Reporting social benefits is not easy

A story I wrote earlier this week on an partnership between Peet's Coffe & Tea and Technoserve that the two organizations say is helping African farmers build sustainable businesses turned out to be one of the most interesting stories I've covered in a long time. Companies that consider the social impact of their business generally fascinate me because that piece of the triple bottom line seems to me to be the one that receives the least attention and I wonder why that is the case. My interview with Shirin Moayyad, director of coffee purchasing at Peet’s ended with a discussion about how or if the company would or even could report the benefits to its farmer partners. That's a difficult prospect for Moayyad though, because the coffee itself is not certified by any organization, but she insisted that the benefits are real. Her response yielded a nugget that I think shines an interesting light on the problem of reporting to a supposedly wary public.

“Right now, with TechnoServe, the proof in the pudding is what the farmers say and what benefit is going back to the farmers, and that is traceable,” she says. “Now how we communicate that ultimately, I am not certain yet. This is all just a work in progress. I don’t think I can put the cooperative P&L statement on the Internet. Honestly, I don’t think the American consumer wants to know to that level of detail. I think they’re dependence on branding is because they don’t really want to have to look at those things themselves. Ultimately I think they’re going to have to depend on the fact that the farmers are saying this is benefitting their livelihood. It’s a valid question and it’s very much a work in progress for us.

So some consumers question company claims about social and environmental benefits, but do they really want to do the digging to find the truth? Or do they just want the label that they believe tells them all the answers? If it's the latter, then who is watching the watchers? What makes any eco-label--no matter how well regarded--trustworthy if no one wants to look into the details?