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In 2020, I interviewed Shirin Moayyad of Sweet Bean Coffee for my book Crop to Cup and my blog. I now invite her back to take part in our ‘Women in Commodities’ series.

Good morning, Shirin. You have recently started selling a range of coffees produced by women. Could you tell me a little about your motivation for that?

There is a belief in my parents’ faith that if you have two children, one boy and one girl, you should educate the girl first as she is likely to have fewer opportunities in life than the boy. My parents raised me with this early belief in affirmative action.

When I talked with David Griswold, the founder of Sustainable Harvest, he told me that women-produced coffee is often better than men-produced coffee. Is that your experience?

Dave introduced me to Fatima Ismael, a lady cooperative coffee producer and agronomist in Nicaragua. In her case, and in the case of the women with whom she works, it is true that women-produced coffee is better than men-produced coffee.

Fatima compares woman farmers to women as mothers. We care for the earth as we care for our children. Of course, that isn’t the case everywhere, but it seems to be in the case for Fatima and Nicaragua.

David also mentioned that paying women for coffee means that more money stays with the family than when you pay men. Is that a factor in your decision to sell women-produced coffee?

The Partnership for Gender Equity – a spin-off from the Coffee Quality Institute – is one of the more prominent and more renowned initiatives around women in coffee. It estimates that for every dollar that a woman coffee grower earns, she will spend 90 cents on the household; a man would pay 40 cents. Even if those figures are not entirely accurate, they do give an idea of the situation.

Nicaragua is well-known for women coffee growers. Is it a cultural thing?

You are right; there are a lot of women coffee growers in Nicaragua. During the civil war, the men were away, and the women had to run the farms and work the land. It helped the development of women in farming in the country.

Women supply 70 per cent of the labour force on coffee farms in Ethiopia, but few are educated, and many are illiterate. In Brazil, by comparison, I met women coffee growers who tended to be from the higher echelons of society, well-educated and well-off. It doesn’t mean all women farmers in Brazil fall into this category, but that was my experience there.

But it can also vary within countries. If you take the island of Sumatra, there are two distinct regions from which we source speciality coffee: North Sumatra and Ace. Women dominate the supply chain in North Sumatra, but in Ace, men dominate the supply chain.

In Costa Rica, I came across two radically different lady coffee farmers. One was from an enlightened family background where, at the age of 14, her father taught her how to drive the family truck, prune trees, apply fertilizer and manage the entire farm. The second lady grower had been physically abused and nearly beaten to death by her parents and then her husband. They both told her that she was too stupid to drive a car or manage a coffee farm. The police eventually put the husband in prison, and the woman now successfully runs the farm with her daughter.

Abuse tends to stop when a woman starts bringing money home. In their book Half the Sky, the authors write about a woman in Burundi whose husband had abused her until she got micro-financing for a business. Once she did, her husband realized her economic value – her potential to bring money into the family – he stopped his abuse.

What is holding women back in the coffee world?

Women may grow the coffee, but they rarely own the land. Land ownership is a critical requirement for belonging to a cooperative. Everyone likes to think that cooperatives work to benefit everyone in the community, but they often exclude women growers because they can’t prove they own the land.

Not being a cooperative member means that women have less access to credit, agricultural inputs, training, and market information. They are denied leadership and are cut off from decision making. Also, not being a cooperative member often excludes women farmers from the training that many well-intentioned foreign NGOs might offer.

In many countries, women grow the coffee but men transport and sell it. Women not only have to grow coffee, but they also have to participate in the supply chain. When women are doing 70 per cent of the labour, you have to include then in the sale of their produce. They can, and must, contribute to making the coffee sector more viable, healthy, quality-orientated and profitable.

What more could we do to promote women in coffee producing countries?

