Beantrends: Helping Coffee Become Sustainable

When Beantrends approached SustainableBusiness.com as a sponsor we learned about this young, sustainable business and thought you might like to know more too.

Beantrends is dedicated to fostering sustainability in the coffee industry by educating people about the crises in the industry and by selling a variety of sustainable, gourmet coffees to the growing number of people interested in supporting organic and fair trade coffee. The web site, Beantrends.com, carries industry related news, a great selection of coffee, and a program that donates a percentage of coffee sales to Coffee Kids.

Before starting Beantrends, founder and president Catherine Benevides owned two specialty coffee stores for many years. During that time she learned of a nonprofit called Coffee Kids that donates money to families who grow coffee. She learned about “the kids out in the fields picking beans” and that small coffee farmers only receive 12 -25 for every pound of gourmet coffee sold. She put a coin box on the counter to encourage her customers to donate to them. Then she learned about Fair Trade issues, organic issues, and shade grown issues.

She recently moved to Canada and decided it was time for a change. “Once I saw all the crises facing the industry I couldn’t justify profiting from another little coffee store unless I could make a difference. I decided to go into the sustainable coffee business. People drink and buy coffee and never really think about where it comes from. We too rarely think about the repercussions of what we do on a daily basis.”

The massive overproduction of coffee glutting world markets has pushed prices to 30-year lows, making it difficult for small farmers to even cover their cost of production. Thousands of farmers are selling their land, leaving sustainably grown coffee grown under the rainforest canopy to be cleared by their successors for other purposes. The glut is caused by overproduction in areas such as Vietnam and the Ivory Coast where they use “full sun” cultivation techniques. Coffee is traditionally grown in shaded forest areas, but recently growers have been planting monocultures in cleared land to increase short-term yields. The full sun farms produce lower quality beans and require large amounts of chemicals to control pests that were managed naturally under forest conditions.

Fair Trade and Certified Organic are the two main certifications for specialty coffees that have emerged to reverse this trend. “Fair Trade Certified” coffee means that coffee farmers receive fair payments – a living wage – for their beans. “Certified Organic” means that farmers earn a premium for growing coffee without chemicals.
Benevides is particularly interested in the work of the Rainforest Alliance and their certified ECO-O.K. coffee. They cover all the bases on both the environmental and social side. The Rainforest Alliance works with farmers to make changes that reduce environmental impacts, improve working conditions, conserve natural resources and protect biodiversity. The social and ecological benefits extend far beyond the farms in newly solidified communities, cleaner rivers and water supplies, increased wildlife populations, sanitary systems, and worker’s paychecks that are on average twice the minimum wage. Thousands of farm families benefit from this program.

“I’m doing this business to set an example for my children,” she says.

http://www.beantrends.com

Rainforest Alliance Conservation Agriculture Network:
[sorry this link is no longer available]

Drinking Certified Coffee: A Way Out Of the Global Coffee Crisis
The Canopy, Fall 2001 [sorry this link is no longer available]

Organic Coffee Association: [sorry this link is no longer available]

TransFair USA: www.transfairusa.org