750 Dead in Sumatra
What Coffee Governance Has to Do With Surviving a Typhoon
Part 3 of our Heirloom Coffee analysis: Part 1: Initial Canvas mapping | Part 2: Expansion & pathways | Context: From circular to regenerative
Last week, worlds apart, two things happened simultaneously.
Heirloom Coffee Roasters announced their transition to employee ownership. And on the other side of the planet? Devastating floods killed more than 750 people across Sumatra - 173 in Aceh province alone, where Heirloom sources from the KSU Arinagata cooperative.
The floods carried water, mud, and massive logs. Evidence of the clearcutting that had stripped forests which once absorbed rainfall and stabilized slopes. Indonesia lost over 260,000 hectares of forest in 2024 - roughly the size of Yosemite National Park, or 487,000 football fields. More than 90,000 hectares disappeared on Sumatra itself, nearly the size of New York City.
When Tropical Cyclone Senyar hit, that deforested landscape had no defense. Environmental groups, scientists, and Indonesia’s Forestry Minister all pointed to decades of extraction - palm oil monoculture, mining operations, timber harvesting - that removed natural protections.
This is what extraction costs: 750 lives in a single week.
I’m not sharing this to exploit tragedy. I’m sharing it because the business models we choose have consequences that show up in places like Aceh. And because some companies are building alternatives that address what extraction creates.
On the same island where 173 people died, the Aceh cooperative’s 1,677 farmers practice something fundamentally different. Traditional Gayonese farming with coffee intercropped alongside fruit trees, vegetables, and spices. 100% organic practices that maintain soil health and ecosystem integrity.
We don’t yet know how these farms fared in the flooding. What we do know is that intercropped trees help absorb rainfall, that root systems hold soil in place, and that healthy soil acts like a sponge rather than concrete. These are the same principles researchers identify as critical for climate resilience.
And we know what happened in neighboring regions where extraction dominated: palm oil monoculture and mining operations had stripped away natural protections. When the cyclone hit, the land couldn’t defend itself.
The contrast isn’t hypothetical. It’s two different approaches to land on the same island during the same storm - and extraction’s consequences are measured in 750 lives lost.
Indonesia’s Forestry Minister admitted: “The pendulum between the economy and ecology has swung too far towards the economy.”
Some companies never swung toward extraction at all. And tracking their evolution reveals patterns most strategic plans miss entirely.
What Tracking Metabolism Reveals
When we first mapped Heirloom onto the Regenerative Innovation Canvas, they were already operating differently: ROC-certified sourcing, electric roasters, direct farmer relationships. As we continued tracking their evolution across Latin America and beyond, we identified where they still needed to go - particularly around governance and power dynamics.
The Canvas predicted this would need to evolve. What it couldn’t predict was how - or which pathways would converge to make employee ownership feel inevitable.
Here’s what unfolded over recent months:
Deeper Sensing
In November, Heirloom told customers something uncomfortable: “We used to think ‘organic’ meant clean coffee. But once we started digging, we realized that the label doesn’t always tell the whole story.”
Behind organic certification, they found tired soil, “natural” pesticides, processing chemicals that never make labels. Sometimes glyphosate - the same herbicide used on industrial cornfields.
This wasn’t criticism of organic. This was recognizing extraction disguised as sustainability. Even “organic” can follow extractive logic if it depletes soil or prioritizes yield over ecosystem health.
Embodied Sourcing
In October, the team traveled 4,600 miles to Finca Palmapampa in Peru. 48 hours of transit. Treacherous mountain roads. At 7,200 feet elevation, they found living soil so dense it came up to their ankles. Coffee cherries that tasted like candy. Foraging chickens naturally tilling. Native vegetation providing shade. Everything hand-picked, mule-transported, sun-dried, hand-turned.
Not a machine or chemical in sight. No tillers, tractors, pesticides. Just relationships with farmers like Don Miguel and the Churupampa collective - relationships that transcend commodity markets entirely.
These aren’t isolated examples. Across Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Indonesia’s Aceh province, Heirloom works with farmers who understand that healthy soil, biodiversity, and intercropping aren’t obstacles to productivity - they’re foundations of resilience that researchers identify as critical for surviving climate shocks.
Guardian Practices
They test every single lot. Third-party lab analysis for pesticides, heavy metals, mold, mycotoxins, purity. For glyphosate specifically. This isn’t marketing - it’s verification that their sensing and sourcing deliver what they claim, making invisible extraction visible.
Then Governance Evolved
Here’s what these pathways created: a culture where people travel 4,600 miles to stand in ankle-deep living soil with farmers they know personally, lab technicians verify purity on every lot, and relationships with communities matter more than commodity margins.
