Building community is at the core of our mission. read more about the organizations we're partnering with to better build community at origin. 

As told by founders Ben and Kristy Carlson: 

Long Miles Coffee Project is a small family endeavor, growing and producing unique micro-lots of coffee in Burundi, east Africa.

 We build relationships with families of coffee growers, and grow our trees right alongside theirs. We listen to their struggles and build platforms for change from what we hear. Implementing pathways to hope through excellently grown and cared for coffees. 

Connecting small hills of coffee farming families with roasters who believe that exceptional coffee includes traceability, unique micro climates, and the power of the human spirit is a dream come true for us. 

To us, direct trade has a very personal meaning. We feel it should embody elements of risk and forward thinking as well as relationship. It’s a conversation between roaster and grower about quality, craft and the possibilities that lie in the future.

Coffee holds so much potential. It has the ability to change a landscape and transform a people.

Every day this transformation changes us as a family and sends us further along a road we never knew we would travel.

We didn’t really know what we were getting our family into the year we cleared a eucalyptus forest and built a washing station flanked by a river in the heart of Burundi’s coffee hills. It was a dream come true and it was a headache of the most unimaginable kind. We were overwhelmed and excited, tired and dirty, petrified and at peace. 

Since those early days we’ve become confident that, together with roasters and farmers, we can continue to change the landscape of coffee in Burundi. Our path there includes listening to farmers and roasters alike, implementing emerging quality practices, and risking operation in the ever changing country of Burundi.

We take every step in our coffee’s journey seriously, from selective harvesting to hand picking to the time sensitive process of exporting. We work as hard as we can to implement practices that will improve our coffee’s quality, even if it’s just by half a point on the cupping table.

Singing Rooster is a 501 (c)3 non-profit and established social enterprise. They provide on-the-ground assistance and direct market access to coffee farming communities in Haiti for the sake of self-sustainability, dignity, and economic autonomy. They meet and exceed principles of fair trade and are a member of the Fair Trade Federation.

Singing Rooster partners with small-scale, farmer-owned cooperatives to help cultivate and process high quality, gourmet Haitian coffee. They then buy and export crops at premium prices and create new markets for it: roasted coffee, green coffee beans for both home and commercial roasters, fundraising with coffee, and wholesale coffee to commercial roasters, cafes and stores.

By helping farmers improve crops, paying premium prices for those crops and then transforming and marketing those crops on behalf of the farmers, they've created a direct farmer-to-table model for rural communities. They then return 100% of proceeds of coffee sales back to farmers and their communities for continued economic development.

Ketiara Cooperative

The Ketiara Cooperative was established in 2009 by 38 people and joined the Fair Trade movement in 2011. After joining the Fair Trade movement, they restructured the overal organization into 100% small farmer with current members totaling 1,979. The cooperative is mainly led by women, who occupy the positions of General Manager, Finance Manager, and Chairwoman. Member farms are situated around the Out Tawar Lake in the Gayo Highland in the district of Takengon and Bener Meriah, Central Aceh. 

The Ketiara Cooperative recognizes the fact that Fair Trade is NOT a perfect system, but that it does create opportunity to change. They believe Fair Trade isn't about the certification, but about the value the coffee business and trade is creatin. It's about increasing the general welfare of the coffee grower, employee, end-customer, and the planet. The cooperative is striving to create a fairer trading system that brings mutual benefit to all parties involved, from the farmer all the way to the end-consumer.

Ketiara Cooperative produces 100% Sumatra Gayo Arabica beans that are Organic certified by the Control Union and also certified by Fair Trade International (FLO).

*banner photo courtesy of Long Miles Coffee Project