Looking for fresh-roasted, organic, fair trade coffee that you can truly trace back to the farmer? Through a new coffee CSA – aptly named CoffeeCSA – you can support small-scale farmers in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Peru and Mexico and get your share of the harvest every month of the year.
CoffeeCSA is a project of Pachamama, an international collective of 100% farmer-owned and controlled cooperatives. Its 140,000 small-scale farmers produce coffee that's shade grown, certified organic, fair trade and traceable.
Farmers deliver the coffee to their local cooperatives, which then ship to CoffeeCSA's roaster in California. From there, the beans are mailed directly to CSA subscribers, who can choose to support a specific grower or a CSA-selected farmer-of-the-month. (Subscribers who live in Davis, Calif., can pick up their share at the farmers' market; CoffeeCSA plans to establish other pick-up sites in the future.)
A global coffee CSA certainly expands our notion of community-supported agriculture, which we generally think of as a link between consumers and local farmers or or other food producers. However, since most of us don't live in places where coffee is grown, this seems like a great way to recognize and bolster the global relationships formed by our food and drink choices.
Have you tried this or another coffee CSA?
• Check it out: CoffeeCSA.org
Related: Meet Your Coffee Farmer At Traceablecoffee.org
(Image: Olaf Hammelburg/CoffeeCSA.org)
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Comments (3)
Wow - I'm so in! Especially because I always forget to buy coffee - so delivery to my house is fantastic :) How do I pick a farmer?
YES! Shade-grown, thank you! This is great, and I want to support farmers who make sure the habitat around them remains liveable.
?? I went to read about Yac's coffee farm, and nowhere does it say it's shade-grown, nor does it reassure me anywhere on the sites you guys pointed to. I would love to participate in this, but not if they're just more deforesting companies. I know that most Mexican coffee is shade-grown, but where's the certification, or even the claim?