To farmers we provide:
20% premiums above market purchase price
5% of every coffee purchase
10% of company profits
International recognition for their communities’ artists, support for community projects, and training in technology |
To coffee-lovers we offer:
A delicious pick-me-up with a stimulating story
The chance to see for yourself the economic, social and environmental impacts of your purchase
The ability to keep track of your impact in coffee farming communities |
To retailers, restaurants and offices we deliver:
Consistently exceptional coffee & service to your doorstep
Customized educational events and marketing materials to help you demonstrate your leadership as a vendor of conscientious coffee |
To roasters we supply:
Unique and quality coffees
Product and marketing support that comes straight from the source
Farmer events, marketing services, and individual consultation to help you optimize your investment in relationship coffee |
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To volunteers we present:
An opportunity to put your skills as a coffee lover to good use. Gain experience in a variety in fields such as research, marketing and event planning, farmer advocacy, and origin outreach.
The more adventurous can even explore exotic origins as a Crop to Cup fact checker |
THE WORK WE DO…
We travel off the beaten path to bring exotic origins online and to your door.
After building relationships with farmer groups and export partners, we install processes at the farm-level to leverage email, GPS, video cameras, digital cameras, cell phone and video conference technologies to bridge the gap between farmers and their customers.
These simple technologies connect dedicated coffee farmers to interested coffee lovers, engaging them in a dialogue to determine what’s important to them both.
This relationship between farmers and consumers is important. It is the only way that we can make sure we are truly serving our clients and their customers. This is why Crop to Cup allows Q&A through message boards and forums, product feedback, and the ability to reach out and converse with others through interactive media and through collaboration on community projects. We try to make it easy to develop a relationship with your coffee’s farmers, and hope that you will see all the difference that your daily coffee decision can make.
We admit - we’ve got a long way to go to reach the full potential of these technologies and our relationships. With time, our dedicated team of coffee farmers and coffee lovers will bring us there the rest of the way, but for now we what we are aiming for is a simple and effective dialogue. |
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| One pound of Crop to Cup coffee provides a 20% increase in farmer wages and a 55% increase in overall community benefit |
Q. How much do farmers receive for their coffee?
A. On average, our farmers receive a premium of $.14 cents over market price per pound of parchment. In Uganda, 2007/2008, the farm-level price was about $.73 per pound of coffee in "parchment" form (see chart). This means that our farmers received just over $.88 per pound of parchment, $1.11 per pound of green coffee, or $1.31 per pound of roasted coffee. That is pure income for individual farmers, 20% over standard market prices.
On top of this we reinvest in farmer communities 5% of what we receive for selling their coffee. On average, this results in an average increase of $.37 per pound of roasted coffee that is reinvested in development projects benefiting entire coffee growing communities. Thus, the benefit to coffee farming communities (via individual incomes and investment in community-wide projects) totals $1.68 per pound of roasted coffee (or $1.13/lb parchment or $1.43/lb green coffee). That's a 55% increase in benefit to farming communities.
We call this our “20, 5, 10” program. Farmers receive 20% over market price for their coffee, plus 5% of their coffee’s selling price in coffee consuming communities, plus 10% of company profits.
Q. How does Crop to Cup compare with "Fairtrade"?
A. While we support the Fairtrade movement, and seek to source certified beans when we must go outside of our relationships, we require neither Fairtrade nor organic certifications. Rather, we believe that respectful and credible relationships with the farmers are the best way to make an enduring difference through coffee. Our goal is not to compare ourselves with FT, but if you are looking for a point of reference, it would look like this:
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Fair Trade
- FT set minimum payment to farmers: ?
- There is no published data on this
- FT set minimum payment to cooperatives:
- $1.25 / lb of green coffee*
- This is a flat-rate applied across regions; this is paid to a farmer's cooperative.
- Includes farmer pay and other costs such as those for marketing, transport, processing, etc.
- FT support for community projects: $.10 / lb of green coffee*
- Ten cents per pound is set aside to support community project
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Crop To Cup
- C2C market-driven minimum payment to farmers: $1.11/ lb of green coffee
- We ensure that farmers receive 20% above market-rates; this allows farmers to experience the upsides of selling specialty coffee.
