Please consider https://food4farmers.org/ "Our mission is to facilitate the implementation of sustainable food security programs in coffee-growing communities."

I have been supporting Friends of San Lucas (Toliman, Guatemala) over the years by buying their coffee green at farmer sustainable prices. Over decades they have made a difference in that community through support of schools, homes, medical care and land purchases.

How about Coffee Kids, or their new (as of 2015) parent organization: https://www.hrnstiftung.org/

Hi Guys,

The coffee industry is massive and complicated, but here are two programs that have very specific goals that benefit both the producer's bottom line and the in-cup quality that we get as consumers, and both in a long-term, sustainable way:

Alliance for Coffee Excellence (link to donate)

ACE is most famous for running the Cup of Excellence competition, which has just entered its 20th year. The COE competition allows small producers to enter high quality lots to be judged first by a national jury and then by an international jury, through blind cuppings. The coffees that pass the quality benchmark make it to auction. The most famous is, of course, the Cup of Excellence auction, but what is less well known is that the coffees that pass the national threshhold but fail to COE hurdle are also auctioned off as national winners. The auctions enable the farmers to achieve very high prices for their coffees based on quality, but of course the lots that are entered might only be a small fraction of the farmer's production. The more important things are probably that (a) the competitions enable quality focussed producers to connect with buyers willing to form a relationship with them and pay a quality premium on an ongoing basis (both through the auction and also through meeting the national jurors, who are usually coffee buyers) and (b) the prizes give the producers the pride and dignity of being recognised for being great at what they do. I helped ACE out with their Australian trade mark many years ago and they invited me to be an observer juror at COE El Salvador; it was one of the greatest coffee experiences I have ever had. Not only were the coffees incredibly sweet, aromatic and fresh, but it was a pretty moving event. I remember when we all gathered for the awards announcement, jury and producers alike, we moved from smiles to tears of joy as the winners were announced.

ACE has now been running for 20+ years and continues to improve coffee quality. I'm not sure if they can really be credited with inventing or pioneering vac packing, but their use of vac packing for auction lots has certainly helped to spread the use of better packaging than jute bags (eg. vac pack, penta, grainpro), which benefits all of us. They have also been involved on other quality focussed initiatives, like trying to find a solution for potato defect in Rwanda. You can imagine that running the program takes a lot of effort and this year they are launching in Ethiopia. I'm sure that they will be able to put funding to good use.

World Coffee Research (link to donate)

World coffee research are a body that is basically focussed on breeding and creating new coffee varieties. We might not think about it too much, but coffee is a plant and coffee farmers have all of the pressures that every farmer has. Their finances will be most stressed when planting and at that point in time, they have to decide what varieties they are planting. So what do they plant? The stuff that tastes best? The stuff that is the most resilient? The stuff with the highest yield? WCR is trying to maximise all of it. This is particularly important, with farms throughout central and south america being devastated by coffee leaf rust ("la roya") and coffee borer beetle ("broca") and everyone suffering from global warming. Frankly, as retail and wholesale consumers, I think we force producing countries to bear the agricultural risks and they are the ones who have the least money to pay to address them in a long-term, sustainable way, so I think that if we don't pony up for this now, we totally deserve to be drinking coffee that tastes worse in 20 years' time.

Cheers,
Luca