As a coffee roaster and buyer, my personal choice is that quality comes first. If I am faced with two coffees of equal quality and one is produced by a woman and one by a man, I will choose the former. For example, I have recently started a line of Sumatran coffee made by a women’s cooperative. I had a choice of various equally good coffees from the region, and I chose the women-grown one. I will not discriminate against quality for gender equality.

If you are a coffee buyer and you have a choice between equally outstanding coffees produced by both men and women, I urge you to choose the one made by the latter. Encouraging more women growers will improve coffee quality and be beneficial for the families that produce it. Doing so will strengthen the integrity of the value chain and make it more economically, environmentally and socially sustainable.

I understand that you have recently been crowdfunding for your start-up and to promote women in coffee. Could you tell me a little more about that?

I am crowdfunding to finance a new roasting machine. I started with a small roaster, but my business is growing fast, and I need more capacity. Having a larger roaster will give me leverage to buy more women-produced coffee. I have three different women-produced coffees, but as I grow, I will source more.

Thank you, Shirin, for your time and input.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2021

In their excellent and must-read book, The World for Sale, Javier Blas and Jack Farchy have pulled together what the FT calls ‘rollicking yarns’ from the last fifty years of commodity trading. The authors have written the book like a spy thriller. James Bond (in the form of Vitol’s Ian Taylor) braves missile attacks to provide oil to fuel the Arab Spring. The evil genius Blofeld (in the form of Marc Rich) manipulates markets, breaks sanctions and trades with the enemy.

Ian Taylor and Marc Rich have sadly passed away, which makes me wonder to what extent the book reflects the current reality of commodity trading. When the world of trading is trying to increase diversity, what impact will the book have on a young person, particularly a young woman, thinking of a career in the business? Would it be like a young person joining the CIA or MI6 searching for heroic derring-do, only to discover that modern-day spying is more about computer-based data management?

The question, therefore, is: ‘If you read The World for Sale, would you be disappointed if you joined the world of commodities?’ My answer is: ‘It won’t be what you expect, but you won’t be disappointed.’

Commodity trading has always been about data – what we used to call ‘statistics’ or ‘supply and demand analysis’ – which commodity professionals use to predict future price behaviour. The weather is probably the most critical variable in agricultural commodities, but there are many others, politics and government intervention being high on the list.

Making sense of all this data –  bringing all the various elements together to form a compelling picture – is like doing a jigsaw puzzle on the deck of a yacht in a Force 8 gale. There will always be missing pieces, and you will have to make difficult decisions without full information.

You will spend a lot of time on that yacht if you join a financial institution as a ‘paper’ trader. Your work will be almost 100 per cent analysis, but you will quickly get used to being buffeted around by the gales that regularly sweep through the markets. Although I prefer physical commodity trading, you will have a challenging and rewarding career as a paper trader. You will also be adding value in terms of market liquidity and price discovery.

Physical commodity merchandising is about sustainable and efficient supply chain management. You can define it as ‘transforming commodities in space (geography), time (storage) and form (processing)’.

As you move your particular commodity along the supply chain, you will discover market inefficiencies and mispricing. These could, for example, make your corn worth more as ethanol than animal feed. You could find that it is cheaper to supply your Chinese wheat buyers from the US than Australia.

Most market inefficiencies occur when poor crops or government interference disrupt supply chains. The Trump trade wars with China meant that Brazilian soy suddenly increased in value compared to US soy. Russian export taxes on grain suddenly made other origins more competitive.

You may do all your analysis and discover that the market is not mispricing the various differentials but is mispricing the entire supply and demand for a commodity. When that happens, the flat (outright) price will move. This occurred during the super cycle of the 2000s when the world underestimated Chinese demand (for everything) while overestimating the world’s ability to supply it.

As you merchandise your physical commodity, you might, if you are lucky, earn a tiny margin at each stage of the supply chain. However, you will be more likely to make your living as a commodity trader by taking advantage of small market inefficiencies – mispricing – all along the supply chain. By doing so, you will not only make a profit; you will also make the market more efficient, ensuring that it sends the correct price signals to market participants. This is especially true for the flat price. Futures markets reflect the future: prices move in advance of a shortage or surplus, solving the problem before it happens.

