Walking into the talk by Keith Lemnios, CEO of Sun Coffee Roasters, I was not expecting a discussion about the ethics of coffee. Mr. Lemnios spoke a lot about the efforts made by his company to ensure that the farmers they worked with were paid fairly, that their children got a fair education and that the company had a low carbon footprint. Every time I got coffee at the dining hall, I never realized the amount of effort that had gone into cups that I often gulped down in a couple of minutes.

Often times, in a relatively food secure area, one does not think too much about the production of food. Agriculture is largely industrialized, to ensure the consistent availability of food. As a result, the production chain is clearly defined and the divisions of labor don’t often blend together: the producers, transporters, retailers are often separated and one can’t always trace the path of food down the entire chain.

The lack of visibility is a factor that influences unsustainable agriculture. In order to meet the demands of consumers, distributors often aim to make the subsequent process of retailing more effective by increasing availability of the product. More often than not, the increased efficiency is at the cost of another link in the production chain, usually the producers. In the case of coffee, this increased demand often results in problems with coffee farms: mostly unfair wages and issues with child labor.

However, this is not only limited to coffee. Unsustainable growth and labor exploitation is also seen in foods that have sharp, and sudden, increases in demand, like in the case of quinoa and other crops like that. These negative side effects are mostly possible due to the lack of transparency of production chains.

Companies have often tried to address these issues by providing alternatives to the conventional products of large food manufacturers. For example, companies like Hampton Creek market their plant-based cookies with statistics about the unsustainable mass production of cookies by large food companies. Other organizations like Fair Trade USA attempt to address the lack of transparency of the food industry by certifying food/food products that were produced ethically. Although this is not an efficient method to address the ethics of food production, it provides consumers with avenues to make responsible food choices.