A good cup of coffee is seen more and more as a commodity among the consumers on a global level. We have noticed a boom in new coffee shops and roasteries opening with good intentions and sustainable promises. But if this were the case, then why is there a negative development in the other end of the chain? Right now, the market price for green beans is historically low. Are these good intentions and promises just ‘greenwashing’?

Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not new to us. To be able to keep drinking good coffee, we need to make a change and create financial sustainability for the farmers. This change needs to be collective. Something we decide to do together.

The first step is to be transparent about your good intentions and promises. This is where the Transparent Trade Colloquium comes into the picture. This is an annual gathering of roasters from around the world. At last year’s event, the idea came up, that we need to make a common code for transparency reporting in coffee.

Since then we have been a small group, who picked up the idea and has developed The Pledge. So, for the past two years, we have published our prices paid to the farmers along with 10 other roasteries around the world.

A Pledge For Full Transparency 

Today, we’re proud to be signing The Pledge by Transparent Trade. A pledge for full transparency and more value directly to farmers. The core of The Pledge is the prices paid, but it is also giving relevant context to the price as for instance lot size and quality.

Some roasters have already been publishing these data, maybe not all of it but some of it. As such the really new thing might not be the content, but more the idea of cooperating on a common standard to make the message clearer and hopefully stronger.

The hope is to get as many actors buying green coffee on board as possible. One of the criteria for commitment has been made to welcome actors who might not have or can publish data on all the coffee they buy and still protecting the scheme against greenwashing. Every actor has to commit to state the percentage of their total coffee purchases, that the coffees with published transparency data covers.

The other thing that is special about this initiative is that it’s a pledge that the signatory actors make. It’s not a verification system of the published data. It is also hoped to be serving as a platform for cooperating between actors on increasing transparency in the coffee market. And this is new and very needed.

A Stepping Stone For Transparency

The hope is that this Pledge can be a stepping stone for increasing transparency in the coffee market. Trying to wrist it out of the dark history of unpaid and now underpaid coffee farmers. And move it towards a situation where the people working hard every day to create the initial seed for the drink we love, will also be rewarded for their work to a degree that makes it possible for them to see a future staying in coffee.

The Pledge can be signed by actors buying green coffee as signatory parties and by any person who feel like supporting the project as supporters.

We are proud to have signed this pledge!

Go to www.Transparency.Coffee and make a change.