I know someone who lives in Burundi and has access to locally grown green (un-roasted) coffee. We have an idea to invest a bit of time and effort (and money)into helping the local farmers develop their community. We have already built a school and a washing station (required for processing the harvested coffee).
At the moment, what happens is once the farmers have harvested the coffee, they cart it off to a market where they get ripped off by various exporters.
We are hoping to help them get access to international markets more directly.
My question is, if I have a lot of green coffee that I want to sell, where do I sell it?
I have contacts to arrange shipping etc, but where do I actually ship it to. Does anyone know of any websites to help us in our endeavor.
I realize that at first it will be trial and error and we will have to start off small but hopefully after a few teething problems we can make it profitable for everyone involved, local farmers included.
Not sure if this will be any help, but Sweet Maria’s imports and sells green coffee from around the world.
Good luck!
I know a little about the coffee industry but only in so far as finished products, i.e, roasted coffee beans, and high end ones at that, so I can’t help that much.
But I think your best bet is to look for an X(country) and Burundi trade association or something similar, in Burundi or in your (x) country. Most countries have such trade organizations that offer free advice or can guide you in the right directions. Contact them first and see what you come up with.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a number of projects that help coffee farmers form cooperatives to get a better price on their product. If you google USAID and coffee you’ll find a lot of links to NGOs working on coffee projects. Following the thread on these might lead you to some contacts who can help you out. Also if you search for the word coffee on www.usaid.gov you can find links to stories about coffee projects. Your best bet is to find the name of an NGO working on a coffee project and try to contact them, someone might be able to provide you some information.
ETA: I found this report on agriculture programs in Burundi (pdf) http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACM249.pdf
I took a look at my preferred fair-trade roaster’s webpage, and they had a bit about their program here. On this page, they also had links to TransFair USA and the Fair Trade Federation, both of which may be good places to look for purchasers.