What Wendell Berry Can Teach Us About Coffee’s Future

“The preserver of abundance is excellence.”

—Wendell Berry

There is a clarity in Wendell Berry’s voice that cuts through the noise of modern life. In his essays and poems, he speaks of stewardship, rootedness, and the moral dimensions of craft and care. And though he writes from a small farm in Kentucky, the ripples of his thought stretch far beyond American soil.

I return to Berry often because he always asks the right questions: What does it mean to live well? To live in place? Isn’t it fundamental to our existence that our work should give us dignity?

These questions matter deeply to us because coffee, like agriculture itself, has long been entangled with the unsettling of the world.

From Colombia to Java, Haiti to Honduras, Ethiopia to El Salvador, coffee’s spread was never neutral. It was often a colonial project—planted by force, extracted for profit, designed to serve tastes far from where it grew. Coffee fueled empires and emptied homes. It demanded labor but withheld power.

It is, in many ways, a bitter inheritance.

“The world is not given by our fathers, but borrowed from our children.”

— The Unforeseen Wilderness

Wendell Berry has long called us back to the land—not with nostalgia, but with reverence. He reminds us that the way we treat the earth is inseparable from the way we treat each other, and that the quality of our work reveals the quality of our care.

In The Gift of Good Land, Berry writes:

“A good farmer is one who, after farming a given piece of land for a lifetime, leaves it in better condition than when he started.”

What would it mean to apply this same ethic to coffee?

Because let’s be honest: coffee didn’t arrive in the world gently. It was carried by ships, planted in violence, harvested under coercion. From the plantations of the Caribbean to the highlands of East Africa, it became one of the great colonial crops—generating wealth for metropoles and poverty for the people whose soil bore its fruit.

Berry never shies away from this kind of reckoning. In fact, he insists on it:

“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.”

—The Art of the Commonplace

This company, Seekers, was started from the fundamental question of what does it mean to be human, and what does it mean to live well. And the reason I honed in on coffee were these glimmers of hope I came across in these formerly colonized lands.

Across Colombia, Ethiopia, Honduras, and beyond, a generation of young producers is reclaiming coffee—not just as livelihood, but as calling. They are refining fermentation techniques, rediscovering native varietals, experimenting with natural processes—all in pursuit of flavor, yes, but also identity, dignity, and voice.

In doing so, they are turning a bitter inheritance into something bright and deeply personal.

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all.”

—The Unsettling of America

These young stewards are not just growing coffee. They’re preserving abundance through excellence—Berry’s very definition of sustainability. And in their hands, coffee becomes something sacred again.

At Seekers, we see our role not just as roasters, but as co-stewards of that care. We roast gently to preserve what they’ve created. We tell the stories behind the bean. We move slowly, because to rush would be to forget.

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”

—Given: Poems

To love coffee deeply is to reckon with its history and imagine a new one. A future where origin is not a footnote but a voice. Where excellence is not elitism, but devotion. Where beauty is not branding, but the visible trace of respect.

Wendell Berry gives us the language for this work. And more than that, he gives us the courage to believe that the future can be different—if we slow down, pay attention, and learn how to serve what we love.

Berry reminds us that quality is not a luxury. It’s how we honor life. And in the hands of this generation, quality becomes a kind of protest. A quiet act of defiance against extractive logic. A way of saying: we’re still here.

At Seekers, we believe in this shift. We source from these stewards. We listen closely. We roast with restraint to preserve the voice of origin. Because we see the spiritual dignity in their work—and in our own.

We’re not interested in nostalgic fantasies of the past. But we are committed to building a future where the story of coffee is no longer written by those who own the boats, but by those who know the soil.

Wendell Berry wrote from the American countryside, but his message echoes across oceans: to preserve abundance, commit to excellence. In coffee. In conversation. In community.

That’s what we’re seeking.