Unquestionably, coffee has a checkered history, replete with graft, corruption, and outrageous marketing claims. Even today, Fair Trade coffee has often been employed as a social-conscious marketing tool, rather than as an honest description of a just wage paid to coffee producers. Some have cut their coffee with chicory, others with an inferior grade of Robusta. Some have shaved costs by selling a 12 oz bag instead of the full pound.
At our farm in the mountains of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, we are sticking to the basics. We produce a quality bean and sell only the beans we produce (we don’t buy from neighboring farms and sell them as our own). We send you a full 16 oz bag in a foil-lined bag to maintain its quality. We seek to pay our coffee workers better than a market wage, and in addition, we provide them a house (that they own), access to education, and a medical clinic nearby. We have provided scholarships to the children of our workers to send them to the university. In fact one of our lead coffee technicians went to the university in just this way.
We keep our product simple because we have a clear vision. We want to help our ministry to at-risk Nicaraguan youth become as self-sufficient as possible, not always dependent on the largess of North American donors. And so we grow a great bean, toast it to perfection, and deliver it fresh to our customers knowing that when they drink our coffee, they are directly supporting the ministry of Young Life Nicaragua.
We seek to be transparent in all we do; if you are interested, take a look at our page The Numbers and see for yourself the cost breakdown of a pound of coffee.
