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Coffee is the richest source of dietary antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents in the American diet. But behind every cup of coffee is a global story that spans centuries of cultural transformation, health science, and a tangled web of trade ethics. Corinna Bellizzi delves into this topic with Chris Kilhan, medicine hunter and author of The Way of Coffee. Together, they unpack the role of coffee in social transformation, particularly with critical tensions in the coffee trade and the nonstop price increase due to the “coffee shop culture.” Chris also presents potential solutions to solve the biggest problems of the global botanical trade to radically improve consumer prices and provide better opportunities to small farmers, the heroes behind our most delicious cups of coffee.

About Chris Kilham

Chris Kilham is a medicine hunter, author, educator and yogi. The founder of Medicine Hunter Inc., Chris has conducted medicinal plant research and sustainable botanical sourcing in over 50 countries. Chris works with companies to develop and popularize traditional plant-based food and medicinal products into market successes. These include ashwagandha, kava, maca, rhodiola, schisandra, tamanu oil, cat’s claw, dragon’s blood, ayahuasca, and hundreds of other plants. Chris also works to bridge worlds, regularly sharing information about other cultures through presentations and media. He has appeared on major media globally for decades. The New York Times calls Chris “part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones.”

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriskilham/

Guest Website: http://medicinehunter.com/

Guest Social:

https://www.instagram.com/medicinehunter

https://www.facebook.com/medicinehunter

https://www.youtube.com/user/chriskilham

Additional Resources Mentioned:

? BOOK: The Way of Coffee by Chris Kilham, Medicine Hunter

? EPISODE: On Building Sustainable Communities By Learning From Indigenous People with Medicine Hunter, Chris Kilham

? EPISODE: Healing The Soil Through Regenerative Farming With Ric Scalzo, CEO of Kokora Life

Show Notes: 

• 02:39 – Deep Dive Into Coffee Production And Consumption
• 15:06 – How Coffee Transformed Our Societies
• 21:03 – How We Can Walk Away From Unnecessary Coffee Hype
• 34:43 – How Firms Can Commit To Running An Ethical Business
• 49:10 – Giving More Opportunities To Small Farmers
• 53:40 – What It Is Like To Bridge Different Worlds
• 01:01:39 – Green Flags To Look For When Buying Coffee And Botanicals
• 01:07:00 – Diving Into A Big Product Project On Coca Leaf
• 01:13:13 – Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

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The Real Story Behind Coffee with Chris Kilham, Medicine Hunter

I’m thrilled to be joined by Chris Kilham, Medicine Hunter, Author, Educator, Yogi, and the Founder of Medicine Hunter. Chris has conducted medicinal plant research and sustainable botanical sourcing in more than 50 countries around the globe, and he’s presently helping to bring traditional plant-based foods and medicines into broader public awareness while spotlighting the people and ecosystems behind them.

This is Chris’s return to the show, and this time we’re going to be digging into what he’s working on right now, his new book, The Way of Coffee, his collaborations and explorations, and what ethnobotanical travel teaches us about community, respect, and the ethics of trade. With that, welcome to the show, Chris. It’s good to see you.

Thank you, Corinna. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you, whether it’s at a convention or on a podcast. I always enjoy it.

I think we’re going on close to 30 years now.

I know. I thought about that. I went, “When we first met, that’s actually generations ago.” I know, it’s scary.

1999.

That’s great, it’s wonderful.

Deep Dive Into Coffee Production And Consumption

I’ve been in this industry since then, and really, we’ve both seen it go through its own evolutions in that time. Let’s talk about what’s new since last time. Last time, we talked about indigenous knowledge, sustainable trade, and how quickly cultures are being pressured to change. What’s been most alive for you lately, personally or professionally?

It’s been a tossed salad of things, actually, Corinna. You mentioned that I just came out with a book called The Way of Coffee. Usually, I write books in a relatively short period of time, but this one I’ve been scratching at for ten years. On the one hand, I took my time. It’s a wonderful book. On the other hand, I was glad to get the monkey off my back. I love coffee very much, and in the course of my travels around the tropics globally, I’ve had the opportunity to be in many coffee plantations. The very last one prior to publishing the book was in Vietnam. I have to say, coffee plantations, especially if they’re done organically, are gorgeous and amazing.

When you catch maybe even hundreds of acres of coffee when it’s ripe, it’s an amazing sight or in when it’s in bloom. I feel that I owe a lot to coffee because it energizes me pretty much every morning of my life. Also, because in our industry, we have such a history of nattering nabobs saying stupid irresponsible things about coffee that are wholly untrue. It’s toxic, it dries out your kidneys, it causes pancreatic cancer, you’ll die if you drink this stuff.

It creates a situation where your body enters an inflammatory state. I’ve heard that from registered dietitians, from doctors. It’s not true, right?

Yeah. It is the richest source of dietary antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents in the American diet. Here’s the crazy thing. I realize I’m ranting a little bit, but bear with me. There are gigantic epidemiological studies tracking people over decades, the Harvard study, the Framingham study, on and on. What they show, the weirdest thing, is that coffee drinkers live on average a year and a half longer than non-coffee drinkers regardless of accidents, diseases, etc. There’s no question that people in our industry, especially like C.W. Post who came out with Postum, the cereal beverage that does not taste like coffee. The Way of Coffee has been a passion for me for years and now I’m glad it’s floating out there on its own.

I’m joining you with a cup of coffee. Those of you who are Lord of the Rings fans may see it’s essentially got the inscription from the One Ring on it. My son jokes, “This is my precious,” my cup of coffee in the morning, frankly all day long because what does the research also show with coffee? That those who drink more of it are less likely to develop neurodegenerative diseases.

