Next Generation Roast: Supporting the Future of Coffee Farming

by Karen Lickteig, Marketing & Sustainability Director for Nossa Familia Coffee

We are proud to introduce the Next Generation Roast, a special Partner Brand coffee with fellow Certified B Corporation, New Seasons Market. We teamed up to purchase a special lot of 2500 pounds from Young Farmers in Guatemala, their first harvest as a group.

Supporting the Next Generation of Coffee Farmers in Guatemala

The Next Generation Roast is available exclusively at New Seasons Market stores. $1.00 from each bag of coffee sold - $0.50 each contributed by New Seasons and Nossa Familia - will go back to support the establishment of a Young Farmers Fund with our partners at De la Gente in Guatemala. This fund will be set up to provide a sustainable micro-loan program so that young farmers can purchase land, equipment and provide ongoing education for these farmers.

The Segunda Generación group, meaning Second Generation, is a collective of young coffee farmers from San Miguel Escobar near Antigua, Guatemala. These 21 young men and women have banded together to follow in their parents’ and grandparents’ footsteps in keeping the coffee industry alive and thriving in this famous coffee-producing region. Many of these young farmers own little or no farming land at all, mostly working on land owned by their parents. The De la Gente Young Farmers Fund will support these young farmers with access to low-interest financing so they can grow their businesses and create more sustainable futures for themselves and their families through coffee farming.

Also Available: Next Generation Coffee Porter from Hopworks Urban Brewery

The Next Generation Roast also comes in beer form! Our partners at Hopworks Urban Brewery, Oregon’s only B Corp Certified brewery, is using this special coffee to produce a partner line of beer: the Next Generation Coffee Porter.

Also exclusively available at New Seasons Market, this porter is brewed with oats for a creamy texture. The Guatemalan Next Generation Roast coffee adds roasty aromas and chocolatey flavors. Hopworks is also donating a portion of the beer’s proceeds to the De la Gente Young Farmers Fund.

Coffee Prices & the Future of Coffee Farming

Supporting the future of coffee farming through young farmers is a crucial endeavor for the coffee industry. We often hear of the threat of climate change to coffee-producing regions, but even less discussed and potentially devastating is the current unsustainability of pricing for coffee. Through specialty coffee, which often operates independent of the commodity market, we can create more attractive and sustainable futures in coffee.

The commodity price for coffee is currently dangerously low, and has been for some time. The price has dipped under $1 per pound this year, which means that farmers selling at the C-price are selling for less than it costs them to produce the coffee, which is around $1.40 per pound.

Nossa Familia Coffee operates on a direct-trade basis with our coffee producing partners. This means that we visit farmers often, and offer them feedback and a continuous relationship. We talk to farmers and responsible importers about sustainable pricing that takes the cost of production and providing for quality of life into account. We pay good prices for quality coffee, and the Next Generation Roast is no exception. For their first harvest, we were able to offer the Young Farmers group $3.20 per pound, not including additional shipping and importing fees through De la Gente. This price is double the current coffee price to meet Fair Trade Certification for Arabica Coffee, and over triple the current commodity price.

Even the “Fairtrade” price, certified by Fairtrade International, is currently a low standard by our measures: the Fairtrade Minimum Price for coffee is $1.40 per pound, plus a $0.20 premium, so $1.60 per pound. And the Fairtrade price hasn’t been updated since 2011.

This issue with low coffee market prices is so serious that the Specialty Coffee Association Board of Directors announced this month the creation of the Coffee Price Crisis Response Initiative, an effort to channel energy and resources to understanding and responding to the coffee price crisis.

From Kim Elena Ionescu, Specialty Coffee Association's Chief Sustainability Officer:

Coffee farmers and organizations representing farmers have been warning buyers for years that from a purely economic perspective – to say nothing of environmental and social pressures – coffee production is increasingly unattractive in all but a handful of places. I often hear (and I repeat) the prediction that climate change will cut the amount of land suitable for coffee production in half by 2050, but with market conditions like the ones we’re living in, I wonder if the sector might lose half of its farmers by 2030.

We are grateful to our suppliers and partners for the care they offer at every step of our supply chain. We also thank our customers for choosing to pay more for their coffee, and caring where it comes from. This continuous care will help to ensure a sustainable future for coffee producers around the globe.

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