Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification – FAQ
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Q: How does Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification differ from Fair Trade Certification?
Q: How does the third-party certification work?
Q: How does Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification define cup quality?
Q: How does Counter Culture define "personal and direct communication" with coffee farmers?
Q: Is $1.60/lb. for green coffee a fair minimum price?
Q: Is the certification process expensive? Is this a good use of your resources?
Q: How do you calculate a farm or farmer’s cost of production?
Q: Which Counter Culture coffees currently meet Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification criteria?
Q: How often are coffees re-certified?
Q: How does Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification differ from Fair Trade Certification?
A: Fair trade is a general term which describes the movement towards increased equity and fairness among the supply chain of a variety of products, including coffee. In coffee, the most widely used fair trade standard is created and maintained by the Fairtrade Labeling Organization, and their licensee in the United States, Transfair USA. Their "Fair Trade Certified" (FTC) seal is the most commonly seen fair trade certification in the market, and Counter Culture has been a proud licensee of Transfair since 2001. However, this seal is not available to all farmers: since the FLO standard includes only coffee producers who are organized into certain kinds of co-ops, independent farmers are excluded from the FTC system. Since maintaining direct relationships with independent farmers is one of our core principles of fairness and sustainability, we sought a fair trade standard that was able to include these farms, many of which are shining examples of sustainable, responsible coffee farming.
Meanwhile, we recognized that our own standards of quality, transparency, and fair pricing were somewhat higher than the FTC standard. We developed the Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification in the desire to raise the bar of fairness and sustainability and lead by example in the coffee trade. We are proud of our standard and feel it is a positive, groundbreaking contribution to the fair trade movement. We respect and support Transfair and their FTC mark, and we seek to go even further in the name of fairness, transparency, and equity.
We created the Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification (CCDTC) to codify and communicate the key measurable principles on which our coffee relationships are built, which are not only important to us, but to our producer partners and customers alike. These principles are:
1. Personal, direct communication and long-term partnerships with coffee farmers
2. Fair and sustainable prices
3. Financial incentives that reward growers for exceptional quality
4. 100% supply chain transparency
Specific differences between CCDTC and FTC:
- FTC applies exclusively to coffee farms organized into co-ops. In our experience, many extraordinary family-owned, well-managed, progressive, independent farms are structurally excluded from the FTC market. CCDTC may apply to any and all of our producer partners, including both cooperatives of small farmers and independent or family-owned farms.
- The CCDTC minimum price is $1.60/lb. for green coffee. The FTC floor price is $1.35/lb.
- CCDTC guarantees at least biennial farm visitation by Counter Culture staff. FTC does not include criteria related to farm visits or the level of personal engagement between coffee farmers and roasters. Personal, long-term relationships with our farmer partners—and the quality, sustainability, trust, and learning they foster—are the essence of our Direct Trade model. By visiting these farms, we can also work side by side with farmers to improve quality, assess environmental and social practices, and learn about the cultures and people who produce great coffee.
- Quality in the cup is of paramount importance to us and our customers. In CCDTC, pre-shipment samples of eligible coffees must score at least an 85 on a blind cupping (cup quality) scale of 100 in order to qualify. While FTC does set a floor price for green coffee, it does not set a base quality level to preserve what we believe to be an essential relationship between quality and price. We build quality incentives right into our coffee purchases and work directly with growers to make sure the best coffees receive the highest prices.
- CCDTC guarantees that Counter Culture maintains open communication between buyers, sellers, and any supply chain intermediaries. CCDTC also guarantees that all relevant financial information is always available to all parties. Although FTC requires financial transparency between roaster and exporting cooperative and supports the rights of those cooperatives to determine how their revenues are spent in their communities, FTC does not guarantee 100% transparency among all parties in the coffee chain.
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Q: How does the third-party certification work?
A: We have partnered with Quality Certification Services (QCS), a USDA-accredited certifier of food and other craft products, to create the coffee trade’s first third-party certified Direct Trade certification program. Counter Culture Direct Trade Certified coffees are guaranteed by QCS to be 100% compliant with a set of four quantifiable measures that reflect our core coffee buying principles:
1. Personal & Direct Communication: Counter Culture has visited grower partners on a biennial basis, at minimum.
2. Fair & Sustainable Prices: Counter Culture has paid at least $1.60/lb. for green coffee. This exceeds the Fair Trade Certified minimum by at least 19%, not including quality-based financial incentives to growers.
3. Exceptional Quality: Coffees have scored at least 85 on a 100-pt. cupping (cup quality) scale.
4. 100% Transparency: Counter Culture maintains direct communication between buyers, sellers, and any intermediaries. All relevant financial information is available to all parties, always.
For more information about QCS, please visit www.qcsinfo.org.
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Q: How does Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification define cup quality?
