Redefining Quality and Farmer Livelihood

Hello everybody, welcome to Episode Seventy-Nine. Today's episode is a conversation that I had with my friend Lalo Pérez, and I'm really excited to bring this to you because agronomy is something that I am really passionate about. It's something that I think is so fundamentally important in our coffee industry and processing can often take a lot of the spotlight, um, can take a lot of the you know, 'cause it's so immediate in in processing. We can do something in the tank immediately and see results in the cup and whatever we do on the farm can take several harvests to see any benefit. And so I think that's why it's often not as flashy in our immediate trendy culture. But I think there's enough of you that are interested in this topic and I usually can't bring it to you because I am not an agronomist. That is not my training. But it's still, you know, I those who know me know that I am I I I think of myself as a gardener first and then I happen to do coffee and other stuff, but my my entire personality since twenty nineteen has become gardening. So any chance I get to learn about agronomy is a very good day. Um as longtime listeners of the podcast will know, one of our favorite friend of the podcast and frequent guest is Purnoy . And Purnoy just has a really great attitude, a really great voice, really great perspectives. Like he's somebody that uh I like to talk to at least once a year on the podcast and get an update from him . And I think that for those of you who enjoy those conversations and enjoy his view of the world, I think you're really going to enjoy meeting Lalo and that I suspect he's going to become another frequent guest on the show and I hope to hear from him a lot more. This conversation was uh long. It it's about an hour and a half, so I'll try to keep this intro a little bit shorter, but it's a conversation that at the end of it, I just wanted to keep talking to him more. And actually, since this ended, we have continued to stay in contact because a lot of things came up. So I look forward to hearing your comments if this sparked some questions some more agronomy specific questions I think this could be a really great opportunity for a part two in this conversation we stay more high level in terms of consultancy and kind of views on nature, not necessarily too into the weeds on specific recommendations or um, you know, nutrient uh breakdown or ratios, things like that . There are some moments. Um so I I think that there is something that you can as a producer get take away from this episode. But in general I tried to stay you know, much higher level and talk about the overlaps betwe en how I approach processing and how he approaches his agronomy consultancy and then also his own farm and what he's doing. Um like I said, I think that at least for me when I got off the call , I was like, oh, so many more questions. So I'm really looking forward to hearing from you guys to see what this conversation sparked in you and what you would love to have Lalo on again next time. Um, you know, very specific agronomy questions. So before we get started on this conversation, I also wanted to mention that the the reason this conversation happened was because he sent me a document. It's a twenty two page document that he wrote as an exploration, as a like I I think I say in the in the conversation that it's like a like a press release, kind of his history of where he started and where he's at now. I'm not sure where this is going to be published. Maybe on his website. So if you would like to read it, you can probably email him and he'll share it with you 'cause I don't think it's public yet. But because I mention it and you're not really able to read it, I wanted to give you some context as to what I'm talking about when I mention this particular document and what about it kind of struck me. And so I'm just gonna read you, you know, this is like the second or third paragraph on the very first page. So these are his words that prompted the phone call. So he says Running feels great today. The sinuous trail bends and disappears, as if it's following the mountain. And it hits me, mid stride, this is the life I dreamt of for years. Family in the mountains, we eat what we grow, we share time with relatives, my daughter loves her school. Somehow, my life still revolves around coffee. Life is good. My AirPods are streaming a podcast, on coffee, of course. The dogs zip past me after trailing behind, launching into a chase after a squirrel they could never seem to catch. They never stop trying. There's something about that stubborn determination, almost primal . What I'm hearing punches me in the gut, and the trail ahead zooms out like in the movies as my heart rate accelerates. Some interpretation of physics suggests a strange possibility. What we experience now could be shaped not only by the past but by conditions that include the future. As I'm enjoying my morning run, Lucia says, My main ethos now is to get out of coffee. If I can help get you out of coffee, that is what I would rather do. And then she adds a second gut punch, almost a warning label for anyone who comes to her with dreams. People think they're coming to a wedding planner, but I'm really a divorce lawyer. It felt like my entire morning routine had been organized by my future self so that I could hear that sentence at exactly the right moment, so I'd be, as we say in Spanish, flojito ecuperando, ready to face the brutal reality. This message is gut punching because I completely agree with it I'm bringing this up because in the conversation I mentioned that recently in the last couple of months I've been doing a few more interviews and um podcasts and I am just kind of running my mouth and saying whatever and sometimes I even forget what I say. So it was interesting to read Lalo 's interpretation or not interpretation, those are actual quotes of things that I said. This was on the Kirk Pearson podcast. And I think a lot of those things struck him as kind of uh he was very surprised to hear me say that. I won't spend any more time now talking about those particular responses. I've beening contemplat a separate episode where I compare and contrast like the questions that I've been asked, the answers I gave, kind of due to time, and what I wish I could have said, because as we all know, why why say something in a few minutes if I can make a 60-minute podcast out of it? But anyway, um, so I just wanted to let you know that that original interview was from Kirk Pearson and that Lalo read that, had this reaction to it and then has reflecting on his role on coffee and he sent it to me just to make sure that he's like, Is this okay? I don't want to misrepresent you and as I say in the conversation, I read it and I was like, oh I, want to talk to Lalo about this. Why am I just reading this when I could actually, you know, we're friends. I can just call him up and and have a chat. But we hadn't talked in maybe like 10 years. So what you're hearing coming up is a result of me on this different podcast, Lalo listening to it, having this reflection reaction, and then we go down this today's conversation rabbit hole. So I'm looking forward to you meeting him. All of the information will be in the show notes. And let's get started because it's it's a long conversation. Alright everybody, see you on the other side. Well this is not a hard hitting interview. Um this is more I just wanted to chat with you. I wanted to talk with you. I really um enjoyed your twenty one page basically it was like a press release I think. It was more of a you know this is what we're doing. And I was I was sitting there reading it and I thought, why am I reading this when I could actually be talking to Lalo and actually connecting again? And so welcome to Making Coffee. This is a space to hang out and to talk about it's my excuse to talk about some of the things that I find interesting in the industry that I don't think are getting enough attention and I think that there's a lot of overlap in our philosophies, in terms of you know placing microbes at the center of solutions and microbes at the center of opportunities and innovation. So I think we share that part. But I just wanted to give you a chance to say hi to to the audience. Hola it's nice to see everybody even though we can't really see you yet. So Lalo you and I met over ten years ago and we met because and I think neither of us really remembers what the catalyst was of how we got connected, but the point is that I went to visit you in Mexico City and I got to see like the baby the baby version of Buna coffee at that time. I think it was like 2014, 201 5. Um and then we also got to travel to some surrounding of producers that you were sourcing from and do some fermentation trials. And what I remember during that time is what was so impressive to me was at that point early in my consulting career, I was mostly consulting with producers, the traditional, I think producers that you think of that are in their fifties and sixties. I was really working with much older people and you and David were just young and fresh and had a lot of energy and you were sourcing and roasting and had a cafe and that vertical integration in a producing country was so different for me. I th I still think it's different now in twenty twenty six, but in twenty fourteen it really was a a novel idea. And if you want to give us any background on kind of your idea of Buna and how that started, and then how you found yourself kind of giving sourcing for producers, giving a lot of advice and then realizing okay, this should be a consultancy and then that led to your own opportunity to farm and to also like supply restaurants and so you've you've really had this multifaceted kind of rich experience in the coffee industry. So if there's anything that you want to add to that before I ask you my questions. No, I think you've summed it up pretty well. Um it was kind of a unique moment when we decided to start Buna in terms of where specialty was at as an industry. Um I think there was uh a call for for more stuff to happen at Origin in terms of the roasting and retailer side. And of course that sounded beautiful to us and we I was living in the States when I was introduced to specialty coffee and when I came back uh to Mexico. I I felt a calling to kind of do it in my country to represent what our country could do because a lot of a lot of what I was hearing back then, at least in the States, was that Mexican coffee was uh okay, you know? And that kinda y both hit my ego and also uh it raised a really interesting question, which was why? Why why is coffee from Mexico not appreciated ? And uh 15 years later, uh I start to have a hint of why that is or why that perception exists, rather, because of course there are fantastic coffees that are grown in Mexico. Um, but it was very exciting and I I like your reflection. We were definitely enthused. And and just to say that enthusiasm was heavily influenced by a lot of ignorance. And I think uh we didn't realize when we started the company that we couldn't have access to the channels that roaster retailers in the States or in Europe or in Australia had, which was to call an importer and give you options, right? And so we quickly realized we have to do this work ourselves. My partner at the time, David, was a biologist, and we were both very moved and interested by ecosystems and the environment and farming. And so it kind of led to a very simple answer, right? Let's work with farmers, let's work, let's understand what they're doing, what their challenges are. And I think this is maybe why we got connected, right? Someone must have put us in touch because they knew we were interested in in processing and increasing quality and help and assisting farmers. And I can't remember who put us in touch. We'll have to we'll have to find out. But anyway, uh to kind of get to where we are today, um it's very hard for a growing business to do a to have a lot