Etelle Higonnet is the Founder and Director of Coffee Watch. She was born and raised in France, earned her undergraduate degree and law degree from Yale, worked around the world on human rights issues, before pivoting her focus to environmental issues with Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and others. She is currently based on Copenhagen, Denmark. In this episode Etelle makes it painfully clear that while drinking coffee is a morning ritual for many of us, its production comes with profound social and environmental impacts that must be addressed. Coffee Watch is a non-profit. Its missions is to promote and secure coffee that is grown ethically, sustainably, in dignity for the people who grow it. Some statistics: 180 - 200 million Americans drink an average of three cups per day. There are 800 billion cups consumed each year around the globe. Finland leads the world for the most coffee per person! Americans are more likely to drink coffee than exercise on any given day. We are all addicted... "We love our coffee, ice cream, tiramisu!" It is so great and delicious; it makes the world go round. But it comes with huge hidden costs: poverty, child labor, and slave labor... plus deforestation. "If you are drinking coffee, you are definitely drinking poverty," states Etelle. Only a very few coffee companies pay a living income for the world's 125 million coffee growers. Many are paid $2 - 3 a day, well below the World Bank poverty level. "Another dirty, bitter gift is child labor,"... not after-school-appropriate labor, but backbreaking labor, most often with exposure to toxic pesticides. In Brazil, the world's number one coffee producer, cartels control production, and there, "modern slavery" is not uncommon. Furthermore, Etelle explains that, "you are drinking deforestation." Coffee production is one of the seven largest causes of deforestation: cattle, palm oil, pulp and paper, soy, coca, rubber, and coffee. Cattle - for beef, dog food, and leather - is the largest deforester... and in cases where there is any attention to deforestation, the biggest causes are in the public eye. Coffee production is 1% of the problem and thus gets overlooked despite the scale of its impact: Vietnam has lost forests the size of Luxembourg to coffee; Brazil has lost acreage equivalent to Honduras to deforestation for coffee production. "Your latte every morning could be responsible for cascading impacts, like regional climate change, droughts, and reduced diversity." Etelle makes her point poignantly: "How about an oat milk latte with a side of dead jaguar or dead orangutan? People have no idea that they are drinking mass extinction." As such, she founded Coffee Watch in 2024. It's dangerous work: Coffee is grown in narco-states, places with civil wars, in countries with repressive dictatorships. Her investigative teams are taking big risks to uncover the state of the industry. Coffee Watch is about taking action, raising consumer awareness through undercover investigations. There are teams working in China, Brazil, Columbia, Uganda, Kenya, and the Chiapas region of Mexico, known for its cartels. Coffee Watch also uses satellite mapping. It produces reports, is in the media, and is active on social media. Coffee Watch also sues the coffee industry for human trafficking and slavery. It has sued Nestle, Starbucks, McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, and others. Companies should not be allowed to get away with this kind of coffee in their supply chains. Etelle believes that consumers would be willing to pay more for coffee that is responsibly grown. And it would cost just a couple cents more per cup to do so. With a cappuccino costing over $3, and specialty coffees at $7... a few cents would assuage a lot of guilt. And if the price goes up, the demand will not. That's been proven. Despite tariffs, everyone still buys their coffee. But fundamentally, people just do not know the truths of coffee production in Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Columbia, Uganda, and Kenya and other countries. Industry is responsible for the lion's share of the abuse, enabled by the producer governments that have abdicated their duty to care for their citizens. The podcast ends up with a discussion of solutions. Are certification programs effective? Etelle makes clear that they are only partially effective. Most are not delivering real sustainability. Organic is great in that it eliminates pesticides, but does nothing to stem deforestation, to assure women's rights, and eliminate child labor. Most consumers assume that organic and fair trade coffees are ethical and sustainable, but for the most part, they are not. No certifications require producers to pay living-income wages to coffee farmers. So what should our listens do? Etelle encourages listeners to dedicate an hour to figuring out good ethical coffee that are available locally, and that reflect your values. Find it, a good ethical and sustainable coffee. Then buy it. Then spread the word to our spheres of influence... your university, office, mosque, or church, and become an ambassador. Demand better coffee, more sustainable coffee. Follow Coffee Watch to make it easy: https://coffeewatch.org/
