Is there such a thing as poverty-free coffee?

The majority of millions of small-scale coffee farmers are living in severe poverty, below the threshold of €1.60 per day. The small-scale coffee farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Peru experience the most severe financial strains. A common difficulty that these small-scale farmers face is being forced to borrow money under unfavorable conditions. This prevents farmers from having any type of savings. With the lack of savings, this causes a detrimental result of lack of access to medical care. These farmers have the inability to pay their medical bills or afford transportation to visit doctors and medical clinics outside of their villages. This pressing economic situation also results in child labor and the excessive use of pesticides. So far, no poverty-free coffee.

Did you know?

0

% of your coffee is produced in Ethiopia, Uganda and Indonesia

0

% of the Ethiopian population depend on coffee for their livelihood

0

% of your coffee cup money goes back to coffee bean farmers

0

million smallholder farmers depend on coffee for their livelihoods

What we did so far

Trabocca

In 2020 we kicked off a partnership with Trabocca. As a specialty-coffee brand, the Dutch coffee importer pays a premium price for higher-quality organic coffee; the farmer earns more. Regardless, the company wanted to learn whether their farmers earned enough to make a living income. To find out, Trabocca used our new traceability platform Trace.

Find the answer here

This video cannot be shown because you didn't accept the cookies.
Change choice

Pure Africa

Alongside Pure Africa Coffee, we are making 100% traceable coffee a reality. Using Fairfood’s blockchain tool; Trace, we have supported Pure Africa in tracing their coffee beans – from farm to cup. The brand focuses on farmers as entrepreneurs, and is eager to uncover whether the higher-than-market price they are already paying, is enough for farmers to invest in their future.

More on Pure Africa

#WAKEcUPCALL

In 2018, we held a campaign for honest coffee. Together with Dutch coffee drinkers, this initiative was meant to shake up the coffee industry. We wanted to show coffee brands that there is a better and fairer way to do business. So, we lead by example: together with our partners ID Coffees and Bext 360, we put 100 kilos of Colombian coffee on the blockchain. Customers could see exactly where their coffee came from and who earned money from their purchase.

See what we did

Sander reuderink
Sander Reuderink Commercial director at Trabocca

In the specialty coffee sector, we tend to believe that because we pay a premium for higher-quality coffee on our end, the farmer earns more. But how sure are we that that is actually true? And how much more is enough? To answer these questions, we decided to start tracking our farmers’ ability to earn a living income using Fairfood platform Trace.

Discover Trace

Read more on coffee

Do you have a question? Maybe we answered it already!

View all our FAQ’s

It seems you also care about the people behind our food.

Stay up-to-date on socio-economic progress in our food system with Fairfood's bi-monthly newsletter!

Stay up-to-date on socio-economic progress in the global food system through our bi-monthly newsletter.