of focus, a lot of different focuses. And so we were, as you say, roasting and retailing, we had a coffee shop, but we were also exporting coffee and we were representing La Marzoco, and so we had so much stuff going on that it was tough for us to grow the business and and to do it in the way that we wanted. So it took us a long time to learn that. We were very committed to keeping that business as complex as it was. We thought that much like an ecosystem, diversity brought resilience, and it did, it kept us alive through many things. It also did wasn't allowing us to to to focus, right? And so when COVID hit and the the economy kind of asked us a hard question, right, what are you gonna do to survive? That's when we decided, okay, these things need to be separate businesses. And we kind of broke everything off. So Lamarzoco in Mexico became its own thing and that's when Biophilia was born. And Biophila was born out of a um uh a desire, a need, uh curiosity that I had to understand what were what techniques and technologies were actually true levers for farmers and and what I found was that microbiology was the strongest one . Not that there aren't others, and not that that's a silver bullet, so of course it needs to work in conjunction with great practices regardless. But uh I really thought that microbiology was both misunderstood and misapplied and I think it uh it could have a great effect on all types of farming if introduced appropriately. So that was kind of the birth of Euophilia . And maybe I'll leave it there so we can go to your questi ons. Well something that I think is really um that I admire about your trajectory is that you found yourself speaking to a lot of producers, sourcing coffee, and that type of exposure , you got to see a lot of different scenarios and a lot of different configurations. And the way that the mind works is then you start to build patterns and you start to see and be able to connect things of, oh, this could be better and this could be different. And so you found yourself kind of in that consulting role getting all of this experience. But then where I think that's where a lot of people in coffee go towards are like, I have information I can help. I have this kind of um view, but I think what is necessary in our industry is then to kind of then do it yourself. And so that discomfort, I don't think enough people feel that discomfort of I'm telling people what to do, but I'm not doing it myself . And so you took that step and you said, I'm not just gonna tell producers what to do, I'm going to grow coffee and see, learn from that way. So can you t tell us about kind of that discomfort and you realizing that you needed to kind of prove these concepts that seemed like good ideas, but that needed that you know next boost. Yeah, that's a great observation. Um it's hard to explain with words because at at the core of this question, I find that there's a there's a abyss between theoretical and rational reality and emotional reality, right? And of course, you can read the books and the research and the text and be informed and be educat ed and try to do all the theory , but there it's very hard to convey the emotions that one feels when they do certain things. I think business owners in general have a good appreciation for this . You know, people think they see a business and everybody sees success on the outside or whatever they think success is, right? But no one understands it's not even how hard the work is, but rather the emotions that one has to go through to keep something that you care about alive . And I think farmers are really facing the strongest emotions of all because they really care for their land. It's what they live off of. They have a deep relationship with their environment. And uh they carry more risk than I think any other business carries. Uh especially as climate has changed. I mean, even before the climate change they were carrying a lot of risk, but especially as climate has changed, it's just exponential the amount of risk that they carry. And I thought I think that that brings a lot of emotions, right? And so what the conversations that we were having with producers , it's hard to describe this, but they weren't really rational, right? They were more about how they felt, what they wanted to accomplish, why they wanted to accomplish that and their purpose. And so I really needed to connect to that, and I realized I couldn't connect to that unless I farmed and it's one thing to again be with farmers, accompany farmers, it's quite another to farm to let's say to grow food. And it's especially uh different if that's your means for livelihood, right? If that's your only economic source, farming is yeah, a very challenging activity. So I I needed to connect with that. I find I found it increasingly hard to be cons ulting on or trying to transfer technologies that were based on agronomic techniques while not being a farmer myself, while not kind of experiencing the fear that may come from stopping the use of fungicides, for example, while Roya was at the peak of its uh exposure, right? So I needed to do that. Uh we tried so hard to do it through the company. We really did. Uh and I I was just rereading when I wrote what I wrote, and it at some point it says we never found it a way to make it economically feasible for the company, which is probably the strongest statement in what I've just wrote, right? Like if if it can't if for a company that has uh the economic engine of selling retail coffee, they can't make farming economical. Imagine how hard it is for someone who doesn't have that economic engine, right? And so that just drove me even more. I really wanted to commit to that. And there was also kind of a side interest which was I love food and cooking and was already starting to dream of a lifestyle in nature. I that that's been I mean that's a separate theme, but that has been pulling at me my entire life. And so I took the chance and started to form . Talk a little bit just about consulting and how consulting works in that we're both in that in that field. I was talking to another friend of uh mine earlier and we were just kind of talking about some clients and just catching up. And one of the things that came up was we both had examples of clients that called us in what we believed was like three years too late. Like it would have been really nice to have gotten there a little bit early because they had just been listening to so many other people having their silver bullets and their ideas. And I think that it's really challenging with how much noise there is for anybody who's looking for help to know what would be good help and so I just wanna want to give the audience this idea of maybe that's that's something that I can think of as a starting point is like is the person that you're listening to also making a living from that thing. You know, are they only talking , you know, what I call armchair experts and just having theories, or do they have that experience? Because like you said, when you you can have really good ideas of like, hey, stop using fungicides, hey, stop doing these things. But unless someone is giving you that information from like that emotional point of they know what they're asking of you. They know what that means. Then I think that can be maybe a way to cut through some of the noise of all of the people that have really good ideas , but what is the proof? Like what are they living? So I don't know if you have anything else kind of to say about that of you know, how to help people not wait so long to get better help. Yeah. It's it's a fascinating question. I I find it almost impossible to discover who is a quality consultant or not unless you have a capacity yourself to understand uh kind of the basics of of of what you're working on. And I do think that, you know, all great intentions aside, there's a lot of consulting that happens in the world, not just in the world of coffee, that is misinformed. And I I often think that opinions are the cheapest form of thought and and it's very easy to share your opinions. But it's not you who's carrying the risk of something going wrong, right? And and and so if the risk is already that high, going back to what we were saying yesterday, to add more risk that's unnecessary is maybe not the right way to to consult on on especially on farming. Um I guess all I can say is is it really behooves farmers to understand if the person they're consulting with has true experience. This is something that I really appreciate about doing your work, the transparency that you have in in in you know in in in what you're researching and and and doing and and and you have a very clear stance on what you're trying to accomplish. I in my case we have a tricky we we live we inhabit a tricky uh ecosystem because of how people perceive what we do which is we call it biological agriculture only because we're working with microbiology. And I think that generally elicits this thought that we're part of the alternative view, uh whether it be organic or regenerative or and uh w we can get into that if you want, but my point is people look for us within a a certain dogma, right? They they it's a certain set of beliefs. And we just want to use microbiology as a tool, regardless of what system you're farming in. And we're very honest when we we come and say, you know, the potential that it has and and when it and when it won't work, when it when, you know, under certain systems it it's it's not appropriate. And to kind of relate to what you're saying, we often arrive at farms that have tried to transition into organic , think we're maybe it maybe failed in the process of doing so and think maybe where the next step to solve this problem. And I know really good agronomy is the is the way to solve the problem and we're just uh one added thing you can do to to increase your your performance, right? So yeah, it's it's a tricky it's a tricky thing to know which consultants uh are quality. Yeah, I just also want to share that I do also see like I'm also grateful for a lot of the bad consultants 'cause that give most of my my uh work comes from fixing, you know, other bad advice. So sometimes you kind of have to, you know, learn the hard way. Um but I think what you said is really important about how much risk producers are taking on. And I think maybe another thing that people could um could consider is is a person asking you to do more so for example my consulting approach is taking away you know it's it's also like my philosophy of like doing less and and being minimal. But taking things away and doing less and and kind of reducing that um cognitive load or that overhead, I do approach it very much in like a reducing risk because it's like there's so much risk everywhere else. I don't want processing, especially crazy processing to add more risk. So I think that a lot of times people get really excited with coffee and like want that romance. And then like you said, don't really understand the realities of what people are living with and like the stress and the the weight of if you have a bad outcome, that could be your entire crop for the year. Maybe it's only, you know, one month's harvest, but it's like that's what you have your income for the entire year. So to to really take that seriously in terms of like the advice that you're giving. So I would just love to see a little less advice giving from a lot of the consuming side of what they think is a good idea. Um anyway, that's my personal thing. Um the other thing I wanted to ask you was you and I chose a very difficult audience. We picked coffee farmers who have the smallest share in profits in coffee in the supply chain. So, you know, coffee farmers don't have a lot of extra money to get advice. So how have you been able to serve this population while also making a living yourself . Mm-hmm. Um I would say I have mostly failed at that. Let's see. It's well first let me let me share a reflection. I have I consult on other crops as well and