One of the big protective dimensions of coffee consumption is what it does for the nervous system. You don’t want to exceed the caffeine speed limit, which for most adults is around 300 milligrams a day. That depends on whether you’re a slow or a fast caffeine metabolizer. I can drink coffee all day long and bang down espresso shots and go to bed if I want to. That doesn’t make sense, but I’ve done it before. I’m a fast metabolizer.

Overall, if you have good quality coffee, ironically, the instant coffees made from Robusta beans, which taste nasty, are in fact insanely protective for you. Robusta coffee, while it has a lousy flavor, is richer in the chlorogenic acids and the other profoundly beneficial compounds that protect every organ system in the body. Yes, drink your coffee with pleasure and never with guilt.

Yeah, I’m right there with you. The question of chlorogenic acid I have interviewed Dr. William Li on the show and he talks a lot about chlorogenic acid and the benefits of it. He also said that when you combine dairy, like regular milk, with coffee, that it can negate some of the powerful effects of coffee. That if you are going to drink it with, let’s say some a cream or creamer, to consider doing so with another type of milk.

I think that denies basic biology, frankly. Unless you have digestive problems, and granted, a lot of people do, but you’ve got some milk or something in your coffee right now, it looks like.

I have oat milk. I use oat milk because I do have problems with regular milk.

The idea that a certain amount of protective agents may bind to the fats in milk, yeah, okay, but if you have an effective digestive system, you’re going to break down the fats in milk, the protein in milk, you’re going to disperse. It’s not as though those antioxidant compounds are going to be A, forever bound once they get through the lumen of the intestine or B, just disappear. I don’t want to say it’s a kooky idea, but I think it’s not a well-informed idea considering basic digestive biology. Not everybody likes their coffee black. I can do espressos and have nothing in them, but I put a little bit of milk in my coffee. I’m not an epidemiological study, but I’m still alive and healthy.

I think that’s a good point too, because frankly, if you overcomplicate it, then people get worried. The reality is drinking coffee isn’t something to worry about.

No, and in fact, this is probably what people mean, but the chlorogenic acids are a big group. It’s not one compound. It’s not chlorogenic acid. What we know in various hundreds of studies, because you know how it is, people really geek out on this stuff. If you look at the range of biological functions among all of the chlorogenic acids individually and together, coffee turns out to be one of the most extraordinary health elixirs you could possibly put together. If you have good organic coffee so that you’re not consuming pesticide residues and all of that, it’s something to be happy for.

Coffee is one of the most extraordinary health elixirs you could possibly put together.

Now, since we jumped right into the subject of coffee, I have a few questions about it. Your manuscript frames coffee as world-transforming, culturally catalytic, and health-supportive. Your stories also include vignettes of travel-based research that range from things like telling stories of coffee awakening and the history of coffee to modern sustainability and climate risk. Chapter titles from this book include topics like Coffee’s Cultural Rise, How to Drink Coffee, Caffeine Science and Health Narratives. What made you decide coffee deserved a full Medicine Hunter treatment and why now?

Many people in the herbal scene, and I’m sure you’ve been part of these conversations, will tell you how they’ve just felt a tug from certain plants. For me, kava and maca and rhodiola and coffee and tea and a number of plants have really captured my imagination and pulled me into them one way or another. With coffee, after I ever first went into a plantation, I was hooked. I caught it in flower, it was beautiful, it was well tended I said, “I get it. I get the magic of this kind of a place.”

In my travels, because I’ve done a lot of work globally around the tropics, which is where coffee grows, either specifically to go after coffee or with that as a side line that happens along the way, like in the Chanchamayo region of the Amazon in Peru where my friend went exploring for years. We were constantly just marching into coffee warehouses and talking with people and looking at beans and maybe even sitting and having drinking a cup of coffee. Coffee became a whole series of really magic moments. One of the things that I’ve done a lot I’ve been in the Amazon like 35 times. I’ve lived with natives, spent a lot of time there. I do not want to go without good coffee.

I have a team of people, typically four of us, we’ve traveled around the Peruvian Amazon. Anytime we go to a village and we stay in one, which has been quite often, we’ll find some woman nearby who would be happy to provide boiling hot water and cups so that we can have coffee in the morning and then I show up with my Lucite Aeropress and organic ground organic coffee. We do not go without coffee, that is a benefit of Medicine Hunter expeditions. You can be guaranteed if you’re crew, you will be served good coffee in the morning.

I love that. It does also remind me of my favorite diving expeditions. There was a coffee lover amongst the crew and he would always make sure we had the best coffee on board when we came up from our dive. When you’re bone-chilled, it’s the perfect remedy in that moment.

I’ve gotten hypothermic body surfing in Maine and I run for a hot coffee and it yeah, it can save your life actually.

Yeah, it’s amazing, really. It both gets your blood pumping too because of vasodilation, like these benefits of coffee.

Yes, definitely so. What are your other questions about it?

How Coffee Transformed Our Societies

You talk about it being more than a beverage, the fact that it’s a cultural engine. What are some ways that coffee has genuinely transformed societies?

What we know is that in Islam, in Yemen, very back around the 1300s or so, it actually was considered maybe an agent of God because it helped people in in prayer in the middle of the night. The really ardently devout Muslims who got up for like the or 2:00 in the morning prayer, it helped them to stay awake and to pray rather than falling asleep. The real transformation of culture with coffee came with the advent of coffeehouses.

