Every Link in the Chain

   This week, as we continue in our efforts to get our operation certified as organic we need to leave the farm and head back to Bali for a few days. It can be daunting how many steps there are to certify. To be certified as Organic, a product needs to remain under controlled and certified conditions all the way along the product chain. For our case this means from the farmer to the bags of coffee sold to consumers by Mocha Joes. There are lots of steps in-between. Just listing them can be difficult, which we found out when Philip, Gilbert, and I sat down to complete a profile of our processing and exporting. When we started our estimate of how many points of control we needed was pretty low, but by the end we had a much longer list.

Farm to you: our coffee's trip from Oku to the US

   What adds to the frustration is that some of these points are under our direct control (for example, sweeping the mill between batches of coffee) while others are being handled by a company we either hire or contract to do the work (this would include most of the steps involved in shipping). In the cases where the control points are our direct responsibility, we deal with them by drafting internal documents and memorandum that lay out our procedures. To again use sweeping the mill between batches of coffee as an example, when our inspectors come they will want to see that we have a section included in our handbook describing exactly how the machines and other work surfaces are to be cleaned. They will also want to see proof that we are practically following those guidelines: in this case, maybe a sign posted just where coffee is loaded into the hulling machine that says something to the effect of “STOP!!! Is this a new batch of ORGANIC coffee? Have we cleaned to machines yet?”

   When we are dealing with steps not under our direct control, our auditors are still going to want to check on the situation. If we are lucky, some of these company’s may have experience dealing with organic products (I’m a little bit hopeful that the shipper we contract will fall into this category) and they will be happy to help us with our efforts. On the other hand, I can imagine that some companies that work as contract warehouses or packers won’t be thrilled at the idea of signing an additional contract with one of their clients and having outsiders poking around their premises.

   So while the farm is the bedrock of the whole process, the place where our coffee beans spend the best years (months) of their lives and will be nostalgic for later, it is only one part (the first part) of a long chain that we need to control in order to assure our consumers that the coffee they are drinking is 100% organic.