and make a decent income consulting on sugarcane and and cereal crops and and we work all over the world and every time I come back to coffee and I I I look for complicated and uh surreal ways to come back to work with coffee producers and I and I think it's because of two things. I or I've learned now it's because of two things. One is coffee to me is a sacred plant. It's it's it really is so intriguing and fascinating to work with this crop in for so many reasons. Uh but the other is the community of people that works in coffee, I mean across the board, but especially in farming, is beyond everything anything I've seen in any other crop. People who grow rice or corn or wheat or you know, they're farmers, and people who grow coffee are pass ionate about what they do. And that's hard to emulate, right? And so I am passionate about coffee and so I like to work with passionate people. And I like that even through the hardship, they're excited about doing this work, and so and and when I mean this work, it isn't what we're consulting on, it's just farming coffee, right? Uh coffee is so small-scale , coffee farming is economically so tough that to see that people are still motivated to do it is really inspiring to me. And so this is why I I really want to work with those people, right? You want to work with people that like what they do. Uh I haven't found a way to make an income yet from this. I guess our closest we we've tried several things, you know, we've tried subsidizing I mean let's say it this way coffee farmers mostly can't afford uh our services. We we have to work with large estates. We would have to work with large estates that could, you know, amortize the cost of our consultancy across many hectares of coffee to be able to afford this. Smallholder farmers have a very difficult time affording our services, and so the way we've done it so far is in collaboration with roster retailers that are interested in investing in this and pay us apart and we subsidize apart and we we reduce the cost. But to be honest it's it's completely unsustainable for I think for everybody to do it this way. And so I was just talking with a friend who was a uh coffee buyer for a very long time and he he's worked in impact investment world for a while, and we were talking about how to you know provide these tools for farmers . And I think now through technology, there's maybe an opportunity to distribute technological tools, uh think an app that can provide information, teaching, guidance, uh that's cheap to to manufacture and distribute and accessible for farmers to acquire, right? But these are all dreams. I have no idea how to continue to be a coffee consultant, which is why that's not where my income comes from. I do it I do it as a I do it because I love to do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's just something I I wanted to bring awareness from is that what I in my experience, the farmers that I have seen be successful are never just doing coffee. They are they either have obviously other crops, but also other businesses, other sources of incomes. Maybe they were doctors or lawyers or they did something else and then they got into farming. And then that's kind of translated into even coffee consultants. It's really hard. I don't know anybody who also just on our side, on the agriculture side, only makes can only focus on coffee. You know, they have to focus on other crops as well. And it's just this kind of truth in coffee that there's this challenge on like multiple layers that like coffee alone is not enough in many different facets. I'll say this because we tend to exclude these guys and I was very close to spending quite a bit of time there and I think actually coffee consulting there is both common and profitable and I think Brazil is a great opportunity if you want to do that because there's profitable farms that that that are that are growing coffee and and they they have their stuff together, right? Of course that's a whole other conversation, but uh you're it it seems to me that uh uh we also we we kind of want everything right we want to both work in coffee and also help or work with the farmers who who can't really figure out ways to make more economy through coffee farming. And so to me , that's that's the I guess the harder the challenge, the the more inspiring it is. But uh I will say that there's so many incredible coffee consultants in Brazil and they can make an income on the agriculture side just because the business of coffee there works. Yeah, thank you for adding that. You're right. It's the only farmers, I'll amend my statement. The only farmers I've seen be successful are farmers that do other things besides coffee or in Brazil where you can be fully mechanized and have those economies of scale. And I definitely do want to come back to Brazil a little bit later because I think there's a lot to learn there and a lot like we can't not talk about Brazil. But before we move forward, I guess I just taken for granted that I know your philosophy, but our audience doesn't. So can you give us a kind of contrast between maybe what you would describe as like conventional, kind of traditional coffee farming and then why what your philosophy with biophilia is and how that's different from conventional farming. I guess I'll start by kind of stating where I come from because I I in general approach life on a I have a deep belief that there's a lot that we don't understand about the world and that a lot that we don't understand is is immeasurable. And science only really works in the realm of what we can measure and and and research and analyze. I also heavily and and uh faithfully believe in the scientific method. I think it gets misused a lot, just like other uh cosmovisions, right? And so I say that because I think we're stuck in a kind of bit of a war of narratives right now in agriculture. There's a lot of desire for food to be different and for the impacts of the food system to change. And I think there's a a very romantic appeal to forms of agriculture that aim to change that, right? Like a organic syntropic biodynamics and all all permaculture, all these forms of agriculture that are a a piece of management strategy that is not only meant to produce food but also change the world, right and that's very romantic and very appealing and that's where I come from. I come from a desire for clean food, a desire for food that's nutritious, a desire for food that's great that food that's great for the environment. Uh, but I have to say that even though that's my strong belief, the more time that I spend in agriculture, the more I see that it's a very gray conversation. And what do I mean by that ? There's a lot of uh trash thrown on conventional, I think. Like no one likes a conventional farmer, it's probably the worst profession to be today. However , with with all of its negative impacts that are for sure important to take into account, they they know how to do two things very well, I think. One is grow food cheaply, and as a farmer, I can tell you and and it probably coffee is the best crop to experience this through. People the market can talk all they want about all the things that have nothing to do with money, but in the end, price is probably the most important lever in a consumer's decision to buy something. And so to talk about price as kind of the last thing and and to put all the other things in the forefront, like social change, environmental change and is is is is is a little bit false, not because the intentions aren't there, but because really the the the main thing moving contracts, moving economies, moving everything else is is money, right? And so I think conven tional farmers are very good at doing that. And they do that through uh tried and tested s scientifically tried and tested uh methodologies, infrastructure and inputs, right? We tend more to have a problem with the input side of things, the methodologies. You know, people are starting recently to learn about like cover cropping and no-till and but that's very new. I think the conversation historically has been about like uh the pervasive use of of fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic uh nutrients. I think there's a a a big misunderstanding on on on what they are from from the people who want or desire organic food. And I also think that uh the the equation isn't black and white. And let me see if I can describe these two things as briefly as possible. First about the equation not being black and white. We perceive organic food or re-general if we grown food or biodynamic food to be clean, right? And that's that is now no longer the case. These chemicals are so you know, they they there's so much research that traces glyphosate, for example, which is a common used herbicide, is sometimes even more present in organic crops than conventional crops, not because of application, but because of ecosystem distribution, right? These these molecules are water soluble, they are now in our rain, and for better or for worse, and that's a separate conversation, but but they're there, right? So if you're buying organic food, it may contain traces of stuff that you think you're buying, kind of this cleanliness. So that cleanliness no longer exists is the first kind of part . The second part is that you know I I Roya is a is a is the perfect actor to talk about risk because I mean you've seen how fast Roya can decimate a coffee farm and when I think about my health my, personal health, right? And and I usually don't take a lot of conventional medicines. But if I were to die because I have a fungal disease, I would take an antibiotic, no doubt, right? If I was at a hospital, I generally don't go to allopaths, but I'm happy that the hospital exists. And what we're telling farmers in organic is you never get to go to the hospital or use any of these technologies, right? And and that's a little bit strict for me because they're already facing again immense risk. And to tell them, so that I as a consumer can have this idea or ideal of clean food, never be ready to perhaps lose your farm because you didn't use a fungicide. That to me is one completely unfair and two not really what the consumer thinks is happening, right? And so uh I don't I'm not I've learned now that what I believe is in integrated management, right? I do think that if you abuse these inputs, you get bad results. So convent badly executed convention al farming is just as bad as badly executed organic farming, to use those two as counterexamples. And people think that compost is benign, right? And you can add compost in an immense amount and and in in an infinite amount to a hectare or a plot of of a crop. And that is also not true, right? You can also cause some ecosystem damage through the salinity caused by by excess compost. And so I think the conversation lies it's I love how in organic and region they have this saying it's not the cow it's the how when they refer to uh uh rotational grazing versus feedlots. And I like that expression because it comes back to human responsibility. I think we we it's very easy to blame something, inputs management, tractors, tilling, but really I think it it has to do with how a steward of land manages their land. I don't see any techniques or technologies are as inherently bad or good, but rather our use of them as potentially bad or good. And so my belief for farming is that we should use all the technologies that we have available to us uh to to yield the best outcomes. So I'm more interested in measuring outcomes than in measuring management strategies, which is what a lot of these certifications focus on, right? Did you or did you not do certain things? I want to measure outcomes. And when you compare, and maybe to finalize this part, is that when you compare the outcomes of well-run conventional agriculture, sometimes they're even better than well-run organic agriculture. And so I don't think that we have a a basis to say that organic is always better, right? And I think it's