as I sit on a hotel mattress made of woven cloth, metal springs, and polyester filling built by someone in a large offshore factory. That bed was then meticulously made by a likely underpaid housekeeper who also set out my small, plastic-wrapped soap on the bathroom counter. I’m sitting in one of multiple rooms in an establishment using unholy amounts of water and electricity each day, while probably discarding pounds upon pounds of food and oil once the restaurant downstairs closes each night. 

Instead of becoming hopeless or overwhelmed by these consequences, I find appreciation and awareness makes for a much more peaceful existence. Simple practices of becoming aware of what surrounds you and where those things come from is a form of thanks. A distinct opportunity for this, if breaking down every single thing in your bedroom leaves you feeling lousy, is your morning cup of coffee. 

Coffee is historically essential to human development. In the book Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World, Mark Pendergrast breaks down how humankind developed and innovated at staggering rates when we slowly adjusted our morning routines from beer to coffee. No surprise, really. But since Absynnia, coffee remained a pinnacle of productivity, comfort, and routine in cultures around the world. Like any staple, however, its rampant use has resulted in plantations like those I saw in Kenya and are present throughout regions of the world that can grow coffee. 

When walking through a regenerative forest in Limuru, Kenya, I saw for the first time a wild-growing coffee plant. This plant was not farmed: its sole purpose was to contribute to the ecosystem of the forest. I plucked a coffee cherry from the green stem and perforated the tough skin with my thumbnail. Slowly, I popped the outside open and saw the classic oval shape with the vertical cross-section of what, if roasted, would become a coffee bean. 

I asked a guide and new friend, native Kenyan and part of the Kikuyu community, his knowledge of coffee farming in Kenya. He shared with me the tragic state that many plantations in the area maintained for their workers. Sometimes, large commercial farms that sell coffee to chains in the United States and United Kingdom would require workers to live on the premises: eating very little, working for even less, and sleeping in inhumane, filth-ridden barracks. 

However, my guide also shared that his family owned a coffee farm of his own: operated mostly by his family members, he grew a small plot of coffee that would be sold to a large distributor for money to support his family. So, while much of coffee is grown in substandard conditions, some of it comes from hardworking families who have owned farms for generations. 

Large industries, like coffee, are miniature worlds: there are virtuous people and greedy people, wealth and poverty, health and death. While it would be beautiful to imagine, optimally ethical coffee will never be possible because it is an industry run by human beings who are multifaceted complex creatures with myriad motivations. 

We can’t be purely ethical. I’ll stay in another hotel, you’ll drive to work or stop at Starbucks because you really love their new flavor of cold foam. What we can do, though, is take a moment each morning for those who grew our coffee. We can take a sip, savor it, and realize that the enjoyment or necessity we derive from our daily rituals depends on thousands of people to make it possible. 

When we decide to look at something with gratitude, I find it often results in motivation and hope to create a more ethical world. Instead of focusing on the large coffee plantations that strip soil and mistreat workers, we can learn the stories of family-operated farms that are honest, dedicated, and sincere. When we reorient ourselves toward the good, the good will in turn become abundant, even if that abundance doesn’t look how we wish it would.