As well as making your supply chain efficient, you will also have to make it economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. Your customers will demand nothing less, even if, unfortunately, they won’t pay you extra for it. Sustainability is now a ‘given’. In achieving this, you will find yourself working alongside – rather than in conflict with – NGOs, certification agencies and other not-for-profit foundations.

As I discovered when I wrote my book about coffee, you may also find that you are using your supply chain in reverse, helping NGOs to implement and effect change at the origin.

As well as managing the traceability of your supply chain, you will also have to manage the risks in it. You can hedge some of your price risks on the derivative markets, but most differentials are impossible to hedge. The skills you learn will enable you to trade those differentials successfully.

You will also have to manage counterparty risk – a client defaulting on you – and country risk – a government changing the rules on you. You may also have to deal with fraud, drug traffickers and other possible criminal activity.

A senior official from Olam recently told me that the health and safety of employees is the number one risk that his company faces – and that cybersecurity is number two.  You will have to deal with both.

You won’t be able to merchandise commodities if you don’t have suppliers and customers. The people you will deal with will probably be from different countries; you will have to become accustomed to dealing with people from other races, cultures and creeds. Many of these people will become your friends.

Meeting and interacting with clients was always the most enriching part of my life as a commodity trader. One week I could be wandering in the cane fields in Brazil, Thailand or India. The next, I could be walking the streets of Manhattan visiting hedge fund managers.

You will also have to work in a team. The movies depict James Bond as a lone wolf who saves the world single-handedly, but he would not work alone in real life. The best teams are diversified, with people of different skillsets, of different genders, and from other races and backgrounds. Commodity trading is a global business, and you will soon lose any prejudices that you may still be carrying around with you.

Finally, if you want an idea of what to expect from a career in commodity trading, you couldn’t do better than to watch this video interview of Dave Berhends, one of the world’s top coffee traders.

In their review of the World for Sale, The Times writes that commodity traders are the true Masters of the Universe. Fortunately, that is not true, but our business is still a great one to be involved in – especially if you are a woman.

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

© Commodity Conversations ® 2021

 

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we post a blog that Shirin Moayyad, the founder of Sweet Bean Coffee, wrote in 2019 when she was first setting up her business. Next week, I will talk more with her about women in coffee. The following week, I will look at what we can all do to encourage more women into the world of commodity trading. Here is Shirin’s story:

I have now worked for nearly 30 years in coffee. I am at long last the founder and owner of my own coffee business. I have been in charge of a coffee farm in the remote Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where I also managed a roasting and exporting company. I travelled the world buying coffees for Peet’s. I guided National Geographic’s film crew through the coffee fields of Ethiopia and Colombia. I’ve had a long and varied coffee career, taking advantage of every opportunity to expand my knowledge, further my skills and experience as much as possible. And yet, it still comes as a surprise when I face gender discrimination.

Last week my partner and I dismantled a 33-year-old kitchen we’d purchased online to refurbish for my new roastery’s cupping lab. Armed with crowbars, hatchet, saws and a mountain of tools, we set to. Mid-morning, the homeowner invited us in for a coffee break and began asking about our plans: why we needed this kitchen, what we planned to do with it etc. Eyes widening with interest, he asked a whole series of questions. Where they concerned construction and refurbishment, my partner answered. Where it had to do with coffee, Didier directed the gentleman to me, saying, “Shirin is the coffee in this equation; she’s the one to answer that.” Kindly though he was, the gentleman only looked at me briefly, then immediately turned back to Didier, as if in subconscious denial that I, a woman, could be the business owner, the authority, or the one who knew the answers on coffee.