in incredibly circumstantial, crop dependent, climate dependent, and context dependent, right? So that's a little bit where we stand. And and and yeah, as I said, we we like to use all the tools in our toolbox I want to highlight one thing that you said um because it really mirrors how I one of my criticisms in the processing side of like a consumer preference, like a consumer preference for a trend in some coffee processing or you know, some let's try to get blueberry or let's try to get some apricot flavor um into the coffee. And this like consumer preference, this thing that's like, I would like to have this thing has such an outsized impact when you're looking at the farmer or looking at the producer who has to make this coffee that I don't think like you said there',s there's not an awareness of what you're really asking producers to do, like the risk that you're asking them to take, for like a flimsy little preference that is just gonna like go away in a second. Whereas for a producer, if you're saying, you know, we want these kind of we want these restrictions, these regulations on what what you are allowed to use and what you're not allowed to use, and maybe for somebody listening it can sound kind of dramatic to say, you know, you can take as much of the homeopathic medicine as you want, but you're not allowed to go to the hospital. For a lot of smallholders, that is a reality. They could completely lose their farm if they're not allowed to have these like emergency um these emergency measures because something ha some you know something comes up and completely you know the the pests take over their farm. So I think that it's not I just wanted to highlight that because I don't think it's dramatic to say and it is a metaphor, but it really is like the entire livelihood and it can be your only source of income. And to say that like my personal preference means you shouldn't have access to these things. We are asking producers to do that a lot on a lot of different scales, or often on many different scales. So I really like that you brought that up. Um the other thing I wanted to highlight about what you said was I do think that we often have this idea that natural is butter and that natural can't harm us. And I'm just even thinking about another example like in skincare, you know, having all natural ingredients, only essential oils that can be really irritating for a lot of people and they just think that, oh, because this is a a natural essential oil, it must be better than any, you know, chemically concocted moisturizer that I can get somewhere else. So I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to this concept that um I've heard you also speak about this too, the idea that oh our ancestors knew what to do if we just go back to the like natural way we should know what to do intuitively we should know what to do and everything will be fine if we just like listen and kind of maybe going t on the opposite side of not listening to science or not listening to kind of like new information. So I just wanted to give you a chance to talk about that more. Again, I think there's a lot of temptation for romanticism and it's very easy to think like, oh you know, we should just go back to the way things were done. For better or for worse. And and it it starts to talk about this is very hard because it almost uh drives you to the philosophical, right? And and and and the question isn't whether it should or shouldn't be. I think it's that we can argue about whether things whether capitalism should or should not exist . I'm less interested in having that discussion, not because it's not an interesting discuss ion, it's a fascinating discussion, but practically capitalism exists for coffee farmers, right? And so and so to discuss with them or through them or through if if it should be the way that the economy moves is not it doesn't really help me uh be a good consultant, it doesn't help me have find practical tools. So I'm uh less in the in the place of kind of philosophizing about things. I'm more in a place of of doing the work, right? And and so for me being able to recognize the reality we're in is is important, whether it's fair, unfair, or or or good or bad. I I'm more interested on kind of recognizing reality. And so why I say that because I think again there's there's a desire to go back to the way things were. But unfortunately, we're here today in the way that the world operates today. And think that I think the opposite. I think we should move into the future. We should of course bring everything that was helpful and and productive from the past, and we should also be very open to new technologies that can help us uh do better. And I think that is actually how it works. I think we may talk a lot about wanting to move to the past, but everybody always embraces technology that brings positive change and comfort. Right. And so there may be a lot of speech and desire about this, you know. I wish I wasn't on my phone so much. But the truth is we are on the phone so much because it also yields all these incredible opportunities, right? And so is that a tightrope? Sure, and and everybody will will walk that tightrope . Uh but but in in general I think that uh agriculture especially and especially if you're a smallholder farmer that doesn't have the minimum viable scale to be automatically econom ically competitive, then I think they should be very open to technologies that can that can further increase the resilience, right? If if if in one season the coffee crop that you've just spent I don't think we should discredit it as a as a as as something bad. That to say it's nuanced because if you abuse the fungicide and you and it what what often hap what hap what's happening with fungicide is that it's so functional that people overrely on it and then we start using we start abusing it. And that's just as bad as not using it. And so this is where I think the expertise of consultants can come in, of finding a a true balance on how to generate these outcomes that we're looking for, right? And so what and I'll I'll just finish this by saying this: one of the outcomes we're always looking for in specialty, we're so obsessed with quality that very few people know about yield. I would say that every single coffee buyer in the world knows how to cup and taste defects and attributes and mouthfeel at that level of distinction. But if you ask them, you know, what's the average yield on a coffee farm? No clue. Right? And that's the economic motor is the yield, right? Because we're only paying for that quality and that mouthfeel we're only paying on average forty percent more to the conventional market. But if you're if you're growing ten kilos per hectare, that forty percent more is is four dollars more, right? And so yield is something that is an incredibly important outcome for us as as consultants and as farmers because that's the what our economy is based on. I think that's an excellent point. Because I also think about yields when I'm talking to producers, when they're doing these micro lots and doing these, you know, carbonic maceration or anaerobic processes. And I was like, great, they bought five bags from you. What are we doing with the other hundred? What are we doing with these five containers of coffee that's not being sold at those prices? So it's yeah, it's just we can't get away from the volume conversation when we're talking about coffee, at least not yet. You mentioned philosophy, and I do think it's important to have these conversations because I think so few people are. I think it's very much a like action without enough reflection. And when we're having this conversation about tradition. I think we get stuck with okay, coffee like I have a problem with the word traditional in coffee because tradition can be so romantic and valued, but coffee tradition is not a very good tradition. Like I'm not convinced that that's what we should be holding on to when people are like purists and and want to hold on to that um idea. And one of those is is like what you were saying with the idea of going back to old ways of agriculture and our ancestors knew what to do and now we're kind of lost in chemicals and things like that. I think that that can maybe be a reasonable argument in other places, but I think in coffee it still doesn't make sense because coffee doesn't have a history of growing where it's growing. So I don't even think it's not a question of do we have access to this knowledge that's like hidden or lost . I don't think that knowledge ever existed. We don't have good traditional ways of growing coffee in these places because it coffee doesn't want to grow there. It didn't grow there. We've introduced this foreign plant into 70 different countries and now we're saying, you know, thrive. And the coffee plant is having a really hard time. And we're surprised that coffee's having a really hard time. When I think if we go back further, it's like it didn't want to grow there. And so this is something else that I had wanted to ask you about is that so many people's experience of a coffee farm is coffee growing in places where it wasn't adapted to grow. It wasn't it's not original to these places and then asked to grow there by people who were not given a lot of instruction. They're just like, do this and we'll buy it and sort of move on. So from the beginning there wasn't a history of quality. It was just volume . And then we go to these coffee farms and we're like, oh what a beautiful coffee farm. It's so green. And I think that most people have never really seen a healthy coffee tree. And now I have a really hard time when even people come visit and you know see the farm that and see just farms in general or when I'm visiting clients and other people are visiting them as well they see this beautiful coffee farm and they just love like the vistas. And I can't look at a coffee farm anymore without seeing deforestation, without seeing loss of habitat, without seeing polluted waterways, without seeing this monocrop. Like I can't see that anymore. So I was hoping that you could help us kind of help help the audience see with like different eyes. Like when you go to a new client or a new farm, like what are you looking for? What does health look like to you ? And kind of like updating our model of like what beauty looks like. These are very hard questions, Lucia . I'm a bit of a systems thinker, so I can't think about coffee without th thinking that it's a farming activity, right? And and farming is first. I think I think the alternative view on farming and the Netflix document ary view on regenerative farming is that farming is a way to change the environment. And while farming absolutely has an effect on the environment, I don't think that that's what farming is. Farming is a business, right? And it's it's just more closely related to nature than every other business, but every other business is also completely related to natural resources, right? And so we just you don't see when you're being sold a service, you don't see the min erals in the computer as as coming from the earth, but but they're it's still related, right? And so it's important for me to consider farming a business because uh otherwise we're asking farmers to do something that they're not they didn't even sign up to do. They want to take care of the environment because they live there, right? And so if you live you don't want to live in a place that's polluted and and full of trash. And so they want to take care of the environment because that's also their home for for a lot of people. And because it's not only directly their home, but it's a place of yeah, it's their future, right? It's their it's where you plan to grow a family , it's it's your home. And so I say that first because to me a healthy coffee farm uh has layers, and those layers are is this does this coffee farm have a future. If the coffee trees if you're fighting roya uh and continu ally having to use systemic fungicide to battle that