Higher Grounds Trading Company
Roasting 100% Fair Trade and Organic Handcrafted Coffees
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About Our Beans
We are proud to be Michigan's only certified fair-trade, organic roastery. We stick to high standards not only for ethical and environmental reasons, but also because we are obsessed with quality: We believe these standards produce the best-quality coffees around.
Why Organic?
Quality: Rich, fertile soil and a cool canopy of diversified shade trees are two of the most important ingredients in a fine cup of organic coffee. Mother Nature’s natural processes of green manuring and slow maturation of coffee cherries results in the most flavorful raw coffee beans which, in turn, provides us with a cup of coffee that is second to none.
Biodiversity: Conventional growing techniques accelerate the destruction of bi-diversity, clearing upper canopy trees in order to encourage higher yields. But organic coffee fields are filled with life! Monkeys play in shade trees above coffee fields in Ethiopia; migratory birds nestle among avocado and orange trees interspersed throughout coffee fields in Mexico; children use the dense forest of coffee fields in Nicaragua as their playground. Cultivating coffee without the use of chemicals provides a safe haven for life to thrive now and for future generations.
Protecting the planet: Organic coffee production ensures that no dangerous chemicals contaminate the soil, water or air. Common organic coffee growing techniques include composting, the creation of live plant barriers to prevent erosion, and the use of organic pesticides made from natural materials found in a coffee field, ensuring that generations to come with have healthy soil to feed their families.
Healthier for all: Much of the world’s coffee is grown in large, open plantations using massive doses of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. These toxic cocktails harm the soil and groundwater, create an economic strain on the small-scale farmer, and have numerous negative health impacts for coffee-growing communities.
Why Fair Trade?
Coffee is one of the most oppressive industries in the world. Neo-liberal economic policies, which have led to the privatization of the resources necessary to help the small-scale coffee grower, has had an enormously negative effect on the campesinos (Latin-American farm workers) of the world. While large trans-national coffee companies and a growing number of specialty coffee companies make hefty profits, growers are struggling to survive – many times choosing migration rather than continuing to farm a crop which provides them with little more than misery.
Just 25 years ago, the Global Coffee Industry was worth $30 billion dollars, of which coffee-producing countries received $12 billion, or 40 percent. Today, the industry is worth more than $55 billion dollars – yet producing countries receive only $7 billion, or 13 percent of that money.
To us, it makes simple sense that adequate compensation for the small-scale farmers who produced fine, specialty-grade beans should be part of the equation that makes a quality cup of coffee. Fair-trade standards ensure that growers are given a minimum fair price set and certified by a third party.
By buying direct from the growers with our North American importing cooperative, Cooperative Coffees, we are able to ensure that the price we pay for our coffees goes directly to the growers – not middlemen, brokers or anyone else.
Why Shade Grown?
Biodiversity: By developing relationships with farmers who care deeply for their small parcels of land and all the life that inhabits it, we are committed to protecting and encouraging the growth of diversified forests that provide life to a multitude of birds, animal and plant species.
Quality control: When coffee cherries – the fruit that contains the coffee bean on coffee trees – are allowed to mature naturally under a canopy of shade, the sugars in the coffee fruit that control flavor are allowed to come to full maturation. This means harvesting several times to ensure that each bean is at its peak ripeness when picked; the result is that we get a fuller-flavored, more consistent cup of coffee. Conventional coffee is grown in a monoculture setting in full sun, allowing the beans to mature too rapidly, compromising much of the flavor. And because some beans are too ripe and others not ripe enough, the coffee quality can be inconsistent.
Birds: The Western Hemisphere forests in the Mexican Highlands are second only to the Amazon in their range of biodiversity, providing habitat to nearly 180 different species of birds. Forty percent of top-level canopy trees were clear-cut in the mid-1900s to make way for monstrous, sun-exposed coffee plantations. Organic coffee grown under a canopy of shade provides biological corridors vital to migration for birds and other wild animals and insects.
Health for body and soil: Many shade trees used on coffee farms provide fruits that are critical to a healthy diet. Additionally, the roots of these trees prevent soil erosion, and when the leaves and branches fall, they decompose – forming a naturally nutrient-rich soil.
Although most of our partner farmers have received shade-grown certifications, at this time we’ve chosen not to participate in the available "Bird Friendly" certifications due to the lack of discourse about the benefits of certification vs. the very high cost for farmers and roasters. Instead, we have chosen to employ the old-fashioned method of ensuring shade in the fields: by going to visit our partner growers in person.
