The paradigm is collapsing

Specialty coffee - like many other paradigms - must evolve; it is not a dogma.

The publication of Thomas S. Kuhn's seminal work, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' in Chicago in 1962 coincided with the culmination of a decade-long research endeavor by Ernest E. Lockhart's team in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This research led to the establishment of the Golden Cup Standard, thereby initiating a scientific discourse on the quality of coffee and its analysis. This seminal work laid the foundation for the economic and social transformation, which subsequently led to a transformation in consumer behavior. This transformation not only paved the way for the emergence and development of the specialty coffee segment, but also catalyzed a qualitative transformation in the coffee market as a whole.

For Kuhn, it then became clear that the history of science, is a collection of references to episodically known concepts and theories - episodic because they evolve with time, intellectual progress and scientific discoveries. Consequently, it can be posited that when a substantial number of actors in the coffee market recognized that aligning their practices with the quality of the raw material, the roasting, and the brewing process would yield substantial benefits to the coffee chain and themselves, they adopted the specialty coffee paradigm. This paradigm not only encompasses scientific and ecological intricacies but also social and economic issues, thereby aligning with and conforming to the capitalist-liberal paradigm that has been adopted in Western societies.

Arduous, manual, sorting of defects in coffee during drying.

Adopting the specialty coffee paradigm does not imply that the coffee market is exclusively concerned with raw materials or premium products, and that the rest is destined to disappear. Coffee graded as specialty represent a certain percentage of the global coffee trade, and by their very nature, will continue to be a decided minority. Following the specialty coffee paradigm entails embracing the consensus that the quality of the raw material matters in trade, including its social and environmental implications.

However, qualitative considerations, which are predicated on the dichotomies of high/low, cheap/expensive, exclusive/accessible, tasty/tasteless, form the essential character of the entire coffee market, and the capitalist-liberal paradigm gives it its logic. Quality research dictates the C-Market Price, this quality is described in supply contracts, subjected to more or less rigorous inspection and appeal.

Following the specialty coffee paradigm entails embracing the consensus that the quality of the raw material matters in trade, including its social and environmental implications.

For a long time, people in the coffee business have been doing things the way they're told, even though there have been some problems with the solutions that have been offered. We've got a system set up now, and everyone's just supposed to go along with it and feel 'good' about it.

The evolution of paradigms is its nature. Paradigms stimulate progress and discoveries consistent with it, ignite discussions subordinate to it, and allow phenomena and trends consistent with them to emerge, giving the illusion of the development of thought.

Thanks to this process, we've seen so many wonderful developments. The specialty coffee market has flourished, crop quality has improved, labor conditions have improved, production and brewing technologies have improved, single origin coffee, flat white, and cold brew have spread throughout the sales networks run by corporations.

On the surface, things seem to be moving in the right direction. However, it is easy to see the economic polarization of our market, the accumulation of capital among the richest. We chase lofty missions, we organize, we popularize, we cannot settle for social and environmental results. The market is growing, but it is not meeting the needs of its participants. That's its nature, we know it from every other market rewarding the few for the efforts of the many.

We proudly serve 'decaffeinated specialty' on plant-based milk, naively thinking that in the process we are courting fair wages for female coffee farmers in Africa. Specialty coffee has become a fashionable, popular and 'effective' way for large companies to showcase their commitment to CSR and PR, and small companies are eager to follow in their footsteps as an aspiration to chase them financial potential and in this same time - to fix the world, they say… Of course, in keeping with the overarching paradigm... whose fate is constantly wavering.

We proudly serve 'decaffeinated specialty' on plant-based milk, naively thinking that in the process we are courting fair wages for female coffee farmers in Africa.

The current paradigm reinforces the belief that the visible development of desirable market features is due to it, and that the beneficiary of these changes is everyone. We mask our shortcomings and 'wash' our green hands in a world calculated for profit to be shared by the richest. While it is important to acknowledge the underlying motives, it is also crucial to recognize the sincere efforts of market participants who, in their pursuit of enhancing quality, offer select improvements to a limited group.

Children working on storing coffee pulp for compost.

