Norbert Niederhauser on sustainability in the coffee supply chain

A recap of the 5-part series on The Daily Coffee Pro by Map It Forward

The Daily Coffee Pro by Map It Forward is Lee Safar’s podcast for people who work in coffee. She has been building Map It Forward for 9 years around a single goal, as she describes it on this episode: responsible businesses with responsible pricing models.

In this 5-part series, Cropster co-founder Norbert Niederhauser returns to the podcast, where he was one of the earliest guests in 2018. Each episode takes one angle on sustainability in the coffee supply chain. The series moves from a definition, to where the chain is failing, to the tension between environment and economics, to the role of data, and ends on the next 20 years.

Here is what each part covers.

Part 1: What sustainability in coffee actually means

Sustainability has been used so heavily over the past 10 years, Lee says, that people now walk away from the word. Norbert widens it rather than narrows it. “For me, sustainability is a huge word, and it really encompasses everything.” It covers CO2, packaging, and shipping, and it also covers how you treat employees, customers, and suppliers.

He credits the B Corp framework for the model he uses: shareholders keep a seat at the table, but so do employees, customers, suppliers, and the environment, and every decision gets checked against all of them. “Those checks come back every day. It’s an everyday new decision.”

On risk, his advice to roasters is to change one part of the operation at a time and to be specific about it. “Try not to whitewash your whole company just because one product is sustainable.”

Part 1 of 5: What sustainability in coffee actually means

Part 2: Where the coffee supply chains lack sustainability

To Lee’s question about what the opposite of sustainability is, Norbert answered: “current state.”

He works through the chain. Farmers are price takers in most cases, so they cannot really make decisions and work on their own terms. The environment is a silent partner that gets damaged every day. Some traders go out of business when prices swing too far, because the system was not set up to survive those waves. Roasters either cannot get the coffee they want, or pay the prices they should, and cannot pass them on to their end products.

Change takes longer than most plans allow. “Excel is very patient”, he says. You can project anything in a spreadsheet, but realities are different when you work with people and networks, and a farmer who plants a new variety is looking at 4 to 6 years to get back into full production.

For a business already under pressure, his test is simple: what happens to your numbers if you are buying at $5 instead of $3? And for specialty buyers still waiting for the C-market to come back down, he asks a harder question. “If you operate in specialty, why do you operate in the commodity pricing at all?”

He also points listeners to a place to start that costs nothing. The B Corp framework is free to access as a self-check. “You don’t have to certify. You don’t have to be part of it.” But you can challenge yourself.

Part 2 of 5: Where coffee supply chains lack sustainability

Part 3: Environmental versus economic sustainability

Norbert defines both halves, and they turn out to follow the same logic. On a farm, environmental sustainability means leaving the soil at least in the same state after production as it was before, and ideally better. Economic sustainability, he says, “is pretty much the same thing”: build reserves in good times and deploy them when conditions turn.

The two collide in logistics. When a ship cannot move, a roaster’s money stays tied up longer than planned, and the coffee meant for customers is stuck on board. The roaster may have to buy other coffee to cover the gap. That turns a delay into a liquidity problem: the money on the ship is still tied up, and now more has to be found to replace what is on it. “How can I stay liquid? How can I stay moving?”

On price, he is direct about the C-market: “it’s not an instrument for the farmers.” Some farms look environmentally sustainable because they have no money for other inputs, while the price they get is set by the market rather than by what production actually costs. That only works as long as the farmer has no other option.

His conclusion is that the two cannot be separated. Environmental sustainability without the economics is a project, not a business. Economic sustainability without the environment damages the base the business depends on.

Part 3 of 5: Environmental versus economic sustainability in coffee

Part 4: Technology, data, and sustainable coffee supply chains

Part 4 starts from a simple principle: “we can only know if we actually made a change if we can measure it.”

Norbert tells the story of Cropster’s first B Corp assessment. The founders were aligned on vision and mission from the start, and when he first filled out the questions, he expected the company to pass. It did not. Certain questions could not be answered because nothing had been measured. “It was only a feeling.” He describes the gap as the difference between good intentions and actually being good.

The same applies inside a coffee business. Spreadsheets are good enough up to a certain point, and then they get clunky, and often only the person who manages the sheet knows how it works. If you say you have great quality, he says, “do the cupping, put the data in, show me the quality.”

He is clear that collecting data is not the same as understanding it, and that software reports, consultants, and your own knowledge of the business each play a part. On AI, he is enthusiastic with one condition. “If you don’t understand your business, do not start asking AI, ’cause it will not know much better than you do.”

He closes with the questions he would put to the data through a sustainability lens: are the prices you pay farmers sustainable, is the operation financially stable, and are your wages actually livable for the people you employ?

Part 4 of 5: Technology, data, and sustainable coffee supply chains

Part 5: The next 20 years of coffee

Lee asks what the next 20 years look like. Norbert’s first answer: “I see myself still drinking coffee in 20 years.”I see myself still drinking coffee in 20 years.”

His hope is that coffee is valued more. “Maybe we cannot afford six coffees a day anymore, but we can maybe afford one or two,” he says, and what we do drink will be very good, and we will be happy to pay a sustainable price for it.

On the agricultural side, the pressure is climate. As temperatures rise, coffee has to move to higher altitudes, and on a mountain there is less land the higher you go. Norbert expects the years with less coffee than the market demands to continue.

Lee raises experimental fermentation as one way producers try to upgrade their coffee. Norbert is cautious. Unlike wineries, most farms do not have controlled environments, so the result can turn out very different from what the buyer expected, and the farmer then has to find a new buyer. Where it does happen, he sees it working best in direct trade, with the roaster co-owning the risk.

On price, his answer is short. “We need higher prices for farmers, and we need stable prices.” On technology, he sees AI as the next shift, and a chance for businesses to finally use the data they have been storing for the last 20 years.

He ends on why he stays. Coffee has been the longest of any of his engagements, and the thought of it ending is a sad one. “Let’s rather work really hard to make it sustainable.”

Part 5: What Will Coffee Look Like in 20 Years?

One thread through all 5

Across the series, Norbert comes back to the same idea in different forms: no business in coffee operates alone. Farmers, traders, roasters, coffee shops, and the environment are part of one system, and a decision in one place lands somewhere else. Sustainability, in the way he describes it, is the everyday work of checking where it lands.

Listen to the full series on The Daily Coffee Pro by Map it Forward.