The Purpose of the Coffee Industry Is What It Does

Coffee brands love to tout their ethics and human rights policies, yet the supply chain is still built on poverty. At some point, we have to judge the industry not by what it says but by its actions.

Photo by Bayawe Coffee Nomad via Pexels

There is a phrase coined by the theorist and professor Stafford Beer that goes: “The purpose of a system is what it does”. Essentially, motivations are not as important as outcomes. Explaining the idea further, Beer said that, “There is after all no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”

Beer’s theory is used mostly in relation to systems thinking, a problem-solving framework for understanding the complexity of the world. But it can also be a handy, if slightly generalised, way to view the coffee industry—and in particular, the relationship between multinational coffee companies’ marketing and their actions.

If we were to take the global coffee industry at its word, then we would see it as a sector solely motivated by the drive to do good: Serving delicious coffee to consumers while providing a better life for those who grow and brew it. Corporations’ main concern, judging by their marketing, is for coffee farmers, and for the environment. They care deeply about community.

And for the most part, those intentions are probably genuine. But the outcome of the industry’s actions is often very different: The vast majority of the billions generated every year are captured by corporations, shareholders, and executives. Meanwhile, a large percentage of smallholder coffee farmers still live in poverty, farmworkers and migrant pickers are among the most vulnerable members of the industry, and baristas are so routinely denigrated that much of the public don’t view them as skilled professionals.

Coffee’s supply chain is byzantine, allowing exploitation to flourish while leaving just enough plausible deniability for the whole thing to continue. To zoom in on a couple of instructive examples: Brands like Starbucks and Nestlé have long been linked to underpayment and exploitation of the farmers in their supply chains. Researchers, labour organisations, and investigative reporters have repeatedly found instances of forced and child labour on farms linked to both companies.

Every time these stories arise, the brands deflect—those farms weren’t technically contracted to us; we have high standards for our partners; we will investigate. And then, a few years later, another investigation finds similar violations, and the cycle repeats.

I started thinking about Beer’s theory when reading about the latest example of supply chain malfeasance, reported just last week. A human rights group in China alleged labour violations—including child labour—on coffee farms linked to Starbucks and Nestlé. Approached for comment by the Washington Post, “both companies said they had strict rules to prevent the kinds of labor violations being alleged, and both companies pledged to investigate further”.

In 2001, Beer gave a speech at the University of Valladolid in Spain. “According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does”, Beer said. “This is a basic dictum. It stands for a bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intentions, prejudices about expectations, moral judgments, or sheer ignorance of circumstances”.

Perhaps it is too much to expect large companies to eliminate all labour violations from the thousands of farms that supply them. But it’s also worth considering why it is that the farmers needed to resort to using children to help pick coffee in the first place, or why farmworkers would be willing to work long hours for such little pay.

Why is it that companies that rake in billions of dollars every year, whose executives make salaries in the millions, and which dominate the direction of the coffee industry keep having to issue mea culpas and promises to do better? The purpose of a system, after all, is what it does.

‘Unacceptable and Heartbreaking’

“At Starbucks, we’ve always been about more than just the coffee. We are about humanity”, wrote then-CEO Kevin Johnson in the preamble to the company’s 2020 Global Human Rights Statement. “It is a fundamental belief at the heart of Our Mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time”.

Starbucks isn’t the only coffee company that has made such statements. In fact, you could probably find similar sentiments on basically any sourcing policy webpage for any major coffee brand. They want to make the world a better place through coffee, and pledge to always work ethically while doing so.

They express particular concern for human rights. Child labour is “unacceptable and heartbreaking”, Nestlé wrote in a 2023 report on the subject. “We are driven by the fundamental principle that all children deserve the chance to learn and grow in a safe and healthy environment, without having to undertake work that is dangerous in any way or that interferes with education”.

The stated policies of other coffee corporations broadly align with these values. They abhor slavery and child labour; they express a wish to build sustainable supply chains; they are “acting responsibly to ensure every cup contributes to a better future”, as JDE Peet’s puts it.

And many have in-house certifications to enforce these policies. Starbucks has its Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices; Nestlé uses either its Nescafé Plan 2030 or Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program; JDE Peet’s version is called Common Ground. These programs all do similar things, like ensuring that the coffee purchased by their respective corporations is “responsibly sourced” and, in the case of Nescafé Plan 2030, “reducing carbon emissions, improving farmers’ income and creating better social conditions”.

More and more, coffee is traded using these certifications, alongside third-party versions from Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade. In 2023, nearly three quarters of the coffee purchased by nine of the world’s largest brands met some form of sustainability criteria. But their impact is difficult to assess: “There’s very little actual monitoring or measuring of the outcomes that you want to see going on”, Kimberly Elliott, author of a 2018 study that examined the effectiveness of voluntary sustainability standards, told NPR.

Big companies don’t like to say how much they pay for coffee—just trust them that it’s enough. But how can you claim to source coffee ethically if you don’t transparently report on the outcomes, and when your suppliers are still struggling? The purpose of a system is what it does.

Ghost Farms and Child Labour

On November 29th, the nonprofit human rights group China Labor Watch published an investigation into working conditions on 26 coffee farms in China’s Yunnan province that supply Nestlé and Starbucks. The group alleges that “Nestlé and Starbucks consistently fail to uphold even the minimum standards outlined in their own ethical codes and certifications”.

