We’ve come here to Fero’s administrative office—a basic room with one desk, papers neatly piled in the corner, a few shelves and informational posters on the walls—in the coffee farming region of Sidama, Ethiopia, to meet with the board of directors and get an update on how things are going here.
Higher Grounds has deep roots in the Zapatista communities of Chiapas. Join us and our partners at Schools For Chiapas in supporting this important seed project. Mother Seeds in Resistance / Sme’tsunubil ta shekel Yu’um is a collaborative project to share diverse seeds and plants with Zapatista and indigenous communities in Chiapas...
Last week, our director of coffee Jennifer (on the bottom shelf in the group shot above!) attended a producer-roaster quality exchange at Cooperative Coffees' headquarters in Montreal (Coop Coffees is the importer we co-own with 22 other North American coffee roasting companies). There she met with other Coop Coffees member...
A circular economic model is the vehicle required for change within the specialty coffee industry. When we operate along a continuous circle across our supply chain, we can build wealth and expertise alongside coffee farmers, rather than in spite of them.
Current leading trends in specialty coffee primarily tie company resources to increasing coffee farm production and quality through capacity building and agricultural inputs. While production and quality investments at coffee origin are necessary components to any "sustainable" trading model in the coffee industry, increasing agricultural support (under the guise of combating climate change) fall grossly short from anything even close to what our coffee-growing friends would call "sustainable."