However, Kuhn noted that over time, a paradigm—defined as a comprehensive system of ideas or beliefs—can reveal anomalies, that is, facts that cannot be explained logically within its context. These anomalies must be resolved, and as they accumulate, they reach a state where the weaknesses of the prevailing paradigm are so glaring that the paradigm and a community accepting it enters a state of crisis. The paradigms in question—namely, the capitalist-liberal, followed by specialty coffee paradigm — are currently in this phase, and more and less sensible attempts are being made to resolve it. The anomalies have reached a point of acute exacerbation, prompting prominent intellectuals and decision-makers to ponder the future of the world in the aftermath of a global market collapse, as well as the potential 'ends of history', 'wars of civilizations', and 'post-capitalisms'. These discourses are unfolding within the context of Norbert Bobbio's 'great dichotomy', which delineates the ideological divisions among societies and states from a right-to-left perspective.

The anomalies have reached a point of acute exacerbation, prompting prominent intellectuals and decision-makers to ponder the future of the world in the aftermath of a global market collapse, as well as the potential 'ends of history', 'wars of civilizations', and 'post-capitalisms'.

Similar dilemmas - still too timidly and cautiously - are already being addressed in the specialty coffee market. There is an ongoing - loosely related - discussion about the value of specialty coffee, solutions are being proposed that put the human being and his feelings on a higher plane, and fields for 'cool' analysis are being created. The anomalies of the current specialty coffee paradigm are noted. We must remember that if he fails, he will not leave a void. We hear dissenting voices expressed in the interest of the real beneficiaries of the consensus that has been adopted, and it collapses, and they step over the precipice as if nothing ever happened. And we want to discuss solutions and study these anomalies, test hypotheses and experiment on 'methods of the future' for the quality coffee supply chain, and coffee itself.

The question, however, is what consensus will follow the current one. It is important to remember that we will accept it, without exception. Will 'quality' cease to be an objective determinant? And what kind of it will we define? Ultimately, it is essential to determine whether we want the new paradigm to be written for us, without us.

We are all aware that there must be another reality, although we are not yet able to fully understand it. When we feel free to make our own decisions, anything is possible. As Slavoj Žižek has pointed out: 'They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare'.

A typical, some boring day at a Western cafe.

The specialty coffee paradigm has taken the scientific evidence regarding quality and made it the foundation of its narrative. Is it less important than the capitalist 'dogma' that controls its spin? The two continue side by side, like a forced marriage. It's time to get a divorce.

We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare'.

Let's note. The farmer's job as an entrepreneur is to produce coffee and repetitively invest the revenue and modest profits in covering the cost of producing it. He seeks a market and fights for the highest possible price to finance future harvests and meet his and his family's basic needs. Meanwhile, coffee roasters and instant coffee factories buy back the crop from the farmer as cheaply as possible to allow the farmer to survive. Sometimes they 'bonus' and let the crop grow a little in terms of volume, or less often and harder - in terms of crop quality. Occasionally, above profit to be shared, or at least on par with it, placed in the transaction will be the good of the community or concern for ecology. Roasters offer 'microlots' weighted by the ton, where quality is matched to standards and profits are maximized. Coffee shops are expected to serve consumers delicious cups of black, white, 'sustainable' coffee with as low a food cost as possible. Cents circulate along with the beans.

The language we use to talk about coffee in the specialty coffee paradigm is the language of Smith, Mises, Hayek and Friedman. Funnily enough, when working with lower-quality coffees, it doesn't bother us at all, but when confronting it with the 'missionary' nature of high-quality coffees - we are somehow ashamed of it, camouflaging it, or even pretending we don't know it. In the comfort of the offices of green coffee importers, roasters and coffee shops, we are all simply capitalists, whether we like it or not.

This inconsistency is a salt in the eye of many of us. We are looking for solutions to this anomaly. We want fair, socially and environmentally responsible coffee, so we need a system, perhaps including an economic system, that slowly makes it happen. But we still need to use the existing paradigm and get in its game while the consensus lasts. Waking up from a nightmare, we simply want to drink better coffee.

We may or may not be reinventing the world. Let's check whether science is wrong in the current paradigms, whether the Copernican world of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy and psychophysics gives us objective answers about the nature of coffee and us, its processors and consumers. Research to date brings important discoveries every now and then that change and refine our view of coffee.

Let's redefine 'quality' and establish values based on it, or incorporating it, whatever it really is. Let's challenge the stagnant order and look for new ways of development, alternative systems, tentatively even allow for their multiplicity and non-universal nature.

