NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, July 17, 2014

This is about a social enterprise on a mission to reinvent the coffee supply chain, giving farmers a bigger and more equitable piece of the action.

Aimed at growers producing specialty-grade, premium, Fair Trade certified coffee, Vega hopes to enable farmers to roast and package their beans and connect to customers directly via an online subscription marketplace. As a result, they can make a lot more money than they normally do.

The company, which is based in Leon, Nicaragua, is launching a Kickstartercampaign today.

Eighty percent of coffee farmers- -or 20 million people– are trapped in a cycle of subsistence farming, according to co-founder Noushin Ketabi. Often in remote areas, they have little access to markets and tend to rely on middlemen for exporting. (The situation is similar to peanut farmers in Haiti. I recentlywrote about a supply-chain social enterprise aimed at them).