What is Coffee Grounds

Coffee grounds is a collection of stories about people, place and ecology in coffee landscapes. We explore in the long-form the everyday lives of coffee producers from the hamlets from which we source coffee and how these everyday lives in turn connect to surrounding ecosystems. The stories are created alongside coffees from the places from which we are reporting.

The intent of Coffee Grounds is to shake up the ‘farm to cup’ narrative. You would not be wrong to think of us as rather Polanyian. Coffee Grounds is an attempt to connect coffee consumers to producers and coffee places through more than just commodities. Rather the long-form stories acknowledge that coffee itself is embedded in society, culture, place and ecology and a truthful farm-to-cup must retain this embeddedness.

We will report based on what emerges from the work that Black Baza Coffee does in the regions we procure our coffee from. We will attempt to tell stories that are truthful even though at times there may be differences between our own interests and those of the producers’ with whom we work.

Quite frankly, we write these stories as much for ourselves. They are a way for us to (publicly) reflect on our involvement with producers and our goal to conserve biodiversity. Navigating this over a 1000 year clock is uncertain and bound to be at a pace of three steps forward and one back. Coffee Grounds is our way of telling where we came from…

Coffee Grounds went live on October 23, 2017.