Don’t get me wrong. I am in awe of my partner’s abilities. I think it’s nothing short of miraculous, all the things he is capable of doing. I don’t know how to sand and spackle a wall. I don’t know how to wield a crowbar or saw through a granite counter. My mother did. But I don’t. She grew up in privation in WWII, Germany. Where you had to know how to do everything. My dad was the poet, the dreamer, the aesthetic; my mum was the doer, the powerhouse who made it all happen. She got shit done. She is, I realise, the person who most influenced who I am today.

Still, coming back to kitchen dismantling day. I found myself astounded by the gentleman’s assumption that it had to be Didier who knew coffee; he was the authority simply because he is a man. Maybe once upon a time in my career, this wouldn’t have struck me so much. But now, some 30 years on, it comes down as being just ludicrous.

It was 20 years ago in Singapore when I first found myself frustrated by the blatant discrimination of these assumptions. I was head of coffee, roaster and buyer for a 28-shop chain when I hired a mate of mine from Australia to come roast. He was a lovely bloke; a tall, amiable guy, very competent and a big help to me. But he was my employee, my hire, my direct report. And I lived the same frustration there, of facing implicit assumptions that he was boss, and I was just some little sidekick, an assistant perhaps. Inevitably, his authority was sought, his opinions solicited, the assumption made that he was The Man. It wasn’t his fault, mind, it just was that way. And I was young enough not to be too irritated. But now, some 30 years on….

There was that origin trip once when we were a group of coffee professionals on a bus, headed out to a farm visit. A chap sat next to me and proceeded to soliloquise on his extensive coffee experience, all the marvellous things he’d achieved at origin. I wasn’t sure when he found time to breathe, he was so enthralled with recounting his own achievements. I forgot what topic it was that prompted me to interject mildly how yes, I had also found XYZ issue on the 98-acre coffee farm that I managed in the remote mountains of Papua New Guinea. There was a moment of silence when my words broke through the waterfall of his monologue, and his face went blank. Dumbstruck. Silent. I watched the virtual cogwheels turning as he struggled to compute the information he had just heard. In the event, it was clearly too much for him to compute since, after that brief respite, he went right back to blathering on about his record of achievements. Sigh. It wasn’t yet 30 years then, but it was starting to irritate me.

My mum isn’t the only one to have inspired me over the years. There are others: women in coffee the world over who have been there in one form or another as I learned this path.

Erna Knutsen was one such wonder. I was travelling to California on a trade mission to represent Papua New Guinea – because, by then, I was managing a coffee roasting company there that had achieved considerable export success. My colleagues at home told me to contact Erna as she was the US importer of our finest estate coffee and would look after me. And indeed, she did. Erna invited me to her cupping table whilst evaluating a quality claim on a pricey auction lot Kenyan. Erna was the woman who coined the phrase speciality coffee, the grande dame of our industry who broke the glass ceiling and brazened her way to a place at the cupping table. She was awesome. And here, without knowing anything about me, she allowed me to cup alongside her. I trembled at the honour.

Later that afternoon, I experienced the true flamboyance of this trailblazing woman. She’d booked us a table at San Francisco’s Boulevard Restaurant…a place so fancy to my Papua New Guinean bush eyes, I couldn’t help but be impressed. And there she was, sporting a leopard skin pantsuit, through her cat-eye spectacles calling the handsome young server “darling” and drinking some mighty strong cocktails over lunch. Her self-confidence allowed her a flamboyance I could only dream of.

Today’s earthly embodiment of the virtue of grace though would have to be the inimitable Sunalini Menon, an extraordinary woman I consider to be both a mentor and one of the world’s greatest coffee cuppers. I first witnessed her quiet self-assurance and profound knowledge of coffee at work in Singapore when I moved there from Papua New Guinea. Two gentlemen were trying to sell me coffee from Yunnan, China, which was coming on as an origin. “As good as a Costa Rican hard bean,” they blustered loudly. Sunalini happened to be cupping with and coaching me that afternoon, but they clearly didn’t know her and assumed she was just another woman who could be hoodwinked and bullied.