In that culture, employee ownership didn’t feel like governance innovation. It felt obvious.
The people who travel to Aceh, who know those farmers personally, who source coffee supporting farming practices built on principles that protect communities - those people now own the company. They’re not employees executing a business model. They’re stakeholders in relationships with communities facing the same climate crisis that just killed 750 people in their region.
When your supply chain includes people whose farming practices follow regenerative principles while neighboring extraction creates mass casualties, your internal structure should reflect that commitment.
Why This Pattern Matters
Most frameworks would analyze Heirloom’s employee ownership as: HR innovation, values alignment, stakeholder capitalism, progressive governance.
But tracking their metabolism over time reveals something else entirely: governance didn’t drive the change. Culture did.
The “organic isn’t enough” sensing informed Peru and Aceh sourcing. Those relationships validated testing protocols. That culture made employee ownership inevitable. These pathways weren’t sequential - they unfolded simultaneously, each strengthening the others.
This is what regenerative organizational metabolism actually looks like. Not linear problem-solving. Not strategic plans with implementation phases. Multiple pathways creating conditions for evolution you can’t predict from a business plan.
And this is exactly what becomes visible when you track evolution through the Canvas over time.
Most companies treat governance as structure and regeneration as operations. Heirloom shows they’re the same thing. Your governance is your metabolism.
What’s At Stake
Heirloom’s transition happened the same week 750 people died from extraction’s consequences. That timing isn’t ironic - it’s instructive.
We’re living through the climate crisis now. Extreme weather isn’t future speculation; it’s last week’s news from Sumatra. The question isn’t whether businesses will face these conditions, but whether they’ve built models that recognize what’s happening and respond accordingly - or whether they continue operating on extraction’s logic.
Extraction stripped Sumatra’s forests. When the cyclone hit, hundreds died because the land couldn’t protect them. The connection between deforestation and disaster is no longer theoretical - it’s documented by scientists, environmental groups, and government officials in the aftermath.
Regeneration builds soil, maintains forest cover, preserves intercropping, supports small farmers. These are the practices researchers identify as building climate resilience - the capacity to absorb shocks rather than amplify them.
Most companies still optimize for efficiency, scale, and margin - even when they call it “sustainable.” They treat regeneration as nice-to-have operations improvement.
The Aceh floods aren’t anomaly. They’re a pattern that will repeat wherever extraction dominates.
And companies have a choice: participate in the model creating these conditions, or build alternatives rooted in regenerative principles.
An Invitation to Partners
This is the third time we’ve tracked Heirloom’s evolution. Each time, the Canvas reveals patterns strategic planning can’t see - because it tracks metabolism, not just metrics.
This methodology isn’t just for analyzing other companies. It’s for revealing what’s possible in yours.
If you’re sensing similar tensions in your organization - recognizing that “sustainable” still follows extractive logic, that circular practices don’t go far enough, that governance needs to evolve but you can’t see the path forward - that’s exactly what this work illuminates.
The Canvas doesn’t give you answers. It reveals the patterns already emerging in your system that strategic plans miss.
I’m not here to analyze your business from outside. I’m here to work alongside you - to help you see what’s already unfolding, to track the metabolism that wants to emerge, to create conditions for evolution you can’t predict but can sense.
This happens through:
Direct partnership: Deep Canvas work mapping your organization’s regenerative metabolism and evolution pathways
The Regenerative Cycle: Full workshops guiding your team from sensing to seeding to evolution
Mini-workshops & strategy calls: Shorter engagements to illuminate specific tensions and opportunities
And if you’re early in this journey, join the Regenerative Innovation Community as a paid member. You’ll get:
Deep-dive analyses like this one, with full Canvas scoring
Practical tools for immediate application
Peer learning and collaboration with others navigating the same tensions
Methodology training on the expanded Canvas framework
$12/month or $120/year - founding member rate for the first 50 members
Or simply follow the work as we continue revealing what becomes visible when we track regenerative metabolism across sectors and over time.
Next: We’re continuing to build both methodology and application - from a deep dive SSA Group analysis we’ve been developing to new sectors entirely. The goal isn’t to analyze more companies. It’s to refine the methodology that helps any organization evolve from extractive models to regenerative metabolism.
Because when the next cyclone hits - and it will - we need organizations operating on regenerative principles that build resilience rather than strip it. Creating conditions for survival rather than catastrophe.
The question isn’t whether others will follow Heirloom. It’s whether you’ll be among them.
Book a conversation | Join the community | Download the Canvas