On the other hand, over the years I’ve spent in this industry I have dealt with a number of producers/importers who invest in their growers, helping them to grow and process ever higher quality coffees and improving volume, etc. This allows those importers to pay a higher price for the better coffees, which has a strong ripple effect: more money for the producers to improve their lot, scaling up their production volume and long term growth and success, and for the importer, higher prices for them due to the increase in quality, and a growing reputation for providing consistently high quality to their clients, who in turn can command higher prices for the retail products based on the noticible increase in quality. Do I pay more for tthese coffees? Certainly. Do I object to that? Certainly not, as I can then offer exceptional coffees to my customers. When the tide riase, ALL the vessels in port are lifted up.
THAT is true “sustainablilty” along every millimeter of the value chain. I have also seen communities totally transformed when they are shown how, then helped along the way toward successm and moving in a few short years from grinding poverty to one of the more wealthy communities in the entire country as they learned the disciplines and practices to produce premium coffee. Instead of the three to five cents the pound at the farm gate they had gotten for decades, they are now getting well above a dollar the pound and enjoying a lifestyle they’d never dreamed of before. And they are working no harder now than they were for pennies.

“Price is that which determines the distribution of goods that have alernate uses”. Thomas Sowell, in his excellent book Basic Economics.

Parting shot: I’d be interested in seeing hard data collected reliably over several decades before swallowing the claim that “climate change will (whatever dire prediction might be made) if we don’t DO something….. said “something” being the theoretical key to reversal of the observed trend…..
Anyone care to guess why Greenland was so named?