Just got off the phone with my fav coffee importer and yikes! the prices are so high! Apparently, the market swings wildly depending on the word coming out of Brazil, easily the largest coffee producing country. Looks like the crop will be smaller than normal. Any novice economist can tell you low supply, high demand, means prices will go up. Sucks dealing with such a volatile commodity. Luckily, specialty-grade coffees reward quality more than some weird market manipulations and so the swing is less wild but it still is a factor. Guess Ill have to hold off on my second home in Costa Rica for another year...or ten. But Ill feel better knowing that every sip of our new crop coffee from Costa Ricas Community Coffees - La Trinidad makes their home better. The Community Coffee program with Coopetarrazu has made a real impact on the communities that deliver cherry to this mill. This program has allowed us to separate out lots from specific communities that score over 86 points and pay a quality premium that the individual communities get to receive and decide as a group how the money will be used to improve their coffee production and their livelihood. We have seen the premiums used to build roads, build large water tanks to store fresh water for the community, building roofs for the children’s schools, and many other projects that have had a direct impact on these communities. This program has motivated these producers to keep upping their quality, and we are very excited to see that this year’s harvest has been very impressive.. We really can change the world by voting with our dollar. Weve moved beyond Fair Trade certification which is no guarantee of quality and adds additional costs that Im not sure are justified. I trust the people that work on the ground with the farmers, helping them to improve their coffee to get the best price for it. I sleep like a baby knowing my farmers are benefiting from the premiums we pay for their coffee. Cheers! patricia
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 18:37:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015