As soon as there were coffeehouses, I think it’s the early 1500s, that all changed. People had this invigorating beverage. They were together in a place where it was being served, it stimulated conversation. Coffeehouses became known as penny universities. We cannot appreciate from our own personal experience how much that was transformative with culture. There were places where people got together and talked but people weren’t having the conversations, let’s say, in taverns that they wound up having in coffeehouses. Businesses came out of coffeehouses and political movements came out of coffeehouses and big monster enterprises that would go on to be dominant globally seemingly forever like Lloyd’s of London, that was a coffeehouse.

People had conversations. Conversations that they necessarily maybe hadn’t had before and hearing people say things they hadn’t heard before. It was almost electrical in how it invigorated society. A lot of things came out of this, newspapers, magazines, books and then people of course became interested in, like, “That coffee’s okay, but what about this coffee? Is it better?” We have, as we have with any other food and beverage, an interest in its qualifications, if you will, its quality, its aroma, its invigoration, all of that.

I think you could make an argument that the beatnik scene wouldn’t have existed without the coffee shop.

Absolutely. Get together, drink espressos, smoke cigarettes, and listen to poetry. Hit bongo drums.

There has been almost a in my mind, a rise and fall to the coffeehouse culture of America. I think in part this has come from the over-reliance on screens, the mobility of work, and perhaps the fact that many coffee shops give you Wi-Fi. When you walk into a coffee shop what do you see? A bunch of people with headphones on doing remote work with their laptops and not really conversing and connecting to one another. While I completely agree with you, I also mourn the loss of the coffee shop culture of twenty years ago.

If you were to stand up and say, “What does everybody here think of King George?” While that would be a perfectly legitimate thing to do back then, you’d be labeled a nut and people would be on their phone, there’s some kook yelling. No, those days are gone. It is sad. It is unfortunate. Where I see it though interestingly, I was in Lebanon and also in Malaysia. You can’t go out and get a cup of coffee in the morning. They don’t do that. However, at 11:00, 12:00 at night, the coffee shops are filled, people are sitting having conversations at tables and it’s not necessarily the penny universities of yesteryear, but very much good coffee culture nonetheless. I think it depends where you are. Some places still do have that.

I’m very tempted to open up my own coffee shop that is digital device free. A digital free zone. I feel like it could find a home in Santa Cruz. This culture I think could sustain something like that.

I agree with you. Yeah, there’s a large coffee company in Vietnam called Nguyen and they they’re a huge enterprise, a monster enterprise. Vietnam’s the second largest coffee producing nation on Earth. They’re a big deal, this company. One of the things they promote is Zen coffee and they have different environments, including some coffee shops that you go in there and people aren’t blabbing on their phones and doing that, they’re they may be sitting talking with each other but it’s much more along the lines of what we came to enjoy when we first started going to coffee shops.

How We Can Walk Away From Unnecessary Coffee Hype

We talked a bit about coffee and health. What are some of the other evidence-informed views that you want people to walk away with beyond the hype or potentially the backlash when it comes to popularity of coffee?

One thing any coffee drinker must know is that the price has gone up. It used to be that you got 1-pound bags and then all of a sudden, it was 12-ounce bags.

Now I think they’re ten. Most of them are ten.

Now a lot of 10-ounce bags, yeah, and the price is a little higher than when we were getting 1 pound. There are real tensions in the coffee trade right now. Demand of course keeps prices up really high, but there are environmental issues that are causing the steady reduction of coffee productivity in many parts of the world. What this means is that coffee, as a result of climate change, is endangered. I just got back from the UK. I’m doing a photographic project with Kew Botanical Gardens, the big botanical garden and horticultural center outside of London.

There’s a guy there named Aaron Davis who I met with and interviewed previously for the book. He has really devoted much of his career to saving coffee. There are many wild species of coffee out there. I’ve only ever encountered one, that was in the forest in Congo, but it was still exciting. He has identified a genus, a species of coffee called stenophylla that may well be the replacement for arabica as arabica production dwindles.

There’ll still be arabica out there, but there needs to be something that’s hardier and still tastes good, otherwise, people won’t tolerate it. They’ve been working on this, but people should know that our very beloved beverage is endangered at this point in time and good thoughtful people are working to make sure that we can have our morning cup.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered coffee pretty deeply on this show. In one case, I interviewed Mokhtar Alkhanshali who formed the company Port of Mokha. In that case, he talked a lot about the actual cost of coffee on global markets and most producers are paid maybe $2 to $3 a pound when the cost to grow it if you’re to pay a living wage is closer to $7 or $8. The fact is that they don’t pay a living wage in many of these cases.

I think that’s part of the problem. That’s a big part of the problem. At the same time, we see the commoditization of coffee coming into challenge because if you treat it like a commodity in the cases you’ve mentioned where, for instance, climate change is affecting how much coffee can be produced in certain regions, the regions that grow coffee or can successfully grow coffee are shifting because of warming trend.

At the same time, we have incredible tariffs that are being assessed and blanket capacity that weren’t there a year ago. Coffees across the board have had to either absorb costs, and you can’t do that on the part of the producer, they can’t absorb the cost because they’re already operating on whisper thin margins. You can’t do that really on the importer side because they already had it priced at a commodity value level. You end up having to pass 100% of that on to the consumers, which is why we have seen really in one year’s time a 30% increase in coffee prices. That’s on average.

There are a lot of factors for sure. We make our industry to a great extent on the backs of people who live at or below the poverty line everywhere I go.

The people who work the hardest, like put the back-breaking labor in, get paid the absolute least.

Yeah, and one of the things I’ve done in my career, much to the chagrin on occasion of the companies that I’ve worked for, is that I’ll find the what people are being paid to be horrifically too low and really push for higher pay and a number of other things. When I first got involved with kava, buyers were dictating here’s what you’re going to be paid for kava root. The same thing happened with maca for many years up in the Peruvian. “Here’s what we are going to pay you.”