Let us seek a better world of coffee, not a new world of coffee, for the sake of novelty. Let's not preach heresy, but learn about reality. Let us benefit from technological discoveries, let us demand open access to them, not allowing them to be appropriated by capital and influential organizations.

Let us benefit from technological discoveries, let us demand open access to them, not allowing them to be appropriated by capital and influential organizations.

We live in a paradigm where even the cooling of a hot brew can be patented. We have privatized knowledge. Let's mash our coffee knowledge with ideas that escape or stand in opposition to paradigms, no one can forbid us to do so.

Edward Abramowski put in the forefront: freedom understood in connection with 'the raising of human dignity' and 'personal independence against all kinds of authority, social hierarchies and dogmas', equality, and mutual aid, which is sometimes also called brotherhood. The aftermath of the thought of this theoretician of radical cooperatism and the cooperative movement, we find to this day wherever there must be 'economic self-defense of weak people', who, to meet their needs, reach for community solutions, calculated for their own welfare and that of the community. Even this we have subordinated to the existing paradigm.

I would cite, for example, the intimate and more numerous cooperatives of coffee producers who, in Africa, South America or Asia, unite to process, dry and sell their crop together, sharing ownership of the machinery. Also specialty coffee brands roasted in the US or Europe in 'coworking' coffee roasters, or NGOs supporting the work of selected excluded groups in our market. All arranged according to the paradigm to defend themselves, as it were, subconsciously from it by participating in it.

The reality of being a coffee farmer in Rwanda.

Recalling the thought of Immanuel Wallerstein, we don't want to fantasize, but train utopianism, in the case of Red Ink Coffee - in the coffee market. We know how to describe the chaos that will be unleashed among coffee producers of all kinds - green or roasted, brewed, RTD and freeze-dried - once the unseen and vociferous singers of the prevailing paradigm wake up from their nightmare, once the accumulation of beans and sales networks has passed its critical point. And perhaps it has already passed that phase. The economization of coffee has an end in sight. And coffee quality, scientifically measurable, can have its value without monetization. Many are already walking the 'lampedusa' path, greening coffee plantations by betting on biodiversity instead of yield volume, countering on a micro-scale the ecological disaster that is unraveling and we are watching. Perhaps many are counting on the current system to fix and regulate itself. Let's not discredit these methods of action, but see if they are solutions.

Recalling the thought of Immanuel Wallerstein, we don't want to fantasize, but train utopianism, in the case of Red Ink Coffee - in the coffee market.

By the same token, The Better Coffee venture, which we are pursuing here, does not run away from reaching for familiar solutions if they can prove useful. It does not reject capitalist specialty coffee, because this cannot be done without debunking it. However, he seeks a better alternative for it, a better coffee. It learns from already known theories, including that which is the foundation of the current paradigm. From its mechanisms of operation, quality standards, distribution of goods. It is not a well-intentioned revolution, but a way of conscious evolution, the results of which can be revolutionary. The Better Coffee is calling a spade a spade. Someone will say that it is an endeavor that is a bridge between what is old and declining and what will emerge from the chaos of the paradigm shift. Someone will not be wrong.

We write new definitions. We make diagnoses and lead change. We will not be hypocrites who, by criticizing capitalism, become greedy capitalists. We want decent remuneration for work, providing value and satisfying needs, including our needs. We want - in the language of the paradigm - to 'reinvest profits', only that in the common good. Not to practice CSR, but to be socially responsible. Create a society that works with coffee on a different basis.

The Better Coffee has a specific operating strategy and its roadmap that follows the demise of the existing rules. We are planning a number of business initiatives within The Better Coffee in the spirit of the current paradigm and ventures that are completely out of sync with it and seemingly absurd to those not awakened from the illusion of the paradigm.

We do not plan to exploit the market. We invite you to take action! And we give the first tips on how to get rich yourself - including financially - by being one of equals among coffee producers and consumers helping each other.

And we are not naive. Knowing the specialty coffee paradigm very well, we know how to work and make money in this market. But we wouldn't want to wake up too late, when the world has changed and we're not ready for it. We woke up early and want to offer you work and research on the new paradigm.

Starting with Red Ink Coffee, there will be a blog and more.