pathogen pressure, then it's very likely your future is dim, right? Because r fungal pathogens and fungal pressure don't show up fungi don't eat living things, let's just say it that way. The plant may be green, but if you have consistent and uh severe fungal pressure, it means that your coffee plants are dying while alive, and and the ecosystem wants to take care of that, right? And so the more you apply fungicide, the more you're stopping the ecosystem, which is a s much stronger force than one , to really do its job. And so the way that I I I have I I think like you night vision goggles that allow me to see whether a farm is is is healthy or not, and and it and it's not it's deceiving because it's not apparent to the eye. And so to me, what's beautiful when I come to a coffee far m outside of the obvious beauty that is being immersed in nature, which is always moving to humans, I think, is when a coffee farmer tells me that he has a strict nutritional protocol and there is shade and there is good management and so to me the beauty is in the intangible, right? To me the beauty is if if the farmer has um a desire and a view for the future . I tend to agree that we are keen to hold on to traditions, and I think it's important that we do and we respect our past. I think it's also important that we again focus on the outcomes. You know, what are we when a farmer farms coffee, what are the outcomes he's looking for? Is it to pollute the waterways, destroy the environment, and lose money doing so? Probably not. So if it's not that , what tools do we have to really ha get help that farmer or and it's this is maybe let's remove the consultant speak. What tools does a farmer have to accomplish his outcomes, right ? And one thing that I know for sure is that farmers want to conserve their soils, so they want to confer to con conserve their ecosystems because that's what they their livelihood depends on. They just and I and I think you mentioned this as well. They have very poor technical training. A lot of smallholder farmers in coffee have land, and coffee was a way, maybe in the not so distant past, where growing it with the with the with the past fertility and the past markets and the p past availability of information was enough to make some income and no longer, right? As as the population and this goes back to my systems thinking, as the population has increased far,ming has become incredibly competitive. And this isn't just in coffee, this is any single crop that is being sold through a commoditized market is is being pushed to efficiency at the max, right? And so this is where I think Brazil and Vietnam come into the equation. You think as a coffee farmer you're competing in your local market, but the people setting the price are this country that's very far away. And so you have whether you want to or not, you have to compete with those machines. And so I think that uh i you in in many ways small farmers have a lot of different opportunities but they really have to be able to see them and recognize them So that they can then compete against those machines, right? Because whether they want to or not, they're competing against the machine. So it's very it's a little bit crazy to me to think that we can uphold the tradition s and and forget about kind of turn put our horse blinders on and and pretend Brazil doesn't exist or that the conventional price isn't a base that we're all tied to . Um so yeah, I guess maybe in in in in in reflection, to me beauty is is success . And uh I see that the people who are the happiest and more most joyful in coffee farming are the ones that can have success through that activity. And and the other thing is that I really think that traditions uh are important as a point of reference, but I think we we should be consistent the way we are in the other parts of our life where we do embrace technologies and tools to be able to bring better outcomes. So one of the things that I I like about that is I think a lot of people think that they can see health, that if you just have green trees or you see some shade, then oh, that's a good coffee farm. And I think what you're sharing is that health is deeper than that. Health is much more deep than just what you can see and that you can't just rely on visual cues to give you a sense of the whole system. And I think another point is that health is not like a snapshot. Health can't just be health right now. To be true health, it needs to be something that has a future. And to see a future, you have to have much more than kind of what's in front of you. And I want to pivot to talking about tools. Um, I want to It's gonna take me a second to get there, but one of the points that I wanted to make was about refractometers and bricks, and that we do have some tools. And one of the things that I saw as a uh a detour, kind of an unhelpful trend in coffee was roasters gifting coffee producers, refractometers, to measure the bricks of the cherry and saying that if they get higher ch bricks in their cherry, then we're gonna have high quality coffee. That there was some connection to the sweetness of the fruit in the sweetness of the cup. And I've done a lot of work trying to like break apart that concept because there's so many steps in processing, and that that chasing those high numbers, chasing really high bricks actually led to lower quality coffee because what people don't realize about bricks is not just more sugar, but it's a concentration. So a lot of times what people were measuring really high bricks, they're measuring dehydrated fruit. They're measuring sick fruit, they're measuring you know, stress. They're not actually measuring quality and success. So I felt like this was a very misguided um approach. Like coffee, it's not that coffee was miss ing, like coffee quality wasn't good because there weren't enough refractometers like dispersed. But I'm seeing something similar now with soil analysis. Um and again, I'm not following agriculture that much because I'm more in processing, so I was hoping you could speak to that. But I'm kind of seeing soil analysis as kind of like the new tool of like, oh coffee is not coffee quality is not very good because we don't have enough soil analysis. So let's get the motos out there. Let's get the samples. Let's get these things and get this information to producers. Do you think that soil analysis is in the way of bricks or do you think it's actually helpful? That's a very good question. Um let's see. I'll start by saying that I think people overvalue measurement. I'll say I'll start by saying that and I and I and I think that true direct measurement is extremely expensive and impractical for anybody to do, in in especially in the in the speed and time that we need these measurements by. And so therefore a lot of the things we're measuring in anything in the world, not just coffee, are proxies, right? They're proxies for a certain thing we want to achieve. And so I I really like that you mentioned this bricks and quality, bricks as a proxy for quality in coffee , and more specifically, coffee pulp bricks as a proxy for quality, is a I consider it to be a terrible proxy because it because it's not even measuring the the product that we're gonna roast event Yeah. In grapes, for example, in wine, they measure bricks, but they actually care about the the grape juice, right? The bricks concentration of of uh of of the juice that they're gonna ferment. So there it it's a little closer of a proxy to quality or to attributes that they can then measure and then choose how to ferment. In coffee I think it's a poor measurement and it can lead to poor practices, right? So if you if you have, I think the lesson here is that if you don't understand what the measurement is serving as a proxy for, you're never gonna get good results with whatever no matter the the the amount of money you spent on the tool. And soil analysis is this way. I think soil analysis is is first and foremost misunderstood. I think soil analysis is a picture of a movie, right? And so for soil analysis to work to function the way it's intended to, it only works if you do it longitudinally across time. In in in your way of thinking about bricks, I think of organic matter i in this very same way. People love to rave about organic matter in the soil. And you know, we go and we take a sample of soil And then the next year it's point five percent less or more and we think oh it changed. No what what changed was your sample, right? Because organic matter is extremely stable and it doesn't change in one year. You would have to erode soil to such degree or or really be a terri like I don't think that people realize the level of of of impact that you will have to have for a soil to change a half a percent in organic matter over the course of a year, right? And so in many ways it's also a terrible metric because i i i if you if you are introducing new management and thinking that with that new management you change organic matter, I hate to tell you it's not true, right? It's not it it's not that it's not true, it's that we can't know in one year if organic matter changed. You would have to measure it across seven or eight cycles and have really high quality sampling protocols within your hectare to be able to see, okay, there's tendency here. There's a tendency on one witness plot to go in one direction and in this sampling to go in the other direction. And this is true for every other element in soil. Soil analysis is extremely important for me as a consultant and as a farmer, I can't tell you what to do without soil analysis. A lot of farmers are eager. They're like, but just tell me what to add. They think of the input, right? And they're used to that. They've been trained in that manner. They take their analysis that the Institute of Coffee from their country gave them and then they go to the distributor of inputs and they say, Here's my analysis, what can you sell me? Right? And I think there's incentive for that to keep happening, but that's really is the wrong way to think about soil analysis. Soil analysis one needs a best practice, it needs to be done well to be functional. Is incredibly useful if used right, but you really need to understand uh the measurements that you need, right? I see a lot of soil analysis that just focus focuses on soluble nutrients, NPK, for example. Uh but for me , uh things like pH or cation exchange capacity. This one is particularly interesting because CEC is incredibly important to understand how your fertility is working. And almost I've never seen a coffee uh soil analysis that's provided by a coffee institute that includes it. And I can't choose the right inputs if I don't know this measurement, right? And so to answer your question, I think soil analysis is critical, but I also think it's worthless if it's not done right. So so mm, yeah, I I I think with these tools of measurement, measure measuring anything is always gonna be expensive. And I think if you're going to do it , I think it's really important that you understand how to do it in a in a best practice way so that you can yield the the outcomes that you're looking for. Yeah, and where I see the parallels uh in terms of measuring the bricks of the fruit is that it's not giving you the information you think it's giving you. And in that sense it can be a distraction and can lead to uh a waste of time or just bad outcomes. And I think the soil analysis too is maybe the part that's missing is people get a result and then they say, okay, what can I add? But to your point, just because you're adding those things to the soil doesn't mean they're available for uptake by the plant. And so if you're just getting this information, you have this false sense of confidence of I know what's missing, I know what to add, without having that missing part or the last part of is the package even getting to its destination ? Like, yes, we're delivering it, but is anybody opening the door and actually receiving that package? Um and something that