Now, in both of those situations, now that those are firmly established in the market, the kava growers tell you what you’re going to pay them. Up in the Peruvian Andes, the maca growers now tell you what you’re going to pay them. They have better living conditions, they have better educational materials in the schools, they have medicine where they didn’t have it before, their clothes aren’t tattered and torn, you see the differences in the communities, they have amenities like cars that matters. That matters.

Mokhtar is on a far extreme side because what he’s doing is he’s going to Yemen and he’s architected a direct supply chain from like where the first coffees are really first coffees came from this area. He’s got an incredibly high quality supply, he’s paying people a living wage, he’s had a couple of projects where he’s worked with coffee shops to offer one of their coffees, and people are paying $15, $20 a cup.

Now that’s of course much more than what they pay going to a coffee shop for another bean. He’s doing something almost from an activist perspective too and it’s on that far extreme of what can be done when you’re working to really build a business that gives full respect and pay to the people at every level of the organization.

If you look at Port of Mokha’s website, I’ve got two of their coffees here.

They’re delicious.

Yes, they are. They’re delicious, they’re superior quality, they’re wonderful, there’s nothing bad to say about it. As is so often the case, this is something that regardless of the well-deserved price structure, this is something for the very well-off. This is something for people who are shopping in Erewhon on Melrose. How I feel about that is good. I’m glad that there is a slice of society that can support this project and that it can be sustainable because we need this. We need thousands and thousands more projects like that, good honorable people doing right by the people who perform the back-breaking labor for our billions in profits.

I agree, and I want coffee to be available and affordable. It’s like these two things exist in tension as you’ve already shared. Being in coffeehouse culture now what did what did Starbucks do for us? We could talk all day long about Starbucks. Did a couple of things that are healthy and it did a lot that isn’t.

It’s a real drag when you want a cup of coffee to stand behind someone who wants a half skinny half caff pumpkin spice macchiato. It’s like for the love of God, get a separate line. A guy named Wolfgang Schivelbusch wrote a book called Tastes of Paradise. One of the things he talked about was how different things, tobacco, cocoa, coffee started out, how they were consumed and how they changed over time to being transactional over the counter items. With something like Starbucks, that is a gigantic multi-billion dollar transactional over the counter place. Yes, you can go and have coffee with a friend and talk for sure and people do, but it’s really intended to be a high productivity machine. It’s a different thing.

Let me tell you what I think Starbucks did for coffee. It got us used to paying a higher price for coffee. I think that is actually a healthy thing because if you’re to go and get a cup of drip for $1 because a few years ago, not too long ago, you could pay $1, $1.50 at a coffee shop to get a cup of drip. Nowadays, that’s just no longer true. I see it as being one part, the coffee shop with these crazy mixes of coffee or double frappé, half caff, two squirts of vanilla, this and that and the next thing got people accustomed to paying more for a cup of coffee than they used to.

In a way, that allowed for consumers to accept a higher price that is more fair for the cup of coffee they consume. This is also Starbucks creating a shareholder culture of coffee shops as well, and it has squeezed out so many of the independents that the negative effects have been really strong as a result of that too. I miss the independent coffee shops, so few have survived.

There’s one chain in our local area, Lulu Carpenter’s, and they still seem to be doing just fine with a few different locations, some of which failed, the one closest to me failed. In part because people have constrained financial resources. COVID killed a whole set of them too because we suddenly shuttered the doors of many businesses and that just allowed for those larger corporations who had the ability to weather a storm to supplant more of them.

You are correct that Starbucks got people used to paying more, but what they got used to people paying more was to a corporation. It wasn’t an equitable thing of now we’re paying the farmers and the harvesters five times as much. I’ve never personally seen a harvester who wasn’t living in the margins. I personally haven’t seen that.

Starbucks got people used to paying more to a corporation.

In Vietnam, in a couple of instances, they were doing okay, but for the most part, it’s a poverty wage. Okay, great, let’s say Starbucks really did get us to get used to paying $4 for a medium sized cup of coffee. All right, but they’re taking that profit. That’s not a sustainable chain of trade, that’s not equitable. A lot of agricultural workers in the tropics around the world die of snake bites. I’ve seen poisonous snakes in plantations.

They don’t just stop at the border of the farm. This is their habitat.

No, they don’t, yeah. “You’re harvesting coffee, okay, like I’ll leave you alone, dude.” It’s hard work and it’s hot work and it’s sweaty work and it depends on whether or not they have decent conditions and often they don’t. Also, the thing that you know so well is these people are invisible to us. Not to me when I’m with them. I’ve spent decades around people in the agricultural sector providing our botanicals and our foods and it’s shocking what goes on. It’s shocking how little they get for how much they do. Without them, we could not survive. Where do you want to go now?

How Firms Can Commit To Running An Ethical Business

This is us talking about ethical trade. I feel like one of the things I’m researching in my phd program is really what it takes to take a stance, to build a regenerative company. So far, what all of my research is revealing is it takes a firm commitment to running an ethical business. The truth is that most of the companies that we interface with in the day-to-day through media or by perusing shelves are not running with planet first ever. That’s the sad truth. So few do run with planet first, people first. When companies say that they’re sustainably sourcing, what are they usually leaving out?

For one thing, like any other field of endeavor, doesn’t matter whether it’s law or music or culinary arts, whatever, working in the field, you develop over time hundreds and hundreds of bits of understanding and ways to assess things. You can easily breeze through a place one time and look, looks pretty good that’s sustainable, and come away clueless and certified. It takes people who go far deeper all the time to really understand actually, this system is broken here. I think that a lot of companies breeze through the sustainability conversation, we reduced our water shipping by 10%.

