It was a pleasure to begin working with this company and generate videos that would publish some of the lesser known facts that frame out this very important commodity – coffee.
This video production is really a slide show video and is a very affordable way to publish your services and products. The still photos can be taken on your premises and of yourselves, or professional photos that entertain while they inform. In this video marketing tool, I used a little video footage that I had in my archive.
When you consider that coffee is the second largest traded commodity next to oil you then realize the power there is in the process that gets it from the farm into our cup. If memory serves there have only ever been two time that the stock market halted trade and one of them was during a crop crisis of coffee.
This video production does nothing to discuss that issue and only offers a brief pictorial insight into the cultivation, harvesting, production line that coffee travels on it’s way to where ever and from whoever it is that we purchase it from.
My idea in producing this mini video was to at least hint at the many hands it travels through to our coffee pot. I would love to produce a current video that would entertain while it informed those who would enroll, if they knew more, in the politics regarding the coffee plantations – that wide gulf that divides those that farm the coffee and those that deal in the distribution of the crop.
I learned so much about the now ‘infamous’ ‘green washing’ that complete conceals in the worst, and camouflages in the least the slave labour on the farms and rampant greed in the market place that this precious commodity fuels. In the instigation to implement the sustainable fair trade movement the desire was, put simply, to level the playing field so that the farmer could work and have bare bone sufficiency – place to live, clothes to wear, food on the table and the tiniest opportunity to procure an education for their offspring. BT, as is the nature of those who’s main objective is to increase the profit margin but invest as little as possible – and put bluntly, not give a damn of how that crop got to the market place.
Let’s just say that there are those among who don’t care about how that java ended up in their morning coffee cup…and who may never become aware of the horrific damage that this crop, cultivated in the wrong way, is doing to the earth. i did shoot video footage on this subject but here again, it’s not included in this mini video production.
- They may not be aware that coffee, when its allowed to grow where it wants to, does not queue up and grow in acres of rows so that the harvesting machines can get to.
- They may not know that it grows in and among a variety of plants it takes on the flavour profile of those neighbouring plants. It prefers to grow under a canopy and this is why you’ll see ‘shade grown’ being lauded on the packaging.
- They may not know that their cup of coffee is sometimes the only way some farmers can be in gainful employment, if you can call it ‘gainful’ AND that is is worse paid than the infamous diamond mines in South Africa.
The coffee cultivated on small sustainable farms, picked when ripe and not ‘strip farmed’ pulling both green and red cherries from the branch, can have the taste of chocolate, or vanilla, or berries. Coffee responds to plants and soil in the same way that grapes do and provide flavour profiles to everything from inexpensive ‘table wine’ to very expensive and elegant sipping wine. A better example would be chocolate since they oft grow together and mime each other in the way they absorb the flavours of the plants that they grow alongside of.
What it grows with, as well as the the soil it grows in, how it’s harvested as well as when THEN the whole process of getting that into the roasting machines…ALL OF IT, affects that final cup of morning coffee.
Oh, my goodness you can see why those who get into this world of coffee are never more seen going into anything else! Its such a rich culture… and those that REALLY get into the politics of it are as easily triggered to become ‘hot under the collar’ as are those who discuss the full spectrum of issues on the Republican ticket!
Speaking of ‘shade grown’ in contrast to those highly disastrous strip farms that move the harvesting machines down a central aisle shaking and striping the branches of everything from the yet unformed coffee flower, the berry in all shades of green all the way up to the ripe n’ ready red cheery…this is why some coffee takes like carmel coloured sludge while other cups of coffee are remarkable. A full bouquet can awaken your taste buds and fill your nostrils and home with a savoury aroma.
Our commercial way of rush – rush to the roaster and onto the shelves has meant that many have never sampled a good cup of of coffee. Seriously. I mean it. I’ve actually been using this brand of coffee that my clients produce, they named themselves simply ‘Roast House Coffee’ and when I’ve brewed it and served it to people who, in my opinion, drink coffee in excess, they have all commented on it’s aroma and its taste.
Great care is taken by Deborah Di Bernardo, the owner, in how she locates these small farmers, works with them and keeps them out of the mainstream coffee market place by paying them. This alone keeps them off of the slave blocks and contributes so much towards saving our fragile planetary balances.
One of the videos I produced for them is called ‘African Coffee’ and this video was shot on 3 continents, one of which was Africa. If you have any doubts whatsoever about the claim, I and others, make that there is at least a concoction of 1,000 chemicals in a single cup of non organic coffee…think again. All you really need to do it consider that when you remove anyone or anything from it’s optimal horticultural preferences, you, in essence, relocate it in a war zone. Predators. Infestations, etc/
Think of it, if a botanical prefers the shade, and you place it under a scorching sun, what’s likely to happen? In short it becomes prey and what would you do if your cash crop was being feasted upon by the foe and fried under the blazing sun?! You’d spray it, that’s what you’d do… repellents, drugs that wold help it endure the sun and not die for want of shade.
Spray. Spray. Spray. Saturate the ground with chemical cocktails that will eventually mean that nothing will grow there. Then, moving on, what is the final outcome of that procedure…?! Well, since those that instigated that ignorant practice will be long gone and onto the next ‘big thing’ will be gone… it’s the people who were worked like slaves that’ll be left to reclaim the land and make it produce again.
Now I’m going to tell you something that I said I wouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway..(as I’m working up a froth! LOL – no, not so funny) when I went back into an area and visited a few plantations I’d shot video footage of years before and one of the most disturbing visuals was the drastic loss of skin pigmentation on those who, in one way or another, handled the coffee. Big white patches of skin were evident on hands arms and faces. Chemicals are to blame. I suppose that if you, for whatever reason don’t share my concern about this skin condition, you may be interested in considering what this chemical cocktail is doing to your health….and remember, that what the body cannot assimilate, it cannot eliminate either. It will however express this toxic condition without dislodging it. It expresses it through the skin, the malfunctioning lungs, the weakened bladder, diminished eyesight, etc.
Well, if you read down this far, as least you’re awake! Maybe you did not need this wake up call, but I did. I simply did not believe that there that many chemicals in non organic coffee. One thing is on my mind a lot: labeling.
- Where on the typical label that sells coffee do you ever see a list of those chemicals?
- How do we get that onto a label and what will be the resistance to providing that information to the consumer?
- How will it impact the market place and the ultimate cost of coffee & will anyone get on board with doing it?
- Now this question is hypothetical: Wouldn’t it be better to get on board with the fight to keeping what few plantations that are not yet poisoned, than to idling sit by and keep score while watching this blood bath?
And, NO! I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic. Remember, this is the world’s second biggest commodity -bought – sold and traded daily in a world wide market place. When I really got my head around that i then understood the passionate statement I heard Deborah Di Bernardo make when she said: “I’m going to help change the world by selling and drinking one cup of coffee at a time.”
Hooray to the David that rises up to slay the Goliath! Hooray to OrganicRoastHouse.com Spokane, Washington – 99207 509.995.6500