I want I wanted to bring up that was a really simple concept that I that I learned, but that I realize that not a lot of people have is that that concept of disease and that you'd think that my plants are sick because insects are attacking them, because a pest is attacking them. That that the sickness was caused by this external thing instead of the opposite view of no your plants were already weak and that is what attracted these insects or these pests to your plant. It's kind of like just reversing the causality. And when you kind of approach it that way, I think you can make a little bit more progress instead of just kind of being reactionary to whatever's already there and being more proac tive. So one of the things that I've been trying to tackle with bricks is saying stop measuring bricks of your fruit, because that's nonsense. But bricks can be helpful if you're measuring your sap bricks. And I've been trying to teach this in in my workshops too, in that we can have a more helpful use of this measurement. So can you explain to us what measuring the bricks of the SAP can do for us and what what are we looking at? And how is that help ful that it's a very fascinating field of study. SAP sap is uh akin to blood for a plant, right? It's transporting the nutrients for for a plant. And uh you can analyze SAP. It's today currently quite expensive to do so, but it's the best practice. It is literally equivalent to analyzing human blood, right? And so think about when you go to the doctor and a uh practitioner really needs to get a state of your health, they need to see all of these different elements that are being analyzed. And so the best way to understand a plant's health is through a plant sap analysis. These are rare and labs are few and far between, so it's not really access an accessible tool yet. Maybe the future will bring some accessibility. But one tool that is a great proxy for the different concentrations of elements is plant sap bricks. So let me just maybe clear up this this first. Is a lot of people know about bricks through sugar and they think that it's uh measuring sugar, but really what what it's measuring or what it's refracting is concentration, right? And and in and sugary liquids there happens to be a lot of sugar that will refract the light. But everything else that is present in the liquid or in the in the gel li gel like liquid will also refract the light including all nutrients. And so this is a actually very linear proxy to nutrient concentration in SAP. And there's an emerging field that has described minimal values or minimum values to to uh that at which if a plant achieves those values, then it is completely resistant to fungal and pest pressure. And let me just explain this mechanism too, because I I mean you said it quite clearly and well, but I agree. People think that fungal attacks, fungal pressure or insect attacks are the disease, but really the the disease is what invites fungal pathogens and insects to to come eat a pl So if a plant is being pressured by fungi or insects, it is already diseased, and the disease is a lack of nutrition, right? And so a plant bricks of above 12 is known now to be a good proxy for plant health. Um it generates carbohydrates that can't be eaten by insects. Insects are uh quite complex.' Threere sucking inse cts, biting insects. There's a lot of types of insects, but basically, as you increase plant sap, you start to remove the risks that you run of insects being able to consume the tissue of your plants. And the same is true for fungi, right? I'll give you an example which I think is beautiful technology. Plants have this capacity to form a waxy layer on their leaves and on their tissues. But but creating lipids is very energetically expensive for plants. These these lipids, which are fats, are double the amount of energy per calorie. And so they can only do that if they're not suffering. And a lot of plants in conventional agriculture and organic agriculture are suffering. If if the agronomy is poor and the nutritional protocol isn't high and there isn't functional biology in the ecosystem, plants are respirating it's it's a little bit like they're over-training . They're trying too hard to survive. And that wasted energy goes to surviving rather than thriving. But if the nutritional protocol is adequate and the soil fertility is adequate and there's a functional microbiological ecosystem in the soil, then plants can relax a little bit, stop the thriving, and dedicate that energy to create these lipids. And these lipids, when they when they appear, they form a waxy layer that don't allow spores to sporulate on the tissue . And this is a passive way, a passive active way that they can that they can protect themselves against fungal pressure. So plants have these incredible intelligent systems that don't um exist in a vacuum or by themselves, they exist interconnected to everything the clays, the sands, the silts and the microbiology that's in soil. And it's really important to be able to balance this equation, to be able to yield the results that we're looking for in plants. And let me just state that too. Sorry, I was mentioning the outcomes that we're looking for. So it's very important when we're met, when we're balancing this equation, that we're balancing towards the outcomes that we're looking for, right? And in the case of farming, yield is a critical one. So we also we one of the ways we measure health is with yield, right? If if we can consistently with a minimal amount of inputs and a minimal amount of pest and fungal pressure generate our yield and quality, that is beautiful farming in my opinion. Yeah, one of the things that I loved learning about um in plants is that when a plant is photosynthesizing, it's taking in energy from the sun and creating these carbohydrates. And when I learned that if you'll correct me if this is not true, that most of the carbohydrates that it produces, it doesn't keep for itself. It releases into its roots and in and to feed its ecosystem. And there was something about that concept of most of the sugar that the plant creates, it isn't even keeping for itself. I thought that was so beautiful. And and what you're measuring in this sap bricks is is that amount of photosynthesis. Like you're you're getting that like pulse on the plant to say like how healthy is it and how much is it able to kind of share and give. And I think that um the concept too is we have these scales of what certain insects tolerate. But I think that the the concept of if you can just give some like directional, like more is better. And so if you were at a two and now you're at a five, like you're headed in a good direction. Like if and and I think that this is also something that can be really helpful to know maybe if the things that you're doing on your farm are having any impact because it's so hard to see to see it with our eyes, but if you can kind of get a baseline measurement , make a change and then check it, kind of this guess and check system, say like, does the plant actually uptaking this thing that I'm putting in the soil? I think that Briggs you know, it it it's like frustrating to me that now a lot of people have this tool and they're just looking at you're just using it to look at like the cherries and then getting like worse coffee when we could be using this tool to actually give us some directional something. And like you said, it's it's a proxy and and we don don''t event even I think that the chemical breakdown is like that necessary. If you can at least just know what direction you're going in, I think that would help a lot of people. Obviously more information can be really helpful. But I just I loved I loved learning that about plants and seeing this like tool just kind of languishing and not being used correctly. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to say about that. So true and and in fact one of the main reasons why a plant will do that, while it will take all of this photosynthetic energy that it has converted into sugar and then pumped it into the soil is because it's actively begging for connection to biology, right? Sugar is the food that microbiology can eat. And so it's sending out signals saying, please come party with me. Please be my friend. And so when you don't have functional microbiology. And to get this idea straight, all soils are alive, right? There isn't such a thing as a dead soil. There's just imbalance in the microbiology. And so all of the excessive inputs that we've added and the excessive management or the wrong management has imbalanced the microbiology in the soil. But if through functional inoculation you can replace a functional ecosystem, then it will come a connect to the plant because it's literally what happens physically connects to the plant and then the the the the plant can stop spending so much sugar that's pump pumping in the soil and can use that towards seeds and fruits and tissue, et cetera. So this is one of the ways that functional microc robiology is so effective at reducing the need for added inputs. It's because it it it it allows the plant to stop stressing so much in in its search for its connection . That's one of the things. And the other is that I'll just say that plant bricks, plant sap bricks is really a fascinating tool in and of itself. But it's it's incredible, I don't know if you've done it, but it's incredibly hard to extract . We have the refractometer, which is even a more complicated uh instrument, but we haven't yet like this is my I want to develop a little crusher or juicer or something that is easy to use because extract ing even one drop of SAP from a from t tissue is extremely hard. But yes, if you if we're able to have these simple tools like a refractometer and the yet n yet non-existent crusher that will allow you to measure SAP, I think that if you can if you have these field tools that you can continually measure tendency, I agree with you. This is way more informative than having a blood panel or a soil panel that has ninety metrics that you can't understand. I've tried uh a garlic press and I have a really hard time with coffee because it there's just not enough flake tissue. I've done it with other things in the garden um because I just love gardening. So maybe somebody could try a garlic press. Call to all engineers to develop a coffee leaf extractor for analyzing sap . So I have this quote that I wanted you to comment on. So I'm going to read it to you and then I'm gonna let you like expand upon it. So you said back then I was obsessed with inoculation. Compost was the origin of this obsession. But when looked at through the lens of scrutiny, compost is expensive. Read not applicable to most farming contexts, a desire to make money. I thought microbes were the miracle, the clean alternative, a functional alternative for everything industrial. I had the same kind of purity instincts that processing fads trigger in coffee. If you use the inocul ant, you cannot use chemicals. If you do it right, you should not need herbicides. If you really believe, the system will reward you. So I wanted to this really struck me when you said this because I also had recently watched this interview with psychologist uh called Doctor Steve Hassan and the title of the talk was Are You in a Cult and You Don't Know It? And I kinda have this idea of like a purity cult. You know, and and I think that it's something that we can question a lot. So what I like about this is you're explaining kind of how you used to think and now how you're a little bit more balanced, but it's such a attractive point of view. And I think right now we're talking about the beauty of nature and the beauty of plants and sometimes that can create like a tightening like a dogma of the like there is one right natural way and I I face a lot of this with my work also in inoculating and saying like, well, you shouldn't need to add external microbes, the microbes are already there, um, and that that's like foreign and and external. And