Okay, if you’re Procter & Gamble, that’s a huge savings overall, but in reality, that’s not sustainable. Yeah, it’s very rough. There are projects out there. That’s the thing. There are projects all over the world. Cooperatives of women in Africa doing shea butter and really doing it and doing it well and supporting themselves and having midwifery and things they didn’t have before and improved economic conditions on and on. You’ve got people around the world dedicating themselves to replanting trees in deforested areas.

Let’s give people a couple of brands that we know about that are doing this because I want them to be able to go and look for themselves if possible. I think with shea butter you might be talking about a company like Alaffia. Is there a company?

I don’t know. I run into the projects themselves. I often don’t know where those products go.

I have read quite a bit about the shea butter .it’s a cooperative of women farmers that are doing so responsibly and that more of the profit stay in their hands, it is a living wage for them, which I think is absolutely important and also completely different than what we think of as a living wage. They might be surviving on a few dollars a day and that’s a living wage there for them in that culture living the way they live. They’re not driving two cars and living in a house with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It’s a different world. You’ve seen that deeply.

Also, you see, most of the sustainability happens on the supply side, ingredients. Let’s say you’ve got a company that’s a finished product like a company like Aveda Cosmetics. I happen to know for a fact that they have a huge assortment of ingredients in various products of theirs that come from remarkable sustainable projects, but they’re not Aveda projects. They buy from these suppliers because they really hit all of the good buttons. Good wages, good environmental practices, protecting soil, air, water, people, wildlife, the whole kit, all of that.

Since I work in the supply side and have pretty much my whole career at this point, I see these projects. It’s hard to say which finished product companies really deliver. I think that a lot of them get ingredients when they can, like Aveda, and when they can’t get whatever something that is functional for the particular purpose, then they use a typical cosmetic ingredient that may not come from a nice sustainable project where people and the planet are doing better.

When producers of agricultural products cannot get the right ingredients, they often resort to using cosmetic alternatives. This is not a sustainable project.

I think that’s true most of the time. There are a few companies that are uncompromising in their sourcing and that won’t do that but they’re the rarity.

Who do you like the best?

On the herbal side, I’m really enjoying Kokora Life. I think they’ve leaned really hard into this world where they’re focused on building systems where the farmers are getting a fair and living wage, where they have reasonable working conditions, where women are paid equally to men, where they’re even considering things like this back-breaking labor, the women are not necessarily as physically strong to carry something as heavy and so making accommodations for things like that as well. Rick Scalzo leads with those ethics. I respect that.

I know him from back when he first started selling his very first herbal products. In fact, I was a buyer for Bread & Circus, which eventually became Whole Foods. We were a first large account. He built into everything he did a whole set of ethics not only in a really honorable and wonderful way that are truly transformative, but also he and some others have proven that it isn’t actually any harder to do it all the right way. It’s just a different way of acting.

A lot of people don’t think, “If we had to be all sustainable or whatever, it’s not a hardship.” It is not a hardship at all. You can do business sustainably, you can do business honorably, and it’s not going to consume more of your time or energy if you’re smart and well-informed about it. I think Rick with Kokora has definitely proven that point also and I’m glad it’s succeeding. It’s just blowing into retail all across the country and getting the recognition it deserves.

I think that’s because people miss in a way that foundational ethic. So much of what we’re sold now is speaks a lot of lip service and there might be a bit of greenwashing, but the foundational ethics may not be there. He’ll simply say if I can’t do it right, I’m not doing it. It’s not fitting with my brand. That is a hard line. That’s essentially what I’m getting to with my academic research. There aren’t a ton of companies that will just draw that hard line and stick to it.

It’s a great line. It’s a wonderful line. It’s clear, it’s definitive it lets people know who you are and where you stand.

It helps you have a brand that is meaningful. I’m 100% bought into something along those lines. I think also of what Lotus Foods has done under Caryl Levine and Ken Lee. They’re over 30 years in now and they have a professional board now leading the company. They’re able to be more on the back end and perhaps in this thematic leadership rather than having to do the day-to-day operations so much anymore. Those ethics are still deeply rooted and they’re still trying to find a better way to support the smallholder farmers and to ensure that they can retain things like a regenerative certification even though they might not have large swaths of land to work with.

That’s one of the issues. Small farmers can’t necessarily afford the certifications that that result in a better experience at the cash register, if you will. They need advocates. They need because and all. If you look at the maca growers at high altitude in the Peruvian Andes, they’re not putting anything bad in the fields at all. It’s alpaca and the cunha coming in and defecating all over the place that are getting tilled into the soil and you’ve got rich Indian soil. That’s great for growing maca.

What I’m trying to say is, I think that in some instances where people can’t afford the certification process, then it’s up to communicators. I do this in some instances to let people know the standards by which they’re operating because they’re good as good as certified organic and regenerative practices, it’s just they can’t afford to say it.

You’ve often been following the trends where some things are simply wildcrafted before they reach scale. Right?

Sure. Almost everything. When there’s a market demand, that changes. I sponsored a two-year study of the vine used to make ayahuasca. A few years ago, my team and I went all over the two largest regions in Peru related to ayahuasca vine. We assessed wild harvesting and cultivation. What I saw was that many people were getting smart about hey this is popular, it looks like this is here to stay, people are taking ayahuasca for personal health and transformative experience and I should grow this.

