For decades, the specialty coffee world has been telling itself a beautiful story: if farmers simply improve quality and sell for a higher price, then this would constitute a ‘Fair’ industry.
This narrative has been repeated over and over again, through certification schemes, marketing campaigns and polished slogans. Eventually, it has become so ingrained in our collective ‘wisdom’, that we barely challenge it anymore nor seek to advance this cause. Today, each roasters’ website mentions one form or the other regarding sustainability and ‘fairness’.
Yet, as we all know deep down, this is not true. 
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) recently published its 2025 equitable value distribution survey findings. At the same time, the Friidom project—a multi-year study by the University of Bern—released its research on disruptive, farmer-rooted organization models. Both reports point to an industry-wide structural breakdown.
In 2025, Paso Paso participated directly in this transdisciplinary research. We opened up our books, sat through three rounds of deep-dive interviews, and joined cross-case validation sessions to stress-test our model alongside innovative founders in the cocoa, tea, and wool sectors.
In this blogpost we look at the overlap in the findings of both reports.
1. The issue: the so-called "aspiration gap"
The SCA survey gathered feedback from hundreds of coffee professionals across 60 countries to measure the distance between how equitably value is distributed today versus how it should be.
The findings are stark. On a scale of 0 to 100, the average score for our current reality sits at a dismal 30.31. Meanwhile, the shared ideal target is 84.57. This 54-point discrepancy is what researchers call the "aspiration gap".
Everyone agrees the system needs radical restructuring, yet the sector remains locked in place. According to the Coffee Barometer, coffee-producing countries capture only about 10% of the total global value. The other 90% is absorbed downstream—long after the green coffee has left origin.
Coffee and the value attached to it are funneled through an hourglass-shaped supply chain. Millions of people produce it, billions drink it, but the strategic control is squeezed tightly in the middle. SCA respondents intuitively see this: they estimate that farming creates at least 30% of coffee's core value, yet captures just half of that amount (15%). Meanwhile, post-export activities like roasting and retail capture roughly double what they create.
This structure brings a massive emotional strain. The upstream sector is exhausted, with 65% of farming stakeholders stating they feel deeply dissatisfied, disappointed, and discouraged by ongoing price volatility and uncertainty.
2. The diagnostic: why ‘Paying more’ is not enough
This is where the University of Bern's FRIIDOM research is very clear. For years, our industry has relied on retroactive corrections: certifications, direct trade, or conditional premiums paid after the value has already been unevenly captured downstream. The decisions of how much kick-back or premiums farmers ‘deserve’, never includes the farmers themselves.
The research points out that these inclusive business models are well-meaning but fundamentally limited: they rarely reallocate actual decision-making authority to farmers. Roasters and retailers hold onto the strategic assets, while farmers remain marginal suppliers integrated on terms they do not control.
So the FRIIDOM research concludes the following: Inequity is not a pricing problem. It is a governance and ownership problem.
The solution is predistribution. Instead of trying to fix a broken system with a financial band-aid after value accumulates downstream, we must build equity directly into the corporate structure from day one.
3. The proposition of Paso Paso
When we founded Paso Paso, we didn’t set out to create another vague sustainability program. We looked at the economic mismatch and applied basic business logic: if the highest profit margins are captured at the roasting stage in Europe, then the farmers must own the roastery.
Registering our company in Germany as a joint ownership collective (Istmo Producers Collective GmbH) wasn't a marketing play. It was a deliberate governance choice.
The Friidom brief classifies Paso Paso under the "small-scale relational" archetype. Because we bypass multi-tiered institutional intermediaries, our shareholder structure connects our German roastery directly to individual producers as equal equity partners. Here is exactly how that design translates into reality for our partner-producers—Diego Robelo, Diego Baraona, Silvio Sánchez, Jorge Vásquez, and the Syoum family:
Control over governance: our partner-producers do not sit on the sidelines. They hold formal equity shares and are fundamentally embedded in the monthly operational decisions of our roastery in Hanover. Finances, marketing directions, and long-term targets are co-developed as true business partners.
Profiting twice: under our statutes, green coffee is paid for completely at the time of export. but because the farmers are the primary owners of the European enterprise, they are entitled to the net profits of the company distributed as dividends . They earn money when the green coffee leaves origin, and they earn money again when the roasted beans are sold in Germany.
Relational price setting: we reject arbitrary market benchmarks. Our green coffee prices are established via mutual dialog based on genuine farm-gate costs and the exact market segments we pursue.
The Friidom research identifies a total of 13 mechanisms exclusive to Farmer Owned Enterprises. 
4. the real work ahead
The Friidom research is grounded and realistic. It reminds us that establishing farmer ownership is just the first step. True equity becomes consequential only when formal rights translate into real influence in daily practice.
Furthermore, because our partner-producers own the equity in Germany, any margin we retain to buy a new roaster or expand our team counts as "latent farmer value". It is money not yet distributed, but it remains under farmer-influenced governance. That requires absolute transparency so we can evaluate our future potential and earnings together.
Step by step
The SCA report challenges our industry with a reminder that the future is not found—it is made. The current system isn't broken by accident; it's operating exactly as it was designed to.
Changing it requires stepping away from conditional charity and stepping up to the equity table. Step by step—paso paso—we are showing that a truly equitable, farmer-owned coffee sector is not an abstract dream. It’s just plain logic.
Thank you for being part of the collective.
Find the full SCA research here.