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Whenever you buy something, it is easy to forget that your transaction goes beyond the store where you purchased it. Whether you think about it or not, what you choose to buy affects other peoples’ lives, and these purchase decisions have economic, social and environmental consequences.
The coffee we buy, for example, is at the end of a long and complicated supply chain that begins in some very remote places. There are over 25 million coffee growers in the world, many of whom have very small plots of coffee trees. Trying to make a living off a small coffee farm is very difficult, especially if the companies purchasing the coffee are solely motivated by profits.
To learn more about how the system works, I visited Sustainable Harvest, a green coffee importer based in Portland. Dane Loraas, a Quality Control Manager for the company and Katie Gilmer, a Relationship Coffee Manager, were my hosts when I visited the company at its Pearl District headquarters. They spent an hour with me explaining the company’s business model and answering my questions.