At the same time that we saw some reduced coastal that is right along the river edges, ayahuasca, because it’s easy to take when it’s right by a river. In point of fact we saw a tremendous supply way deep in the actual ayahuasca breadbasket of Peru which is wicked hard to get to. We also saw a lot of people cultivating. What I imagine is that the cultivation will just continue because there’s a profit in it and there’s a demand for it. That will alleviate the concern about it being wiped out. We have seen that with a number of crops of all different kinds. You’re right about that.

I think early too about turmeric and curcumin just in general. Often, it was wildcrafted, it wasn’t necessarily farmed initially. The traditional ways of harvest were employed. We have a huge turmeric boom. There’s more research on curcuminoids and the things that they can do for your health and relieving inflammation, etc.

Suddenly, the boom means the wild ways are going the way of the dodo. They’re out and now you have another method coming in, more people regeneratively farming it, farming it in Costa Rica now instead of just in India, and moving around the world. I know you’ve been to many of these places. I agree with you, it’s like we need to figure out ways to ensure that stories get told and that they aren’t automatically hedged out of getting a fair price for their product when it when it absolutely comes with a lot of labor attached.

I knew an Italian guy in Vanuatu, he had a project called Venui Vanilla. He made amazing vanilla extract. He did it all like as pure as the driven snow, just perfect. He wasn’t certified organic, he wasn’t certified in anything, but you’d have his vanilla and you’d go, “This is astonishing.” I used to bring vanilla pods back to a friend of my mother and give them to her, she was a baker, and she said, “In all my life, I’ve never had vanilla like this.” He wasn’t certified for anything, but his story was excellent and everybody in Vanuatu knew it, yeah, that’s the stuff you want if you want vanilla, that’s the stuff.

Giving More Opportunities To Small Farmers

Now, if you could redesign one rule of the global botanical trade overnight, what might it be? If there was a rule you could change or some way that business was done you could change overnight.

I saw a project in Namibia for devil’s claw, which is an anti-arthritic herb. It’s always been a poverty wage for the people who harvest it. The guy who designed this project sells hundreds of tons of devil’s claw root dried. He realized that if he taught the people who were harvesting it, the harvesters in the village, if he taught them how to do all of the work that the middleperson would typically do, a separate entity because these things often go through chains of custodial, then he could pay them more than twice as much.

He developed a whole way to educate them to to track lots and all of that and weights and do what the middle people would do, eliminating that, giving the people who do the back-breaking labor more, that was a matter of caring enough at all to just make it happen. If I could change anything, it would be it’s very easy to turn the words living in poverty into an inner how unfortunate comment and then move on.

When you see it up close and personal all the time, then it becomes much more of an urgent issue. I would like to see a real conscience around at least tripling for a start what the people who are doing the back-breaking work out there are getting right now. If it means that my cup of coffee, whether it’s arabica or stenophylla, is going to cost me more, fine, great.

Yeah, but we’re also talking about tripling a cost that is the lowest cost center of these operations typically. It’s not like that would mean a tripling of your cup of coffee. I think part of the problem is that we see it that way when we hear that, so many people hear it as well, “I’m going to pay three times as much for my cup of coffee.”

Probably not because people are paid so little for the back-breaking labor that they’re putting in. I completely agree with you and I think we need to have more real conversations about this and listen less to what the politicians are telling us about these sorts of things because they’re not giving us the granular detail. They’re not helping us understand the real issue. I think we really do need to turn it into a dollars and cents conversation.

Yeah, with emphasis with cents spelled s-e-n-s-e. I agree with you. As you know, it’s about a whole way of thinking about life. Do we want everybody to flourish, if that’s possible, where everybody in the chain of trade to flourish? Do we want the environment to be truly protected and nourished so that we will continue to engender life or do we just want it to go all completely to hell in a handbasket?

 All of these are moral ethical decisions, and they set the direction that you operate in. That’s what they do. All I needed to do was get one dose of poverty and environmental devastation like when I first went to India in ‘83. I was on board. Whatever has to be done to change this. Whatever has to be done to change this, I’m all for it. We have to be dedicated. It can’t be a part-time thing.

What It Is Like To Bridge Different Worlds

I think you talked about this the last time you were on the show as well, but you’ve said your role is to bridge worlds and I think that’s what you’re talking about here too, to help us understand what it’s like on all levels. When you focus on sourcing in particular as you’re out there as the Medicine Hunter and reviewing all of these different herbs and foods and the things that we rely on every day, be it coffee or tea or ashwagandha or some fruit that’s growing in the Amazon that we suddenly decide has benefits everybody, acai, absolutely. I just wonder what does it look like to really bridge worlds? Like what does that role look like to you?

I can tell you my experience has been very, very fortunate. I’m friendly and I’m respectful and that goes a long way in all of these situations. Also, I do not assume I’m the expert. I know some stuff and I can be dynamically helpful to initiating chains of trade. I go in with great respect for the people that I’m going to be among. I have found that if you tell people in environments where they have different botanicals and natural products, if you tell them that you’re interested in those, that goes really deeply to their core values.

They’re like, “Let me show you what my auntie’s got. It’s just a couple of miles away. Let’s walk there now, we can go right through the forest.” You’re like, “Great.” There are a lot of fortunate incidents that lead to various discoveries. Also, I’ve learned that people regard the United States as Valhalla, even despite Trump. Our smart allies don’t, but you talk with people living in poverty in Africa and it’s like, “America,” it’s unimaginable.

If a botanical could sell in America, what would that do? And if anything, I often have to tamp down expectations. You start something with people, like I got to Vanuatu to work on kava in 1995. If you just stay with things year after year and time after time and go fully in. If they’re barefoot I’m barefoot, if they’re playing with the dog I’m playing with the dog, if they’re swimming in the waterfall I’m swimming at the waterfall, and yes, if they’re firewalking I’m firewalking. We do all that stuff and then they go, “This guy’s okay.” You get further in.