The investigation uncovered multiple instances of labour violations on what it referred to as “ghost farms”, small operations that supply the larger estates which Starbucks and Nestlé have certified. Farmworkers, often without employment contracts or health insurance, worked with little respite: eight hours a day, every day, for months at a time during the harvest season. They often relied on informal child labour during the busiest times.

As reported by Vic Chiang and Christian Shepherd in the Washington Post, “both Starbucks and Nestlé use verification of farms to ensure workers have labor contracts and are paid above national minimum wage. Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. standards also promise medical care and zero tolerance for child labor”.

The effectiveness of these in-house certifications is questionable and difficult to measure. They might look good in yearly impact reports, but because they are private it can be hard for researchers and watchdogs to find the real story. In a 2015 master’s dissertation on Starbucks’ human rights record, Charlaine Sleiman notes that “by creating the C.A.F.E. Practices, Starbucks has developed its own certification process that is fine-tuned to their business needs, but that is noticeably lacking the transparency of its counterparts”.

When it comes to harvesting coffee, time is of the essence. It is not uncommon for older farmers and farmworkers to rely on underage family members to help out during harvest season, especially during school holidays. It is a worldwide phenomenon: The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that, on any given day in 2016, 152 million children were involved in child labour, with the majority engaged in agricultural work. According to the ILO, coffee is the fourth-largest sector utilising child labour worldwide.

Poverty is a key driver of such large-scale child labour. As the childhood studies professor Tatek Abebe has written, child labour acts as a “shock absorber for economic precarity”. The crisis of low coffee prices, Abebe writes, “has intensified the jobs children must undertake to increase their household’s capacity to survive”.

But if many families within the coffee supply chain still need to rely on child labour to make ends meet, then does it matter if large companies have zero tolerance for child labour? If children have to work on coffee farms in order to help support their families, then how can the coffee sourced from those farms be considered ethical? The purpose of a system is what it does.

On and On

The China Labor Watch investigation is just the latest in a string of similar reports into farms supplying Starbucks, Nestlé, and other large coffee brands. Many of them found violations that go far beyond familial reliance on child labour.

In 2020, the British television program Dispatches found children “working 40-hour weeks in gruelling conditions, picking coffee for a daily wage little more than the price of a latte”, according to Jamie Doward in The Guardian. The farms were linked to Starbucks and Nespresso—this “surprised and saddened” the latter’s celebrity spokesperson, George Clooney, who vowed that “work will be done” to improve conditions.

Going back further, both Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts admitted in 2016 that coffee grown using slave labour “may have ended up in their coffee because they do not know the names of all the plantations that supply them”, according to Kate Hodal in The Guardian. The admissions came after the Danish investigative news outlet Danwatch published a report that found “debt bondage, child labour, deadly pesticides, a lack of protective equipment, and workers without contracts” at Brazilian coffee farms. (I wrote about this report for my piece on pesticide use in coffee.)

It goes on and on. In 2018, Brazilian authorities raided a coffee farm that was certified by Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. Practices, rescuing 18 workers “who were laboring on coffee plantations in conditions analogous to slavery”, according to Daniela Penha in Mongabay. Repórter Brasil published a report in 2016 alleging more labour violations at farms linked to Nestlé, Starbucks, and Ecom Agroindustrial. That same year the Finnish NGO Finnwatch investigated instances of human rights violations on coffee farms in Brazil, Honduras, and India. Those farms featured in the supply chains of exporters like Volcafe and companies like Nestlé, Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group, and Jacob Douwe Egberts.

Repórter Brasil also published an investigation in 2023 called “Behind Starbucks Coffee” which alleged similar offenses on 39 coffee farms, several of which also carried C.A.F.E. Practices and Rainforest Alliance certifications.

From this pattern, it seems clear that labour violations in coffee are far from anomalous—less a bug than a feature. The purpose of a system is what it does.

Actions > Words

The coffee industry, and the big brands that dominate it, are trying to fix these issues—at least, they’ve been saying so for years. In 2020, the nonprofit Global Coffee Platform (GCP) launched a four-year initiative with the goal of tackling modern slavery on coffee farms in Brazil. GCP is made up of some 150 coffee companies from across the globe, including—you guessed it—Nestlé, Volcafe, and JDE Peet’s.

“We know that no single action can ever fully solve the complex social issues leading to poor working conditions and labor abuses in the coffee sector”, GCP said in an announcement at the time. “However, we believe there is a good chance to overcome these problems if we work together through an effective model to mobilize coffee sector support and collective action from the ground up”.

Four years later, the human rights organisation Conectas published a report that it said showed “the persistence of modern slavery and the need for significant measures to curb forced labor in coffee supply chains”. The investigation found multiple instances of human rights violations, and noted one 2022 example in which 20 people, four of whom were under 18, were rescued from a farm linked to Nestlé. That farm was also certified by Rainforest Alliance.

The coffee industry can say that it is working to tackle the issues in its supply chains. Companies can launch initiatives and publish policies and have their suave spokespeople wax lyrical about their ethics. But where are the results?

When, at the same time as they profess their horror at the inequities of the system, they continue to suppress prices and hoard profits—when the vast majority of the coffee industry’s billions in revenue stay in the Global North, when farmers barely earn enough to cover their costs, when the colonial power structures of the global coffee industry remain largely in place—then what they say is essentially meaningless.

Actions speak louder than words. The purpose of a system is what it does.