As we started to cup their samples, Sunalini gently probed them with questions on the varieties they had planted. Was it a first or second-generation cross as the Catimor cup was clearly coming through? Perhaps the parenting might have been from XYZ stock as that taste was in the finish, didn’t they think? And where had the progenitor plant material come from as it tasted rather more along the lines of IMN than XYZ, didn’t they think?

With every softly spoken question, her deference combined with her indisputable empirical knowledge of what she was cupping put the gentlemen further on the back foot. I watched their posture literally move from forward-leaning, imposing, nearly bullying to quiet, defensive, and ultimately defeated. The lids came down over their eyes, their body language shut down, they were silenced. It was a prize-winning performance, the likes of which I have not since seen. Never once did Sunalini raise her voice or humiliate. Instead, with soft-spoken words underpinned by the undisputed certainty of her palate and her knowledge, she whipped them. Always immaculately clad in the bright and decorative costumes of her native India, Sunalini’s personal and professional elegance is an inspiring beacon to other women in coffee.

Let me end by drawing a parallel that might help the reader hear my point of view. I have a dear friend, Phyllis, an African American coffee professional. Some years ago, I reflected on the fact that while I could sympathise with her fight and certainly try to empathise with the discrimination an African American experiences, still I could never fully feel it. Why? Quite simply, because I’ve never lived it myself, I haven’t walked in those shoes. It hasn’t been my experience in life, and as much as I sympathise, I cannot live that experience the way Phyllis has.

By the same token, although I’m certain that while my many male colleagues and friends in coffee all sympathise, they cannot know in full what I feel because they’ve never lived it. They’ve never experienced this through this lens. Through the lens whereby, after some 30 years in the industry, a man would still turn his back on a woman and direct his questions at a fellow man with arguably nil experience in coffee.

If I look at the cumulative lessons I’ve learned from the women I admire, what it boils down to is this:

1. Know and love your subject matter because nobody can question that kind of integrity, and you will live with its certitude.
2. Believe in yourself and don’t listen to the noise of others. You know your worth; the monkey chatter of others should wash over you and not stick.
3. Don’t be afraid to have your style. From Erna to Sunalini and every other icon in the world of women in coffee, with the knowledge they have, style is an adornment, a cloak that embellishes their individuality and worth.

Note: these reflections are simply that and no more. And I dedicate them equally to the man I love, as to all my many coffee sisters. And most particularly to my mum, the woman who could do everything.

I also want to thank all my male colleagues for the huge support they give to women in coffee. The world is indeed changing, and there are several men out there – you know who you are – who I look up to every bit as much as I do to the likes of Erna or Sunalini.

 

I haven’t yet received my pre-ordered copy of The World for Sale by Javier Blass and Jack Farchy, but it has already spurred some headlines about corruption in the world of commodity trading. The story that attracted the most attention concerns a former Glencore mining executive who admitted to the book’s authors that in 2003 he flew around the world with bags of cash to be paid in bribes to government officials.

The authors rightly point out that, although unethical and immoral, it was both legal and even tax-deductible in 2003 for Swiss companies like Glencore to pay ‘commissions’. The Swiss government has thankfully rectified that sad state of affairs, and Glencore has banned using local agents, the intermediaries they used to facilitate corruption.

Glencore started life as Marc Rich & Co, led by a brilliant but flawed trader who specialised in dealing in countries where most people feared to tread. Daniel Ammann has written a (truly) excellent biography of Marc Rich – The King of Oil – in which he tackles the issue of corruption. He writes

“Most commodities come from countries that are not beacons of democracy and human rights. The “resource curse” and “the paradox of plenty” are the terms economists and political scientists use to describe the fact that countries that are rich in oil, gas or metals are usually plagued by poverty, corruption, and misgovernment. If commodity traders want to be successful, they are forced—much like journalists or intelligence agents who will take their information from any source—to sit down with people that they would rather not have as friends, and they apparently have to resort to practices that are either frowned upon or downright illegal in other parts of the world.”