The projects that are interesting but aren’t the most wonderful ones are the projects where I go someplace once. I’ve been to Ivory Coast once. I don’t know if I’ll be back there. I didn’t have the opportunity to dive very deeply into that or Cameroon or any number of other places, but then there are projects that I’m going back to all the time, people I’m working with all the time decade after decade. These become fruitful beneficial for communities. They help to give people many of the advantages that we totally take for granted, the comforts that we just assume are going to be there.

That part is extraordinarily rewarding. I can’t even begin to describe how rewarding it is. If you can help to set up a situation that results in people’s lives being somewhat or even radically improved, what a great thing. For seven years, my friends came up with this crazy crackpot idea. Let’s build and operate a dental boat on the Amazon. That’s a catastrophic idea. For seven years, after he had this humongous 27 meter boat built and fully equipped with dental equipment and dentists, we went around to riverside communities all up and down the Ucayali River providing dental services for free. What you can do out there is completely limited only to your imagination.

That sounds like one of those you can’t make this up stories that you’ve had the pleasure of sharing with me a time or two before. I wonder if there is one experience you’d like to highlight perhaps from the recent past since we last spoke about something hilarious that still captures the reality of the work you do.

I’ve got a good one. Things can and do often go terribly wrong and it is quite often with transportation. I have a lot of aphorisms and one is you will break down, you just don’t know when or what. It’s true. On a relatively recent time in Cameroon, which is a sketchy dangerous country in Africa, people like Boko Haram and some of the other terrorist groups are racing around in jeeps with guns. It’s not really very cool at all. My two traveling partners and I had been assured of our safety in our comfort by a man who proved to be actually far less reliable than his chummy nature would suggest.

We wound up at night having to go way back into the city where we were staying, about two hours out in the country in what turned out to be a broken Mercedes-Benz. The entire housing of the right rear light just kept coming off and hanging by a wire and banging against the car. We did all these things to try to fix that. Eventually, we wound up in the middle of nowhere on a two-lane road with gigantic tractor trailer trucks of goods roaring by us, like an inch away, furiously struggling with this housing in the dead of night to try to get it to fit.

These situations, you recognize the danger, you recognize it immediately, but also they’re just hilarious. You can’t make this stuff up, it just happens. My wife and I have broken down in in vehicles in mud a few times where they start, “Don’t worry, I do this all the time.” You say, “What do you figure? It’s going to be another minute?” “Yeah, sure.” You get stuck up to the hubs and then you can’t get it out and then you have to leave the vehicle. This all happens.

Green Flags To Look For When Buying Coffee And Botanicals

I know that our time is coming to a close, but I have a few rapid fire questions I’d like to ask you. For someone who wants to buy botanicals and coffee more responsibly, what are the top three green flags to look for?

I always support certified organic. While I don’t think that the 15% increase in wages is actually adequate, I think fair trade certification is a very good start in the right direction. If you have something like Demeter, which is a much higher level of organic than USDA certified organic I admire that greatly. I think those are three things to look for. Not everybody wants to make a career out of figuring ingredients and I don’t blame them.

I don’t know who makes the glass for the windshield in my car, I’m just glad that it works. I think that you can find out through well-informed people like you what are good brands to look for. I, in general, have had very good success with companies like Nature’s Way. I know a lot about their history and past and operations and overall, I think they do a good honorable job. You’ve got companies like Gaia and Kokora and Herb Farm and others who are operating at high standards and I admire them. It often is about asking well-informed people.

Conversely, are there 1 or 2 red flags that you’d like to point to?

Yeah, if 250 capsules of anything for $9.99 means you’re not getting whatever you thought that thing was in the capsule. That’s obvious. There is a lot of adulteration of ingredients overall in our industry and in other industries. That’s why the so-called reputable brands, again people turning to advice like yours and some of the other guests that you have on, that supports good efforts and it helps to at least mitigate the sales of lousy products. Bargains are not real. In the botanical scene, you can almost you can guarantee that. Bargains are not real. Whatever it is you think you’re getting, you’re not. It’s green, it smells like rosemary. You’re not. Stop it.

Bargains are not real. Whatever it is you think you are getting, you are not.

I want to just endorse that comment. I also would just add to it. Some unrecognized brand on Amazon isn’t where to start.

At the same time, what’s wonderful is that as new people do come into our industry, despite the fact that the nature of the industry has changed a whole lot, there are people who come in with sustainable projects, whether it’s with organic olive producers someplace or any other ingredients, like Yerba Mate, like Acai, like things that were very marginal when they started out and now are booming successful, thriving enterprises. You look at what Sambazon has done in the Amazon with their whole supply chain, it is one of the most remarkable things I’ve personally ever experienced and witnessed. Extraordinary.

The products are really good too.

Yeah, fantastic. They’re also supporting over 15,000 families in Amapa. That’s remarkable. It means they get to drive Porsches and surf in San Clemente, God bless them. That’s all I got to say.

What’s one small shift that helps people reconnect with nature, something that you would recommend?

Take a walk in the woods as much as you can. If you live in an urban environment, take a walk in the park or get into your car get out of the city and take a walk in the woods. You can’t just think about nature. You have to be surrounded by it. Getting out into it, however you do it. Doesn’t have to be an extreme sport. It doesn’t have to be mountain biking. Just get out into it. That way, you really do connect as a vital human being in that environment. It gives you things. Trees are constantly giving off invisible phytosones that we absorb as we breathe that enhance brain function. The miracles are all around us once we get into nature and that’s my biggest recommendation.

