Care Market Unfolded: 2020–21 Updates
This week we spoke to Sunghee, one of Bean Voyage’s co-founders and our Care Market lead. She told us all about how Bean Voyage supports market connections and coffee sales for partner producers, as well as the latest updates from this year.
What’s the latest from Care Market?
Even with the challenges of last year, we were able to celebrate many firsts, including selling substantial quantities of green coffee and roasted coffee! Our green coffee traveled to buyers in Canada, France, and the UK, and with the help of our friends at Gebana, a Swiss crowd-funding market space for smallholders, we sold 505 bags of 500 grams roasted coffee!
Due to the pandemic and related issues, we faced other firsts, such as last-minute cancellations from buyers amid the market disruption. However, we found this to be an exception, rather than the rule. Undeterred, we doubled the number of bags of green coffee sold this year! The quantities we sold were large compared to previous years, a step in the right direction for Bean Voyage.
The productivity of coffee farms in Costa Rica was generally lower this year due to a number of factors, including the pandemic, a lack of labor owing to travel and border restrictions, and a climate-related month-long delay in the harvest. As a result of these challenges, we were forced to turn away some potential buyers. However, the quality of this year’s coffee was as high as years prior, if not better. Most of our producers scored around 84 points on the SCA Q-score protocol and some got up to 90 points. This is a huge success and demonstrates that our partners are utilizing best practices and showing resilience in the face of many challenges beyond their control.
Another challenge this year has been the delayed harvest. The timeline for supplying green coffee to international buyers and importers has been drastically affected by the delay. By June last year, most shipments had already been completed. However, this year, we are now at the end of June and our shipments have yet to begin. The concentrated demand for shipping containers has also made it hard for exporters to secure space. This delay has been frustrating for everyone involved as there is generally a wait of at least two months from shipping to launch. All of us at Bean Voyage greatly appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience!
How did the Care Market model develop?
In the early stages of Bean Voyage, we formed most of our connections with buyers through conferences and word of mouth. Over time, more buyers have started to reach out through social media and email. Once someone reaches out to us, Sunghee organizes a quick call, in order to get an idea of their buying practices, and whether they are a good fit for Bean Voyage (and vice versa!). After the harvest, we send coffee samples to potential buyers, on the basis of which they can choose to place an order.
At present we use ‘forward purchases’, whereby importers and buyers commit to buying coffee in advance of shipment. This allows roasters to forecast costs, profits, and to decide on their menu in advance, in order to better appeal to their target market. It also provides a level of stability in the coffee supply chain and allows for traceability and strong producer-buyer relationships.
Currently, we don’t have ‘spot purchases’ available, which involves importers storing coffee on its arrival and roasters requesting to buy bags on demand rather than committing to do so in advance. This method incurs higher storage costs and a greater level of financial risk for a small organization like ours cannot easily take on. However, there is equally greater flexibility and immediacy, making it an option we may consider in future.
Another key element of the Care Market is our commitment to prioritizing the producers’ wishes for pricing. We take a different approach to the market ‘norm’. Instead of buyers telling us the FOB (‘free on board’ — export price) that they would accept each year, we let the farmers set the price. The buyers can negotiate with the farmers if they wish, but it gives them a good idea of what the producers consider to be a fair price. It also makes it much clearer exactly what share of the FOB (which includes different taxes and other export-related costs) farmers are receiving.
Any updates on Care Market partner buyers?
We continue to be impressed by our buyers’ strong desire to support sustainable development practices, and their willingness to go above and beyond in the interests of our partner smallholder womxn coffee producers. We have been so fortunate to work with so many great buyers!
One example of this is Girls Who Grind Coffee, a UK-based coffee roastery with which we have been partnering for a couple of years. They source their coffees exclusively from women producers and their Cheek to Cheek program (more info here) gives back 10% of the sale price of roasted coffee retail bags to producers, on top of already paying an equitable price for the green coffee that they buy.
One act of kindness from last year comes to mind as capturing the personal interest that Girls Who Grind Coffee take in the womxn producers from whom they buy. One of Bean Voyage’s partner producers saw a decrease in production after welcoming a new baby into the world last year. She had previously sold coffee to GWGC, and in a wonderful demonstration of their commitment to producers, they directly supported her financially in those difficult months.
Strong partnerships like these are what we aim to achieve through our Care Trade© model: building an equitable value chain and allowing womxn smallholder coffee producers to not just survive, but thrive on coffee-related income is our ultimate goal. Care Market is still a relatively new element of this. For our first few years, we were largely focusing on building our core training programs for producers. But despite the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic, we have been greatly encouraged by the response so far, and hope to see it grow year on year!
Curious to learn more about Care Market and our Care Trade model? Click here! And stay tuned in the coming weeks for a comprehensive list of where you can buy Bean Voyage coffee all over the world!
Written by Alice Mee
Edited by Kayla Sippl
