Organic or Natural?

There's an ongoing debate within the coffee industry over the term "organic." Without getting into the boring details organizations within the coffee industry have both created a product and a desire to go with it. In response to consumers' health concerns and the aversion from anything chemical, coffee moguls started marketing "Organic" coffee beans: coffee beans that are grown without pesticides, insecticides and any other dangerous chemicals. For the garden variety American, that sounds great! Of course it does; our context is chemically laden cornfields and soybean fields.

Anyone who has been to a coffee producing nation however, knows that the context of that region is anything but typical American. Like it or not, our $2.00 cup of premium specialty coffee that sells on the retail shelves of our fancy American coffee boutiques comes from the hands of the poorest of the poor of our world--underdeveloped farms in underdeveloped regions in underdeveloped countries. Underdeveloped is the politically correct term for dirt poor.

It is either ironic or just plain wrong that Americans spend more on 1 cup of coffee than the typical coffee worker earns in 2 days.

So what does this have to do with "organic" products? Everything!

Coffee workers aren't the only ones who are dirt poor--so are the coffee farmers.
THEY DON'T HAVE THE MONEY FOR PESTICIDES, INSECTICIDES OR ANY OTHER CHEMICALS. They'll cultivate their coffee trees, prune them and care for them, but chemicals are not a luxury they can afford!

So tell me now which coffees are "organic." Did you say all of them? If so, you just won a brand new car!! That's right folks, coffee is an organic product by default! You know what isn't organic: the "organic" organizations that certify coffees as organic for a "nominal fee."

Here's the scam: find out what the consumer wants and rename an existing product to fit the bill.
In this case, consumers rightly want chemical free coffee. That's great except that the coffee bean suppliers forgot to tell consumers that coffee is chemical free by default. In steps the marketing moguls and all of a sudden we start seeing "Certified Organic Coffee" show up on the menu board. And guess who gets the profits from that little certification? It's not the farmer. It's not the worker. It's not the coffee shop or the coffee shop workers. It's not the roaster.

There's one place where all those "nominal" fees go...the certifying organization.