Diving Into A Big Product Project On Coca Leaf

Lastly, as we got started about this conversation on coffee, you’ve mentioned being called to study a specific herb. I understand you’re now going to be diving into a big product on project on coca leaf. Do you want to give us a highlight of what’s to come?

Sure. Quick background. A while ago, I went down to Peru. My primary working partner down there, Sergio, and I had been in communication with the Peruvian National Coca Company. They make coca leaf tea, whole coca leaf tea and they make some other coca leaf based products. They also make medical cocaine which they sell to the medical industry and they sell about 150 or 185 tons of coca leaf to a chemical company in New Jersey that takes the cocaine out of it and sends the extract to the Coca-Cola company because coca leaf extract is a primary flavor in that.

Turns out that now ENACO, which is the Peruvian National Coca Company, has available coca leaf extract, powdered and fluid, that are both FDA approved and GRAS. When you look at the nutritional profile of coca leaf extract, it is so much higher than so many of the superfoods, the so-called superfoods, it’s just crazy.

People eat ground pulverized coca leaf powder in baked goods and all kinds of things in Peru. In any case, I’m going to go back down. We were we were allowed to interview them about anything we wanted to know, to see their whole operations which they just didn’t let people do, and also to take photographs which according to them they’d never allowed anybody to do. That’s all part of a big article that’ll be coming out in herbalgram, the American Botanical Council’s journal. I’ll be back down. I booked air to be back down at the end of March, early April to go out into the coca fields there with Sergio and a guy named Gonzalo.

Anytime I need something in Peru, Sergio will say either, “I got a cousin,” or, “I know a guy.” Sometimes we’ll say, “Cousin or cousin?” He’ll say, “You know.” I don’t, actually. In any case, we’ll get into the coca fields there. It should be good weather, good timing and I’ll shoot some video and also a lot of photographs. That will add to the project that’s happening with American Botanical Council. That’s the next thing.

There’s no money, certainly no money in it for me. Some of these projects cost me quite a lot actually. I do them because I believe in the work and if I can do it, I may be able to make a contribution to the body of knowledge and people’s understanding. I would love for more people to be turned on to the extraordinary nutrient density of coca leaf powder. We’ll see what happens with all of it. That’s after Expo West in Anaheim, which will be 90,000-plus people in convention center. That’s where I’ll be headed to, up in Cusco area in in the Sacred Valley.

As we’re recording this at the end of February, Expo West is next week, so I imagine you’ll be there and busy as sin, I’m sure. Hopefully, find some new friends and connect with old ones. Sadly, I’ll miss this year, but I’m working on my PhD. I’m in the finishing stages, so I’ve had to hunker down.

Good for you to be finishing, though. It’s a wonderful thing you’re doing. I admire it greatly. I’ve always considered you to be really sharp and I think your aptitude for sustainability and the way you’re going about it, it’s really wonderful. You’ll make a great contribution to the field in addition to the ways that you have already.

When I think about what you just shared as we’re prepping to wrap, about not every project being something that necessarily profits, that you pay into, that’s how I’ve looked at my education journey too. This show, frankly, which has just started to be monetized through advertising so that it can hopefully cover its own costs so I’m not just continually paying to do it. Sometimes, the import of the body of your work exceeds the need to be compensated for it. I think that’s important.

Also, I hear a lot of people say, “When I retire, I’ll travel.” I think, “When you retire, you might not be able to travel. Why not just travel?”

A lot of people never do. I have a dream, and I’m going to put it out there. One day, and I’m not sure how soon this will happen, but one day I hope to join you on one of these journeys. Whether it be in Africa in South America or wherever, I think I can make that happen and I would love to make that happen with you.

Let’s figure that out a little bit further than just at the at the end of a show, but that sounds very cool.

I’ll manifest it. I’m putting it out there. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you.

Thank you, Corinna. You take really good care.

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Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

I so appreciate Chris for helping to bring the real story of what it’s like to be out there on a global scale talking to these producers around the globe to life for all of us. The insights he offers helps us see the world beyond the cup of coffee you might be drinking to the people behind that story. To the place it takes in our hearts and our minds and our history and our culture. This is the world we live in. We should see it for all that it is.

If this episode resonated with you at all, I want to direct you to Chris’s work. You’ll find links to The Way of Coffee, to Herb TV, and to MedicineHunter.com, as well as to my past interview with Chris as well. Please feel free to check those links. This show is proud to support my cause partner for 2026, Prescott College, where I’m earning my PhD.

In 2026, they are celebrating 60 years of advancing regenerative education and experiential learning. I encourage you to support their work and visit their website to learn more about them. Thank you, readers, now and always, for being a part of this pod and this community because together we really can do so much more. We can even slow down long enough to savor what’s in our cups and honor the hands and the ecosystems that made it all possible. Here’s to your health. Thank you.

Important Links

• Chris Kilham on Instagram
• The Way of Coffee
• Eat To Beat Disease: Reimagining Our Healthcare Systems With William W. Li, MD
• Indulge In A More Responsible Coffee with Mokhtar Alkhanshali, CEO of Port of Mokha, Producers of World-Renowned Coffee from Yemen
• Tastes of Paradise
• From Flood To Feast: How Regenerative Organic Farming Yields More Crop Per Drop with Caryl Levine & Ken Lee, founders of Lotus Foods
• Healing The Soil Through Regenerative Farming With Ric Scalzo, CEO of Kokora Life
• Chris Kilham On Building Sustainable Communities By Learning From Indigenous People
• Chris Kilham on Facebook
• Chris Kilham on YouTube