Honouring our coffee

The farmers bring their products to the coffee collection depots, where Soprocopiv pays the farmers the market price, as well as a premium for their certified coffee. Once purchased, we store the coffee in our depots or stores before transporting it to our factory. We then sell it to a number of clients – including some international companies in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey and the UK. The prices we charge depend on the quality required – full-washed (K3), washed (K4) or K7.

Certified

All our members are currently UTZ-BIO certified, out of which 2/3^rds Arabica and 1/3^rd Robusta. All our members growing Arabica coffee have received the Fair For Life (FFL) certification in October 2020. On top of these, we are currently undergoing an audit for the Fairtrade certification. The latter is rather new, and the result of the efforts of the Technical Assistance Facility of the Fairtrade Access Fund from Incofin, which is helping us acquire the Fairtrade certification digitally, as our region is too distant/difficult to reach for the standard certification process.

These labels share the same 4 parameters: social, environmental, quantity and quality. Through these labels, the product can be traced, the production improved, and financial premiums obtained, for the direct benefit of the farmers and their villagers. They also allow us to stabilise the prices and reach a wider and more international clientele.

We train our members on these good agricultural practices and their neighbours imitate them after seeing the higher yields.

We want to further grow the cooperative’s activities: although we cover 16 areas, we only have 6 coffee washing stations, leaving the remote farmers without easy access. We are also looking into new pulping machines, which could really increase the quality and quantity of our products.

With the support of the Technical Assistance Facility of the Fairtrade Access Fund, we’re also creating nurseries to rejuvenate the old orchards, increasing the productivity – and income – of our members.

What’s next?

Coffee is a seasonal crop, leaving farmers without an income for a large part of the year. That is why we are currently looking into other income-generating activities – both for our farmers and for the families they support.

We also want to invest in infrastructure. We need good schools, so that the children of our farmers have opportunities that their parents never had, as well as an easy access to quality health services.

Finally, we want to introduce short-term micro-credit for our members. This will allow those with larger plots of land to pay for labour and will help struggling farmers in between harvests. We would be the first to do this, as there are no other financial institutions in the area.