A: Our mission statement begins with a simple, straightforward assertion: Counter Culture Coffee is the relentless pursuit of coffee perfection. This pursuit begins with relationship building on the farm, extends through our craft approach to roasting, and then to the quality of coffee in the cup. We spend an unprecedented amount of time working on the ground level with the best, most progressive farmers in the world to produce exceptional quality coffee. Put simply, Counter Culture Direct Trade Certified coffees represent the best of the best: CCDTC coffees must score at least an 85 on our 100-point blind cupping scale at the time of pre-shipment. We recognize that this snapshot quality measurement cannot capture all the extraordinary things about a coffee, but it does provide an important baseline (similar to a base price) and a tangible point where we can assess and establish quality. It’s important to remember that 85 is the bare minimum baseline, not the goal, and designed to help determine a base quality level. Most CCDTC coffees will score well above 85.
In general, with all of our coffee relationships, Counter Culture is committed to establishing farm-specific programs to recognize, reward, and support quality development. One type of program is a "microlot" system in which small lots are cupped and scored, and the resulting coffee is paid for based on its cupping score. For example, we might pay 1.60/lb. for coffee scoring an 85-87; 1.80/lb. for 88-93; and 3.00/lb. for 94+. In other cases, where we might not have the infrastructure available for a microlot program, we will pursue another system that develops and rewards quality on the farm.
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Q: How does Counter Culture define "personal and direct communication" with coffee farmers?
A: Personal communication and relationships are all about trust, and nothing is more effective or enriching than face-to-face interaction. We visit our farmer partners regularly, and seek to have a consistent, personal presence on the farms where we buy coffee. Between visits, we stay in contact with individual growers using the methods most convenient to them because every farmer is different, and we define personal communication slightly differently for each relationship. In some cases, monthly phone conversations are easier for farmers than weekly e-mails or online chatting, but for others, the opposite is true. In each case, our goal is to make sure that Counter Culture is responsive and available to all of our partners, all of the time—not only when we’re standing on the farm.
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Q: Is $1.60/lb. for green coffee a fair minimum price?
A: Yes, $1.60/lb., which exceeds the FTC floor price by 19%, is a fair minimum. To us, this figure represents a baseline for producing the level of quality which we demand for CCDTC. It was challenging to set a minimum price (initially we tried to avoid it) because minimum prices tend to be interpreted—by consumers and sometimes by buyers—as standards, as opposed to an absolute minimum. Because our goal is to pay growers based on their costs of production, we chose a fixed minimum price of $1.60/lb. based on discussions with our grower partners. We chose not to index our minimum to the minimum for Fair Trade Certified coffee because it, like the commodity market price, is subject to daily fluctuation. We will pay more than the minimum of $1.60/lb. for most CCDTC coffees, and we are always willing to share the price paid for any particular lot.
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Q: Is the certification process expensive? Is this a good use of your resources?
A: In comparison to other third-party coffee certifications, the Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification process is very cost-effective. It is also important to note that CCDTC carries no cost to the grower whose coffee receives the certification, because ultimately, we are assessing and certifying Counter Culture’s purchasing practices, not the grower’s farming practices. We created CCDTC to strengthen our purchasing system, support our partners, and communicate our values. We will never allocate resources to certification that could be better used to support our partners in other ways, or use CCDTC as a reason to purchase, or not purchase, coffee that we believe in.
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Q: How do you calculate a farm or farmer’s cost of production?
A: The coffee farms we work with are diverse in size, culture, topography, growing practices, and other factors that make a universal accounting system unrealistic. Right now, only one or two farmers we know are doing a good job accounting for their costs of production. Most farmers just take the money from their crop, spend as little as they can, and hope that they are profitable at the end of the year. We see this as a major threat to farm sustainability, and seek to help farmers track and quantify their costs of production, so they can be secure in their profitability. It’s not easy, as labor, inputs (fertilizer, etc.), transportation, farm maintenance (roads), equipment, organic certification, interest, medical care, and security all factor into our calculations and change from farm to farm. We are working on this together with farmers and learning as we go. We see our consideration of producers’ production costs as an important value we bring to producer partners.
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Q: Which Counter Culture coffees currently meet Counter Culture Direct Trade Certification criteria?
A: The following coffees currently meet the criteria for CCDTC:
- Finca El Puente from Marcala, Honduras
- La Golondrina from Popayan, Colombia
- Valle del Santuario from San Ignacio, Peru
- Ikawa Rwanda from Nyakizu, Rwanda
- Finca Nueva Armenia from Huehuetenango, Guatemala
- Decaf 21st de Septiembre from Zaragoza, Mexico
- 21st de Septiembre from Zaragoza, Mexico
- Finca Mauritania from Santa Ana, El Salvador
- Cafe San Ramon from Matagalpa, Nicaragua
- Ndaroini from Nyeri, Kenya
- Jagong from Jagong, Sumatra
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Q: How often are coffees re-certified?
A: Each coffee is re-certified every crop cycle, which for most coffees is once a year.