so I just wanted you to speak to kind of your your changing philosophy, how how that's gone over the couple of years. But also the the land doesn't always have the best microbes. Like there they may not you may need to introduce something from outside to like bring in some of that balance. So that's all I wanted to get you to speak on. So so you at some point at the beginning mentioned how coffee is being grown in a place that wasn't right. And uh while I appreciate that because I think this is representative of a globalized world and a place of interchange which has always happened in history. I think you know what's funny to me when I look at HOA uh regulations that say that this plant is invasive or to me that's funny because plants and seeds know no political border, right? They're they're meant to move. And so while coffee what isn't original originally from a lot of the places where it's grown, it it is now m you know developing a new genome in these new environments. But it is com the the the old genome, let's say, is not accustomed to a lot of the conditions that it's now being uh present at, and this is the reason why we have all these problems with it. And so if you're okay, if you're of the idea that nature is intelligent and intelligent enough to take care of your coffee farm and you will do nothing and get out of the way, then good luck. You know, I I wish you the best of luck. Please report back. I haven't seen that succeed because a lot of the places where we're doing agriculture, not even coffee, a lot of the places we're doing agriculture, aren't meant to continually support a monocrop . And I love I I know we love to think that agroforestry coffee is not a mono crop, but five shade species and a monocrop does not an ecosystem make. That's not to say that it isn't an ecosystem, it is, but it isn't an old-growth forest that has six hundred species of plants and 400 species of birds and mammals, and we don't we aren't driving enough biodiversity in farming in any farming environments, no matter how many cover crops you're using, uh to have that fertility be sustained over time. And so this is where whether it's compost or urea , you have to add these management strategies and inputs, right? And so I like to think about it that way cause everybody's condition, I I don't know if people are farming coffee in an old forest or in a grassland or but it depending on where you established your coffee farm, you're gonna face different requirements to keep it alive right and to keep it thriving and so uh again i it's very attractive to come back to these purity principles and to think that you, know fung,icides are bad and evil. But the truth is if you want to farm mostly anywhere in the world, we are changing the ecosystem to be able to do so. And home gardeners that use compost, use raised beds, right? And raised beds is changing the environment to be able to yield your outcome. And so it's not I think we need to it would serve us well. I'm not gonna say that we need to because every everybody will always do whatever they want, but it would serve us well to start realizing that agriculture is what it is, which to me, again, is a business. If you look at the history of agriculture, it it it it is the origin of trade. I don't see us going back to becoming hunter-gatherers anytime soon as a global population. We are increasingly an urban population and I think that for that to happen, farming has to be yielding, right? And so we have to kind of uh again, this goes back to my the beginning of this talk where I said this is the reality I've decided to face. We are an urban population of eight billion people that is going to grow into however many more billion people, and we need to be able to produce foods and other things we like, like coffee. Um in in that sense , and trust me, I tried. We tried so hard ourselves and with so many producers to do high level organics, high level syntropic, high level permaculture, high level everything. And all of those tools were never enough to get the outcomes we were looking for. Yields were bad, disease pr pressure was high, and economics were terrible. And this is where I I in in hearing you r repeat that phrase that I wrote to me, I realized that compost was really the thing that detonated the change in me because I was in l compost is so beautiful, right? It's alchemical. You take these things from the forest and and and you take manures and plants and you mix them together and out comes this gold that smells like earth and it's so beautiful, right? And we were so committed to having farmers make and utilize compost. And then when you actually look at the ledger, you realize wow, this is incredibly expensive. People think compost is dirt or somehow cheap because it's free, because you didn't buy it at the store. But but let me give you some hard facts. To fertilize to appropriately fertilize a hectare of coffee to produce yields that are enough to make a an economic gain, you need to use anywhere from five to ten tons of compost per hectare. That that means that you had to get maybe double the amount of those input somewhereere. Wh are you getting that manure from? How are you transporting that manure? In which space on your farm are you producing this amount of compost? And then we already have a really tough time finding the labor to pick coffee. Now you have to find labor to carry compost up a hill and apply like in every sense, compost is the most luxurious, expensive thing you can apply to any farm environment. Um and the realization was like, okay, when I when I realized this, I was like, okay, but but I really like the benefits of compost. So what is compost comprised of? And we realized three things. One, uh you know, nutrients and PK and microelements, which the cheapest form of applying those is through synthetic minerals. Like you can apply three bags of urea or ten tons of compost. Which would you rather carry? Now if you just add the urea , bad outcomes, right? So because uh compost is contributing other things as well, and this is where the inoculation comes in, microbiology is a huge part of compost. But we decided if we separated the parts, the nutrient part, the structure part, and the microbiology part, we could actually get a better outcome and cheaper if if we if we focus on the parts that compost is comprised of and delivered them to the farm than if we added compost. And so this really changed my perspective and it allowed me to kind of open up a bit to to to understand that what we're looking for is the outcomes and not the management of y you know organic is all about management. No one's measuring residuality, for example, in soils or or in foods. They're just measuring did you apply our allowed list of things or not? And basically that's the basis of organic farming. So I to to put it into your terms and perspective and maybe for your audience, the question is did you add the yeast to the fermentation? And it tends to be that it isn't enough. You also have to do it right, right? The warm water has to be at the right temperature and the tank has to be clean and you have to do all these steps that make it so that that inoculation is functional. And so uh yeah, I'll just I'll just stand by saying that I'm now completely open to all tools and technologies that that yield the outcomes that we're looking for. And I think it's worthwhile to to put the things that we believe in romantically under scrut iny. And I love this, I love this phrase , are you in a cult and you don't know? Because I think, you know, I I will say in the world that we live in with so much access to information and everything that's happening in the world that we don't approve of, it's very comforting to believe in these things. And so there's a lot of like uh invisible psychology that's at work here because we're we're so keen to to find habit in what's comfortable. And if for us comfort is a label, a green label that makes it feel so that my food is clean, okay, that's my comfort, right? But it's important also to recognize that it's just that. It's a little bit Yeah, I was watching that talk because I I'm I I'll be the first to raise my hand. I'm very cult susceptible. Like I would be the first one to join. I really like the idea of somebody telling me what to do and telling me exactly what's right, and then just being able to follow that. Um but I think that it kind of speaks to a broader concept that I've been struggling with with coffee, in that we know coffee's in trouble. We know that it's a very broken system. I think people are becoming much more aware of that. And I think that so many people want to go towards the lever of romance. Well, if people just appreciated coffee more, if people paid more for coffee , then that would be the way out. The like escape hatch would be not thinking of coffee as commodity, it has to be specialty, um, you know, going in in that direction of of valuing it. It has not been my experience that that is helping. I don't think it's helping to romanticize coffee because it again lets us or doesn't let us look at some things that we should be looking at more on the scale ability, more on volume, more on the realities. Um but I also don't think that coffee like to me it's m the same like savior complex. Like we just need to like swoop in and do some fairy dust magic and we can improve coffee. I think that it it lets us not look at the reality of what's going on. And this actually brings me to another um quote that I picked out from from your document that I wanted to just it was a little bit more personal that I wanted you to talk about this. And it I put it under the category of like philosophy. And you said oh no actually I don't think it was in the it wasn't the document. I don't know where you mentioned this, but you said when I competed in the past, I would come in last place almost to prove a point, almost to say that cub quality isn't accomplishing these these rules. Cub quality to me is a livelihood of the farmers, the quality of the soil, and the health of the ecosystem . And I wanted to ask you about this concept of kind of resisting quality and saying like, oh, 90 points is if everybody could just get 90 points, then coffee would be saved because people would be paying for it. What what did you mean when we're trying to make that statement? Uh I have to go compete again so I can place last. Competition was my way into coffee. I was uh lucky enough to be asked to judge a coffee competition before I knew anything about coffee. That's another story. But but the fact is that I was inspired and moved by what I was seeing in competitors. They're power at a young age. I was kind of not motivated by the traditional path. And so to see that all these young people were super passionate about coffee was very moving to me. And so I eventually, you know, wanted to compete. And when I analyzed the rules, I was like , these like all rules are completely arbitrary. But fine, this is what you signed up for. You know, if you want to play this game, these are the rules. And uh that's I just thought because and maybe this was because of my context, right? I had moved back to Mexico. I was trying to start a specialty coffee company in Mexico. And so our reality was massively different to anyone buying, you know, a competitor who's being sponsored by the roaster or cafe that didn't have this sensation or e emotional tie to the producers that we were actively working for, right? And so I thought, to me, a farmer that was striving to plant shade or increase their diversity was so worthy . Like you're making no money and trying so hard to spend money doing this new thing because you think it's right. To me, that seemed righteous and romantic, right? And so I tasted that coffee differently because it moved me. And I think this is true for everybody, right? We don't when you I I love to cook and so I I love to ask people to remember the things they love to eat. And almost always they will tell you a little bit about the