You may have noticed when you check out your coffee we don't charge shipping fees. Instead, we ask you to consider leaving a tip for our farmers. This money is saved up and used to supply equipment to one of the farms that provides us with our exemplary coffee. Being an independent business means that ALL of the money raised actually goes to buy equipment, no overheads, no admin and no wages.
We are very happy to report that this most recent campaign has raised enough to buy equipment for Anastacio Benitez, the farmer of our single estate specialty coffee Lempira.
We had planned to reach our total last year but when Honduras was hit by two hurricanes within the space of one month we decided to use the funds to send aid to some of the communities directly affected. You can see below some of the neighbouring communities putting together food packs and face masks funded by your tips to take to people who had lost their homes through the extreme flooding brought by Hurricanes Eta and Iota. We provided packs to 250 families and water to 500 families. (We didn't think it was appropriate to take photos of those directly affected.)
So, a little later than planned! we are happy to say our customer's tips have funded an industrial grass cutter for Anastacio.
Thank you to all who tipped it really means so much!
Due to the mountain terrain and economical status of most equatorial countries, farming coffee beans is still very much manual work. Specialty coffee specifically avoids use of agro chemicals and thus practices such as weeding or removing seeds to control insect growth are done manually.
It is important that we continue to pay better prices for coffee commodity so that these farms and their workers thrive and enjoy good living standards but alongside that, providing technology and machinery that can help equip workers will mean farmers can improve time and financial efficiencies and that means Anastacio can dedicate more time to his family.
You can watch our video HERE and read a bit more about his own story HERE.