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Although coffee farmers around the world spend years cultivating their
crop and do an incredible amount of labor to grow and harvest their product,
they typically receive less than $1.00 per pound (or the equivalent of about
$0.03 per cup of coffee), which is then sold in the US for upwards of $20.00
per pound, keeping them trapped in a cycle of subsistence farming.
Stepping Up

“We work directly with producers in origin to consolidate ship-
ments to the destination country. We then warehouse and sell coffee
to roasters. We are also curating and sharing content from producers
to enable roasters to share the coffee’s production story with their
customers.” Coffee Exchange provides transparency reports with live
data so one can engage with the market directly, without middleman.
Producers who use the platform see the price they receive increase
from 20-50%—this is a big difference in the low margin green coffee
trade. These economies of scale and direct market access might be
exactly what the industry needs in such challenging times.
The company now works with coffee producers from Ethiopia,
Kenya, Rwanda, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama,
El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and Indonesia, serving over
1,500 roasters in China where they can purchase coffee from around
50 different producers all over the coffee world.

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