Mr Ammann is right: corruption has more to do with governments than commodity trading. The onus is on governments to cure the disease.

Way back in 1977, the US instituted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). It made it unlawful for a U.S. person or company to offer, pay, or promise to pay money or anything of value to any foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business.

More recently, China, previously one of the world’s most corrupt countries, has resorted to drastic action, instituting capital punishment for corrupt officials.  Other countries are taking less drastic measures, but they are moving, albeit too slowly, in the right direction.

Corruption in commodities typically thrives when governments get involved in, for example, awarding mineral rights, production or trade quotas or by setting prices.

It was omnipresent in the agricultural markets when I began my career in commodities. At that time, only the government had the right to import or export certain commodities in many countries. Buying and selling tenders were often rigged – and you were never sure how much money was being siphoned off or added on before it reached the farmers or the consumers.

Over the past 40 years, governments have exited the agricultural commodity trade; the business has been privatised. When business is in private hands, producers or buyers have little interested in receiving bribes; it is the price and the terms of the deal that interest them.

But what should you do if a government official asks for a bribe? In my book, The Sugar Casino, I told the true story of the first time someone asked me for one:

“After spending two years as a futures trader in Minneapolis, my company transferred me back to London with a brief to develop new markets in the Middle East and Africa. The company’s agent in one country (I won’t say which one) contacted me to say that they had surplus sugar that year and the government would like to export a couple of cargoes to earn much needed foreign exchange. The minister who was handling the sale was coming to London the following week. Could I meet him?

 “Despite being only 25 years old, I met the minister and took him to an expensive restaurant. We had an excellent meal, discussed the sugar market and tried to estimate the price for the particular grade of sugar the country was exporting. As we were leaving, he surprised me by suggesting that we dine again the following evening. I agreed even though I was unsure what we had left to talk about.

 “The next evening, the minister slipped me a shopping list of electronic items that he would like to take back with him from London. There were only four items on the list: a television, a radio, a stereo system and (bizarrely) an electric iron. He asked if I could help him obtain these items. I wasn’t quite sure if he asked me to go with him to the shops to choose the items or ask me to buy the items and give them to him for free. And if it was the latter, I was surprised at how little it took to bribe a minister.

 “The next day, I told my boss what had happened. I thought it was a bit of a joke. Still, my boss took it seriously, advising me to go back to the minister to politely explain that company policy meant that we couldn’t help with his request but that we would still like to buy his sugar and be very competitive on the price. I did as instructed and was not surprised to hear a week later that one of our competitors had bought the two cargos of sugar. I calculated they had probably made a profit of $240,000 on the deal. I compared that to the couple of hundred dollars it would have cost to buy the items on the minister’s shopping list.

 “I mentioned this to my boss, who told me angrily that I should never think about paying a bribe to anyone, no matter how much money was at stake. He called it “selling your soul to the devil” and argued that even if a television may not cost much, it was “the thin edge of the wedge. And from a business point of view”, he added, “It makes no sense.

 “First, it will give your client a hold over you. Second, if everyone does the same thing, you will end up competing against each other in the number of bribes that you pay.” He called it “competitive corruption” and said that paying a bribe would be ineffective if your competitor paid more.

In 2016, I interviewed the legendary sugar trader Robert Kuok for The Sugar Casino. He told me:

“One piece of advice: never hug the high and mighty; they electrocute you. Keep them at arm’s length. And always adhere to moral practices, and nothing can stop you. If someone asks you for a bribe, you should say that neither you nor your company could do that. But stay very polite. Don’t stand on your high horse and preach morality at that moment. Just turn them down nicely. If you get a chance later at a meal or something, you can pontificate a little, but not then – they are not in the mood to be listening to moral truth.

Sound advice, indeed.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2021