food and then almost immediately they'll turn into what was happening around that moment, right? About where they were and and and who they were with and why it was relevant. And so I think emotions are just complex and and and we are trying to reduce these coffees to a cup score, which by the way, I think everyone agrees now , is is not a functional scale of what we're trying to do. And and this is why so much change is is happening right now around that arena of measuring what quality means. And so we always we had a word for this at the company and and we said our our our coffee was cafe riquen we could taste the coffees that were from this intention right now that's very unscientific and it doesn't translate to something that can be re plicated and so it has its limits because it worked for our company, but it it do it it doesn't a system create. And so I completely understand why it's also important to have arbitrary rules that create a system of commerce of interchange of of common language. So I've always cared I'm not trying to discredit or disvalue the amazing tools that we have in the industry to analyze the quality of coffee. I think they're absolutely necessary and they'll evolve as we learn more. But I also think that given everybody's context, we choose to value what we value, right? And so and and and and organic is maybe the perfect example of this because I don't see any ecosystem change or economic change in farmer livelihood, but somehow it generates a lot of value for the rest of the supply chain. And so why you choose to value that is up to everybody. To me, what I value as coffees that are of quality are qualities that come from a way of doing things, a form of thinking about things, maybe regardless of whether they're eighty-four or eighty-six. That to me is a consequence and beautiful to see shift, right? Like I also don't think that an eighty four should always be an eighty four. A a coffee from a farm will always change. And so I'm more interested in being curious about what the ecosystem will deliver when managed well. And I see quality in that way. And now that I farm coffee , I'm so excited to not search for the typical geisha profile, which I think is perhaps the most valued right now in our industry, but rather to see what our form of management and our terroir, our ecosystem, del ivers this quality. And I'm I'm curious and will be welcoming of whatever that is, right? So to me, that is quality is is is a form of doing things, the artisanship, the craft of doing some things in a way that is intentional and and well mannered. Of course it has to be sustained with actual attributes, right? You can't you can't just say I did it in this way and therefore the coffee can be defective and phenolic and and therefore you should appreciate it. Well, you will you will likely not find a market for it. And so there's a balance between those things. But I've always kind of leaned into the fact that quality is beyond what we can sense. No, I really agree, and I just wanted to hear you talk more about that because that's been the most helpful like movement in the coffee industry as of recent is decoupling score and cup quality. Like saying that quality is more than just this number because I think that's been really detrimental in a lot of ways. And I had a like a a personal policy that if anyone ever reached out to me because they wanted, you know, ninety point coffees, I was just like, I'm not working with you because that's not a med like I don't I don't want to make those coffees. I don't think those coffees are going to help really anybody . And yeah, I'm just not interested in making those coffees. Because we haven't talked in a long time. And one of the things that really struck me in reading your document was I forget a lot of the things that I say just because I've now gotten into the business of kind of running my mouth and just like saying stuff in especially in interviews. And you you picked up in one of the interviews that I did that there was a lot of grief in in what I was in in the way that I was communicating the information. And I don't know how obvious that was, if you're just particularly sensitive to it, or maybe I'm just, you know, bleeding all over But you were right. There there's I have a lot of grief for the state of the coffee industry and especially living in a producing country. And the origin of this conversation was something that I said on a podcast that caused you to reach back out to me. So I was wondering if there was I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about any of that if you wanted to or we can just leave this out of that epis No, yeah, I I I guess I see it the grief is reflected, is how how I would say it most briefly. I it's very sad to go to a lot of s farms, coffee farms, and and kind of know that the way out is extremely difficult and very improbable . And so it really resonated with me because it's something that I have had in my mind all the time, right? Like should we be promoting smallholder coffee farming as a as a business or not, right? And um it was particularly impactful because I'm as I described in my document, I'm about to get right into it again. And so it was confronting, right? Like what wh why? Why am I inspired to do it even though I know that it doesn't work? I guess the answer to that is a different conversation, but I guess I guess I have to say that I'm still inspired by working in coffee, even though it's grief full and sad to see the state that it's in. I still think there are solutions and I just think it takes a kind of doing a little bit what we've talked about throughout this conversation. It's it's it's kind of removing the romanticing, the romanticizing and and and getting real with with the facts, right? And the way that I kind of see this problem now is Brazil is prime to take over. Like they're doing such a good job at what they're doing. And we can put we can put that through all the moral, ethical, ecological, social filters that we want, but regardless, they have the capacity to produce coffee for the world, right? Like th they will be able to provide th them and Vietnam have the capacity to prove to provide enough coffee for the entire world. Does it fill the souls of those people who want diversity in origin, diversity in flavor? That's a separate thing, right? And so unfortunately, the financial system doesn't care about that that preference so much . Now it's impactful of me to know that we've built a hundred billion dollar plus industry from special coffees and that we can't seem to recognize that the source is incredibly important . And it makes me think, you know, is the source not important? Are we able to maybe modulate Brazilian coffees through or let's not even attribute it to Brazil, like mechanized coffees or or cheaply grown coffees with labels and brands and flavorings so that it doesn't really matter where they come from. And to me that answer is no, because I see the passion in all of the people that work in this industry. Whether you're a farmer or a barista, I think we all care to keep this community alive. And to me, there that is the reason to do it, even though it's incredibly hard. I just think we need to realize that it can't exist under the current model and that doesn't only include the farmers. Like there is that it's very simple. I like to I like to say I like to say two things. One is it's very simple. It's not. You know, it's just not simple to fix. But the biggest lever we can change is price. And I think we are so far from paying farmers, smallholder coffee farm ers, a price per pound that is even close uh to being profitable. I think we talk in percentages, right? Like, oh, we're paying X percent over the conventional price. Like, forget about the conventional price. We shouldn't even be talking about the conventional price because this is not a conventional coffee. And if we truly want it to remain in the world, we should be willing to pay what it costs. And if that means that down the road or downstream, you have to add more value to it and change the way you roast, sell, or brew that coffee. Well, that's your job, right? That's literally what those business people should focus on. But if we want diversity to continue in origin and in in forms of coffee that exist in this beautifully diverse ecosystem today, we really have to start paying farmers a lot more . Like a lot more. And I just wanted to follow that up with we need to start paying them a lot more for the coffee as it exists. My biggest problem with the specialty movement is this idea of, okay, we'll pay you more, but you have to do more. Like we haven't been paying you enough because your coffee hasn't been very good. So make it better and then like kind of a little carrot and a stick. And I think what most people don't want to admit is that we already haven't been paying enough for it. So like farmers don't need to do anything new. Like as is, everything's fine. Give them more money and then you can look for more premiums and things like that . Is there anything else you wanted to say as we wrap up? And let you have the last word? No. Thank you. It's first and foremost very nice to catch up with you. And just to let you know that I in silent have been following what you do and I deeply admire what you do and I think it's it's good for this cause, so so k keep doing it. I I learned a lot from you. Thank you, Lalot. And um where can people find you if anyone wants to hire you or buy some of your coffee or anything else? Uh we are just starting to launch our new coffee business. We will be roasting coffee on our at our farm uh that is at ikaria dot coffee uh and you can find you can reach us reach out to us uh at our consultancy which is at bio dot biophilia. Awesome.ank Th you so much for joining and I'll catch you next time. I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. I felt very selfish doing this episode because it was a conversation that I wanted to have with an old friend and decided to bring you guys along. So I hope that that's something that you enjoyed because I don't do that many interviews. I don't feel super confident as an interviewer. There's so many people that I admire who do that job really, really well. So I've never wanted to kind of insert myself and be that kind of podcast. I feel way more in my comfort zone when I get to just, you know, vomit out thoughts, but I love talking to intelligent people. I love learning myself, talking to people. So if you enjoyed this, let me know. Like I said, I'm really looking forward to hearing what questions you guys have more about agronomy because again I don't get to answer those questions but now I get to talk to people who can. So definitely send an email with your questions in the show notes. And thanks for listening today. Something else that's really fun that I get to do whenever I do have a guest is to invite them onto Discord so that we can continue the conversation and that you guys can speak directly to the guest and and to myself. So if you're interested in a future office hours with Lalo and myself, check out the link in the show notes to join Patreon, join our Discord, and I'll be announcing those dates in the future. But as you guys know, I do office hours twice a month anyway, where it's just me and you guys chatting about whatever. Um and then when we have a special guest on the podcast, they usually come on and get to hang out as well. So if any of that interests you, you can sign up for my newsletter where I send you periodic emails of sending you updates of whatever's going on wherever you can get the coffee. I will have more information soon about the James Hoffman project and what roasters are carrying that, just any details related to that, I'm super excited to share with you. And that newsletter will be the first place where you'll get that information. And yeah, I think that's it for now. Thanks everybody. I'll catch you next time. And remember, life's too short to drink bad coffee.