150,000 Tonnes of Perfectly good coffee is about to be DESTROYED.
Yes, you read that right! To put that in to perspective, an average 20ft shipping container holds up to 20,000kg of coffee in other words 20 ton.
That means that they are about to destroy 7,500 shipping containers worth of coffee!
I can't even get my head around it considering that we at Mikro would only roast around 3 and a half shipping containers of coffee.
Wow.
Now why would they destroy 150,000 tonnes of coffee and who are they you might be asking???
Well, let me tell you a little bit of background in to what is going on and why this is happening.
On 29th of June 2023 the European Regulation on deforestation-free products entered into force.
The main driver of deforestation is expansion of land use for agriculture, this includes coffee and cocoa.
Under the Regulation, any operator or trader who places these commodities on the EU market, or exports from it, must be able to prove that the products do not originate from recently deforested land or have contributed to forest degradation.
Once again Wow.
Imagine being a European coffee importer with a warehouse full of coffee, lets say 1000 tonnes that has come from Brazil or Colombia.
You have absolutely no idea that the farmer that you purchase that coffee from has been recently deforesting some of their newly acquired land to plant and grow more coffee.
And now your warehouse is loaded to the brim with this coffee that you can no longer sell in to the European market after a certain cut-off point.
The new regulations will enforce producers and importers to pinpoint exactly which farms the coffee comes from and that the land is not considered recently deforested or causing degradation to nearby forests.
This is when I count our lucky stars that we spend the time to do our due diligence to ensure that our coffee farming partners that work with Mikro don't engage in deforestation and forest degradation practices.
European union wants to drive change to consumerism and production to ensure that farming does not cause any further Environmental damage, but it sounds like
they will have some collateral damage to cause along the way.
Now, it remains to be seen what these news and regulations will do to the overall coffee market and how this will drive the coffee prices in the near future.
In the mean time, lets enjoy a cup of Ethically sourced coffee and savour every moment.
Kind Regards
Valeri
Mikro.coffee
