20 Years Certified Organic!!

This year marks our 20th anniversary as a fully certified organic coffee roaster with Oregon Tilth! Were this a marriage, we would expect only the finest of china to commemorate the milestone; as is, we'll continue to shell out the annual fees and keep the machine moving.

The organic industry has recently taken a few jabs that seems to mirror the novel desire to dismantle markets built up over decades. While legacy institutions do sometimes warrant the occasional dismemberment, this rhetoric appears to be done purely for the sake of disruption. To be blunt, these swipes seem to originate from businesses looking to chip away at the success of organic products purely for their own monetary gain with assertions and self-certifications that boil down to, “Trust me, bro.” 

Third party certifications put many eyes on a process to reinforce that both the product and process live up to their declarations. No perfect system involving people exists and many aspects of the organic industry could be improved upon but it is the best program currently in place to ensure that what we put into the environment and our bodies won't poison us. 

Organic certification requires safe storage and handling through every step of the process, from the farm to the bag of roasted beans you buy in the store or at our cafe. Opinion on organic agriculture tends to focus on our individual consumption but the distinction also ensures that farmers are not subject to hazardous chemicals while producing the crops upon which we’ve come to rely. 

With talk of microplastics and fertilizer runoff in the news highlighting just a sliver of the damage we’ve done to the planet, producing, purchasing, and supporting certified organic products continues to read like the right and rational choice. And in twenty more years, well…..we’ll see.