- C2C payment to cooperatives/export partners: $1.48 / lb of green coffee
- Includes farmer pay of $1.11 and cost of purchasing, transport, processing, administration and export (i.e. costs separate from farmer pay).
- C2C support for community projects: avg. of $.37/lb of green coffee (5% of C2C’s coffee sales) + 10% of profits.
- Support for community projects is connected to selling price of farmers’ roasted coffee in specialty coffee consuming markets.
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The chief difference between FT and C2C is that FT works at the cooperative level, meaning that the costs of purchasing, transport, processing, administration, certification and export are taken out of the $1.25 paid to the cooperative before this amount reaches the farmer.
C2C’s payment practices, on the other hand, are based on market prices and actual payment to individual farmers. We ensure that individual farmers receive a 20% premium over market prices. For the most recent crop, this equates to $.88 / lb of parchment or $1.11 / lb of green coffee.
We outsource the other in-country services (processing, transport, export, etc) on behalf of the farmer, then reinvest 5% of our roasted coffee sales and 10% of overall profits to give them a stake in the business.
While we do have a nonprofit organization associated with us (www.dnetiganga.org), this is no charity. Our coffee is specialty washed Arabica, and our relationships are packaged into value-adding marketing materials and customer loyalty functionalities so that you can get much more out of your coffee.
*According to Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International “Pricing and Premium: VALID FROM 1 JUNE 2008”
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THE WAY WE SEE IT…
Quality Coffee is both a pleasure and a livelihood.
Coffee farmers sell into an open market. They sell to us because we pay higher prices for quality coffee. Higher prices encourage farmers to look at their coffee gardens as serious businesses.
Our purchasing partners pay a 20% premium above market prices to reward farmers for putting in that extra effort to produce high quality coffee. It’s no easy task to make the coffee taste so good, and this reward is necessary.
Find out all that goes into your cup
Everyone deserves a stake in their own success.
As farmer representatives it only makes sense that the more we get for our clients’ coffee, the more they should get. As such, we put 5% of every coffee purchase to good use in the coffee’s origin community. Additionally, we reinvest back into farming communities one dollar out of every ten in profit through our 10% profit sharing plan.
Track your impact in your farmers’ community.
Good People + Good Coffee = Something good.
So there’s good coffee, then there’s good coffee that does good too. While we do not know why homemade pie tastes better, we do know that the same holds true for coffee; knowing the person who cared for your coffee, and the story that goes into your cup, can enhance even the casual coffee experience. At Crop to Cup we believe that the quality of life for participating farmers is a large factor in the quality of coffee they produce. |
In one year your average coffee tree produces about one pound of roasted coffee…
Because we work directly with individual family farmers, we know how much they receive for their coffee – you should too. Whereas most companies and certifications publish amounts paid (for example the “fair-trade minimum” to farmer co-operatives or exporters for “green” coffee), these already include in-country costs such as those for processing, management, transport and marketing, and don’t detail how much the farmers actually receive when they sell their “red cherries” or “parchment.”
Part of the reason why others don’t show how much the farmer gets is that tracing coffee through all of its production stages back to the farmer can be complicated; but we are sure you can get the hang of it. The following table converts roasted coffee (what you drink) to red coffee cherry and coffee parchment (what the farmers sell to us).
| Coffee Stage |
Looks like... |
% weight loss from last stage |
Avg. lbs needed to make 1 lb of next stage |
Avg. pounds required to make 1lb roasted coffee |
Cherry |
Red, fresh off the tree |
- |
5 |
7.44 |
| Parchment |
Red skin removed, beans dried, white "parchment" encasing remains |
80% +/- |
1.27 |
1.49 |
| Green |
Parchment removed through “hulling”, ready for roasting |
21% +/- |
1.18 |
1.17 |
| Roasted |
Brown, ready to grind and brew! |
15% +/- |
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It takes 7.44 pounds of red coffee cherry, or 1.49 pounds of “parchment” to make 1 pound of roasted coffee. |
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