Thank you from San Rafael
A note from First Crop Coffee:
Over the weekend we received some exciting news from Carlos in Colombia. As you will all know, late last year the cost of San Rafael increased. This was due to a commitment we made to Carlos and Yurley (ASCAFE) to invest in projects that would continue to benefit the communities around San Rafael, Popayan and in Cauca. The Women Coffee Growers Project has been a success and is producing bigger and better yields, the Young Coffee Growers Project is coming along, and now we’re excited to announce the newest project, the ASCAFE store.
Located in Popayan, the ASCAFE store sells rice, lentils, oil and other fruit and vegetables at below market prices to coffee farmers in the region. This project was funded entirely by First Crop, and by association, you! We are so excited about this project and Carlos and Yurley are incredibly grateful for your support. This will help coffee farmers in Cauca feed their families and even help them in planting and growing new crops.
In our last newsletter I discussed the C price and the impact this is having on farmers. We don’t buy coffee against the C price, we have committed to prices with our producers that enable them to be profitable in coffee farming, to make it feasible and sustainable for them to continue to produce coffee. We rely on you, our customers to support us even as the marketplace becomes flooded with cheap coffee. This will be inevitable in the coming months because importers will be buying coffee from exporters who have leveraged off the low C price. This includes a lot of “specialty coffee”, and sadly many farmers around the world will struggle this year and next year due to what has happened with the C.
On behalf of Carlos, Yurley, Celina, Daniel and myself, we want to thank you for working with us and supporting us by committing to San Rafael, the Women's Coffee Growers Project and now Soul Mountain. For now, we’re just sending this to customers who are buying Colombian coffee from us to say thank you and to let you know your business is actively supporting livelihoods, sustainability and communities in Colombia, so thank you! In the coming days well share this story on our Instagram, for now though, enjoy these photos directly from Carlos this weekend and feel free to share these and the story with your customers or on your social media.
