Located on the Bolaven Plateau in Laos, 2454 families, in 64 villages, make up the Jhai Coffee Farmer’s Cooperative. This coffee is all about empowerment. With diseases related to poor hygiene being the number two killer of Lao children under five years old, Jhai Coffee directly supports the installation of clean water wells and hygiene programs at schools in the region. Additionally, Jhai has implemented farmer education and technical infrastructure to enable the community to receive the maximum earnings for their hard work.

The Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU), is an umbrella organization established in 2002 to support a sustainable coffee supply from cooperatives in the Gedeo ethnic region of Ethiopia.

There are twenty-six cooperatives affiliated with the YCFCU totaling nearly 45,000 members in the districts of Yirgacheffe, Gedeb, Wonango, Dilla Zuria, Bule, and Kochere. To grow a sustainable coffee community, the YCFCU has invested in school construction, electrification projects in remote areas, and road and bridge improvement projects.

The 62,004 hectares of coffee farms produce an annual average 9,000 tons of Yirgacheffe, 3,000 tons of Sidamo washed coffee and 24,000 tons of sun-dried coffee. We are excited to continue working with YCFCU to bring you some beautiful Ethiopian Coffees!

Our Sumatran coffee was grown by members of the family-owned farms organized around the Asosiasi Kopi Gayo Organic cooperative (ASKOGO), located in the Takengon highlands of the Aceh province on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. This region of Indonesia is also referred to as the Gayo land because the coffee farmers are from the Gayonese ethnic group.

ASKOGO currently has 760 members organized in 13 villages. They are all located in the regencies of Aceh Tengah and Bener Meriah. ASKOGO members grow their coffee from 1,000 to 1,500 meters above sea level.

The ASKOGO co-op offers regular training activities to each of the farmers in their co-op, in order to improve the quality of their coffees, learn new harvest techniques, and implement more beneficial farming practices. This group was founded in 2008, and has continually improved their coffee in the subsequent years. We have been purchasing coffee from ASKOGO since 2015.

“We arrived on the Big Island In June 2005 eager to see the coffee farm we purchased, sight unseen. Our first visit to our new home was stunning. While we had an idea of what we might find, we were thrilled to see the lush overgrown coffee trees and a macadamia nut orchard.

Our passion soon became cleaning the land. Using only organic practices, solar energy, and water catchment our farm soon became an oasis for birds, camelions, and all plant life. The coffee appreciated the attention and soon ripened with vibrant with red plump cherries. The rich volcanic soils of Hawaii and tropical climate allowed the coffee to thrive.”

— Kollette and Jason Stith, Mahina Mele Farm

The farmers of the Guaya’b Cooperative grow coffee under a dense forest canopy that doubles as the winter home for dozens of species of migratory birds as well as local flora and fauna. It wasn’t always this way. When coffee was introduced to this remote region 40 years ago, it was promoted as an alternative to subsistence agriculture, and farmers were taught to clear forests to make way for this new cash crop. Fortunately, these farmers are closely connected to the health of their land, and have re-established their once logged forests providing much needed shade and diverse ecosystems in which coffee thrives.

Now, a new generation of farmers works to cultivate coffee and a variety of other cash and subsistence crops to increase incomes, and to protect the health of the land. Thanks to their partnership with our importer, Elan Organic Coffee, Guaya’b has perfected the art of picking, depulping and fermenting their coffee to produce deep, juicy, and full flavored coffee with a truly distinctive character. In fact, the farmers’ coffee is so unique that they periodically run into trouble with ANACAFE, Guatemala’s national coffee marketing wing, which tries to subdue Guaya’b’s flair and replace it with a more generic cup profile produced by less-inventive processing methods.

Not content to merely develop members’ coffee production, Guaya’b has a pilot organic honey project, which also helps to increase coffee yields thanks to improved pollination.

Twice he’s won top honors for this magical coffee: Maracaturra, a special variety found only on his small family farm in Nicaragua. The coffee is a unique hybrid of the heirloom varietals Maragoype and Caturra (Bourbon). It was developed and is grown exclusively by Byron Corrales for Thanksgiving Coffee Company. It is a truly exceptional coffee that’s more akin to its cousins in the highlands of East Africa than its neighbors in Central America.

Each coffee carries the subtle differences in taste imparted by soil, variety, and processing, but all exemplify the classic Nicaraguan character: juicy apricot aromatics, rich cashew nuttiness, and a deeply toned sweet cacao finish.

“I was 7 years old when my grandfather taught me to plant my first coffee tree. I liked to look at sun coming through the trees, to share the lessons my grandfather taught me about the growth of plants, and watch the rain fall and surrounded by the scent of the earth. I listened to the song of the birds and rode my horse to school every morning. 42 years have passed in my life since then and I want to transmit our family’s art, our work of many years, discovering the flavors we’ve learned to bring forth from our mountains, expressed in this cup by way of respect for our environment and the songs we sing every day in our coffee farm.

I talk every day with my plants, and they ask me who will consume each bean of our production and in this moment when you are tasting our coffee, I want to talk with you and tell you in silence that you are contributing to the conservation of our planet, that this cup has come from the Arenal Forest Reserve, that its flavor that you’re tasting on your palate is the expression of life and the life energy of all the living beings who live in our community. Now we are together in embraced by this moment celebrating with joy the responsibility of protecting the future of our generations.

The cup of responsibility is a song of love.”

— Byron Jose Corrales Martinez, 2008

The Cooperative’s members grow coffee under a dense canopy of banana, guava, and tropical hardwood. Each farmer harvests juicy red cherries by hand and then carefully removes the sweet fruit using hand-turned depulping machines. The day’s harvest is fermented, then washed and dried before being brought to the Cooperative’s office in the town of Aranjuez.

Each coffee carries the subtle differences in taste imparted by soil, variety, and processing, but all exemplify the classic Nicaraguan character: juicy apricot aromatics, rich cashew nuttiness, and a deeply toned sweet cacao finish.

Thanksgiving Coffee Company is proud to have purchased Cooperativa Solidaridad’s coffee since the mid-1990s, when co-founder Paul Katzeff visited during one of his many visits to Nicaragua. The relationship that he established is our oldest ongoing partnership and has been the proving ground for many of our ideas. After dozens of visits through the years, we’ve learned more than we’ve taught; today our relationship continues to deepen with the trust and strength built by our shared history.

The cooperative provides services such as marketing, cooperative development including technical assistance, training, credit funds, improving coffee quality and social projects to promote food security and gender equality. PRODECOOP’s motto is “Behind every cup of coffee, there is a family.”

We’re proud to purchase coffee from this cooperative — their coffees are featured in some of our most popular blends!

The cooperative represents 654 families and is recognized around the world as a leader in the movement to empower small-scale farmers, especially women and youth. During the harvest, coffee is carefully picked, then depulped and fermented overnight before it is washed, and sun-dried. Careful attention to the subtleties of processing and the farmer’s pride produce sweetly floral coffee, with a rich nutty depth and a distinctive sweetness reminiscent of dried apricots.

We are proud to have purchased SOPPEXCCA’s coffee since 2001.

Caranavi province is the heartland of Bolivia’s coffee production. Rivers that flow from glaciers 4,000 meters above carve deep valleys and create an ideal landscape for the cultivation of exquisite coffee. The farmers of ASOCAFE grow prized varietals on their small farms and transport their carefully hand-picked coffee to central processing stations, where, under the watchful eye of the cooperative’s staff, the ripe cherries are depulped, fermented, washed, and sun-dried.