Supply Chain

Japan’s ‘Coffee Hunter’ Shares Vision of Industry’s Sustainable Future

José Yoshiaki Kawashima, founder of coffee brand Mi Cafeto, is on a mission is to create a market and increase value for producers who are committed to making quality coffee while protecting the environment and human rights.

Sponsored Content | / This article is sponsored by SUSCOM | By SUSCOM | Published 6 hours ago | About a 5 minute read

Image: Mi Cafeto

One of the industries already most impacted by climate change is coffee, which is known to be facing a “2050 problem.” Beyond the varied challenges of long and tortuous supply chains looms the issue of supply shortages, as farmers in certain regions struggle to cultivate coffee beans in the changing climate.

José Yoshiaki Kawashima — founder and Chief Executive of Japanese sustainable coffee brand Mi Cafeto Co., Ltd — is a “coffee hunter” who, for decades, has traveled to plantations around the world to help solve the various problems faced by the farmers at the heart of the business.

Kawashima’s mission is to create a market and increase value for producers who are committed to making quality coffee while protecting the environment and human rights. Mi Cafeto continues to work toward creating a more socially and environmentally sustainable industry and use coffee as a bridge between producing and consuming nations.

Connecting producers and coffee lovers around the world

Mi Cafeto’s Coffee Hunter café in Neihu, Taiwan | Image credit: Mi Cafeto

Kawashima first travelled from Japan to study in El Salvador in 1975, at age 18. Over years of research at the Salvadoran Coffee Institute, he learned coffee bean cultivation and selection. Hired by coffee giant Ueshima Coffee Co. in 1981, Kawashima was engaged in developing coffee plantations in Jamaica, Hawaii and Indonesia. Over the years, he became keenly aware of the increasing challenges of continuing to satisfy the world’s demand for coffee in the face of climate change and poor labor conditions in coffee-producing regions and committed to changing the story: Kawashima founded Mi Cafeto in 2008, was appointed Coffee Director for Japan Airlines (JAL) in 2011 and became Coffee Advisor to the Thai royal family in 2014 — and he continues to work towards global sustainability for the industry.

“Consumed worldwide, the culture of coffee has developed to be unique to each region in which beans are grown,” Kawashima explains. “It is one of the world’s largest industries in terms of the numbers of people involved, but it faces many challenges. One of these is that climate change will change the possible zones of production by 2050, and the area of land suitable for bean production may halve by then.

“Coffee trees are also more severely affected by disease as a result of the warmer climate; but if you look at our track record and the various shared challenges faced over the last 50 years, with the right level of investment combined with correct training with regard to cultivation, it should be manageable to some extent,” he adds. “So, why can’t we do it? Because coffee itself is not properly valued. Over the past 50 years, wages have risen, overheads such as herbicides and pesticides have increased — and yet, due to flat international coffee prices, producers are under pressure. In short, the price of coffee itself truly must rise.

“Mi Cafeto was founded for this very reason: By creating a value pyramid with clear standards — with the highest grade the equivalent to a [revered French wine] Romanée-Conti — the overall value would rise. Producers would be paid properly. Producers would take the responsibility to grow beans of assured quality and be able to gain consistent income from a market in which trades match the quality of the product. Coffee will only be sustainable when its value is high enough.”

Kawashima’s ambition for consumers to value coffee as they would a fine wine can be seen in Mi Cafeto’s branding and packaging: Many of its coffee beans are packaged in champagne bottles and called Premier Cru Café and Grand Cru Café, after the premium vintages that inspired their names; and the company’s Coffee Hunter cafés offer an elegant environment and a truly elevated coffee-drinking experience.

The sky’s the limit

Mi Cafeto’s Doi Tung coffee | Image credit: JAL

Kawashima discusses his work with JAL — where he was instrumental in developing the JAL Café Lines in-flight beverage service, which offers different sustainable coffee varieties for each class — with pride. Since 2018, Café Lines has featured Mi Cafeto’s Doi Tung, a Rainforest Alliance-certified product in its “Coffee Hunters” series created in partnership with the Mae Fah Luang Foundation — an organization dedicated to reducing poverty among ethnic minorities in northern Thailand whose livelihoods depended on opium production, human trafficking, forest destruction and environmental degradation. Doi Tung coffee was the result of a project that converted poppy fields, once grown for opium production in mountain areas of Thailand, into coffee and macadamia farms.

By serving Doi Tung coffee on board, JAL, the Mae Fah Luang Foundation and Mi Cafeto are supporting the work of the Doi Tung Development Project — a collaboration that conveys the sustainability efforts and philosophy of JAL to customers and offers a guidepost for the future that Mi Cafeto aims for in business.