Now Helping 5,000+ Farmers Pursue Economic Sustainability

Since our beginnings with a few farmers in Costa Rica, THRIVE Farmers has had a simple mission: to create true economic sustainability for coffee producers, who have been leaving their family farms at double-digit rates for years.

This mission is being realized today through a farmer-direct platform in which coffee farmers gain direct access to the marketplace for their coffee. Farmers are closer to consumers, obtain added value from their crop and achieve economic sustainability to their families and communities.

Right now, the average coffee farmer who supplies coffee for some of the top companies in the world still does not earn enough to sustain their farm and families. Many work two and three jobs to survive. They can’t predict what their earning will be from one year to the next because the value of their crop is tied to a highly volatile commodity market. There is a MAJOR disconnect between the farmer’s revenue and the consumer’s cost – which is the root cause of such drastic farmer attrition, poverty and lack of food security.

The THRIVE Farmers revenue-sharing platform is leading an innovative change in the industry by aligning the farmer with the consumer and allowing farmers to participate as stakeholders in their crop. By being able to forecast supply and demand within the platform, 75% of the sales revenue from green beans and 50% of the sales revenue from roasted beans goes back to the farmer. For the first time, their earnings are directly tied to the value of their coffee in the U.S. retail markets. And financial rewards are directly linked to quality, a key factor in our unique model.

The net result? THRIVE Farmers coffee producers earn up to ten times more income than they would typically earn in the traditional marketplace, even including popular certifications.

Our platform and the idea of economic sustainability is rapidly spreading across farms in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, and now in Africa with the introduction of Burundi coffee in 2014. Coffee farmers are getting on board as demand continues to grow and word spreads about the THRIVE Farmers mission.

Thrive by the Numbers

The number of farmers contributing to the THRIVE Farmers platform has increased to over 5,000 this past year – up more than 8x since 2013. And while these farmers are mostly small, independent growers, their output is significant: we’re expecting to move more than 3 million pounds of beans this fiscal year, a 5x jump from last year’s total, and we expect to double this number again by 2015. These numbers represent the lives of real families and their communities who are experiencing positive impact, better lives, and promise of a sustainable future in the coffee business.

Focus on quality

We are humbled and excited by our growth — growth that’s enabled us to focus even more on quality and bring on Tracy Allen as Chief Coffee Officer for THRIVE Farmers.

Tracy has been a leader in the coffee industry for more than 25 years and is one of the original members of the U.S. Barista Championship Committee and the first chair of the Rules and Regulations committee for the World Barista Championship. He’s trained multiple national and regional barista champions and he’s a 3x SCAA Supertaster, certified cupper and Q-grader instructor. Most recently, Tracy was elected as President of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

Quality is paramount at THRIVE Farmers. Tracy is a trusted authority on quality and brings to THRIVE his passion for the specialty coffee industry and the coffee producer. We are happy to have Tracy join the THRIVE family with his focus on developing tools to achieve the highest quality coffee from crop to cup. This creates a win-win; consumers enjoy amazing quality coffee in exchange for supporting the success of farmers, while farmers finally achieve economic sustainability for providing consumers with an awesome cup of hand-crafted coffee!

THRIVE Farmers is committed to expanding our impact and bringing true economic sustainability to the universe of farmers around the globe. What’s your experience with THRIVE Farmers? We’d love to hear your thoughts on our growth in the comments or @ThriveFarmers on Twitter.