Recently I stumbled across this report:
I must say that I am not surprised, like many other certification that started off trying to make a difference it to has gone to the marketing dogs. Any certification that needs a board falls into this trap. The Organic certification is more about sales than it is about the way things are grown. I have seen this with the coffee from the Limu region of Ethiopia. This coffee was always partly made up of wild growing coffee. The co-op spent a small fortune getting certified, in the hope that sales would grow. And they have placed a premium on the coffee, with almost no money going back to the grower for all this certification work. Now the end consumer can fell better, but there are no significant changes, the coffee tastes the same, and you have to pay 15% more for it.
I believe that you need to look for honest businesses. Like the businesses promoting relationship coffees. There is no certification just honest through the chain. The grower knows what the co-op and the the exporter and roaster make, and this is all published along the coffee chain, so that everyone is kept honest.
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