Momentarily 90% of the total coffee value disappears into the pockets of a handful of large multinationals, which we call Big Coffee. This means that the coffee farmers are left with only 10% of the value. It’s even worse, because there is nothing is added to this value– only 2% of that amount is actual profit. We may be entrepreneurs, but there’s no way to justify this imbalance. That’s why we started Moyee!
“IT IS TIME FOR COUNTRIES SUCH AS ETHIOPIA TO CLAIM THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACE AS EQUAL PARTNERS IN THE COFFEE CHAIN. IT’S THEIR COFFEE AFTER ALL!”
Guido van Staveren van Dijk, Founder of Moyee Coffee
From paying a 20% FairChain premium to a living income.
By working together with 100 smallholders to improve the quality of their coffee beans, we soon realized that a 20% premium was not nearly enough to secure our farmers with a decent net income a household needs to offer all members of that household a decent standard of living. A visualization of theory of change is created by our Living Income Roadmap. Working closely together with the FairChain Foundation, we developed a FairChain Farming program specifically designed to ‘bring a living income to farmers by managing profitable farms and getting involved in value-adding activities”.
From opening a roastery in Ethiopia to entering Kenya and Colombia It’s a hella of a ride, but worth jumping along.
Founding a purpose-driven coffee company in Holland has been an enormous challenge to say at least. Just like Holland, Germany, and other western countries, we are all dominated by Big Coffee companies backed by Big Bucks. Fairchain is both a voice and a first against a system in which development aid subsidizes global corporations that refuse to share their wealth. At the heart is a 50/50 approach that aims to create an equal value split between countries that produce coffee and countries that produce it: that’s right, radically rebalancing the global coffee chain. Learned the insights and expertise we gained in Ethiopia, we have expanded FairChain to Kenya and will soon set up a shop in Colombia.
From natural forest-grown coffee to true cost production. Now are Triple and Dark and ecological.
By working in the coffee industry, we’ve become climate activists out of necessity. At Moyee, we believe the root cause of deforestation – and the climate change deforestation catalyzes – is poverty. As forest dwellers, our farmers are on the frontline of climate change. Their environmentally-friendly farming methods protect forests – forests necessary for our own survival in the west. We unveiled an ambitious tree-planting program in 2019 to boost farmer income, protect local forests and kickstart a Mission Zero moonshot. And end 2021 we continue rocking planting trees. Our goal is to prove our business model can turn negative externalities into positive externalities. In addition to signing a pledge for net zero emissions by 2030, we are undergoing several significant projects specifically designed to achieve our environmental ambitions.
Sorry for the party-pooping but to get farmers at the bottom of the pyramid to a living income and power them to fight climate change on our behalf it’s not an easy fix. Swipe right to see our yearly developments to reach the living income goal.
First ISO certified roastery in Ethiopia set up. The FairChain impact model starts with investing in value adding activities. we want more development and less aid.
First 80 farmers in our FairChain farming program with the aim to get the poorest smallholder farmers to earn a living income. Living income is a human right that should be at the core of any coffee company’s business model.
We were the first to conduct a living income benchmark study in Ethiopia. Without this, any living income claim is just storytelling. Getting smallholder farmers at the bottom of the pyramid to a living income is not an easy fix and needs a detailed theory of change.
We were the first to get Speciality Coffee quality from farmers that previously delivered commercial-grade poverty coffee. We bring 3rd wave, direct trade coffee quality to the bottom of the pyramid. We call this 4th wave coffee.
Moyee goes beyond storytelling to story-proving. That’s why we’ve put our farmer payments on the blockchain. Easy to check and the starting point of many living income experiments to come – check the latest harvest on circularreport.fairchain.org
Investing in a wet mil became part of our living income roadmap. Washing coffee cherries increase coffee quality and thus farmer income. The wet mill offers value-adding jobs to a staff of 8 and 64 seasonal workers of which many are women who never had any income before. It paved the way for our woman empowerment program.
This field training had the focus on the implementation and production of compost to increase coffee quality and yield and prevent the use of chemical fertilizers as seen in e.g. Brazil and Kenya, The training showed the production, use, and advantages of compost. It secures by default organic coffee production.
Within the Limmu area, many farmers must deal with old, poorly managed trees. This results in lower production and declining income. Our training reversed this trend and paved the way for our next living income intervention > we learned that investing in new trees could double farmers’ income. Our 1 Mio tree revolution was born.
Our hard work and training was rewarded by Rainforest Alliance. This was the first time that a group of non-organized individual farmers in Ethiopia was RFA certified. Although we don’t believe in certification per se it helps our farmers to sell to customers that do.
The first study on how to reach young women via digitization. Read the report > blog
In the same year, we helped set up a Women Empowerment Committee that led to 1/3 of female participation in the successful financial empowerment program, banking nearly 400 farmers.
First to implement blockchain farmer wallets. It is the start of radical transparency about earnings and provenance and enables tokenized premiums and payments for farm input and services.
First to implement a blockchain-based coffee tree planting program that allows Moyee consumers to transfer value directly to our farmers, revolutionizing the conventional consumer-producer relationship and a crucial step towards a REAL living income as each tree generates 10e extra income for the farmers. On top of this our unique insetting program turns Moyee coffee Carbon Positive.
Financial training to 100 farmers to participate in the first blockchain-powered microloan offered by coffee drinkers. Connecting these loans to certain offtakes makes them virtually risk-free. Current Micro Finance solutions work with 25%+ interest rates, our aim is 5% max creating huge opportunities for farmers to become bankable and invest in their farms.
Extreme hard Covid and war situation made it difficult for farmers to come to the wet mil. For those who came we raised the coffee price from 42 to 63 ct per kilo cherry (around 4,8e kilo roasted) and decided to keep it like this as it proved to be the Living Income Reference Price we were looking for. I see living income roadmap results here
The second wet mill opened in Limmu to scale up the smallholder program to 568 farmers.
270 HA of coffee forest adopted in Mizan to experiment with agroforestry that combines the need for scale, to get to profitable farming, with biodiversity to be adopted by 30.000 farmers in that region.
Started with digitizing the first 12.000 farmers in Mizan together with the Bench Maij Coop, testing living income and carbon calculation tools developed in Kenya and Uganda.
Investment in Extraction technology to turn waste streams into value-creating substantial income potential for farmers.
A lot of interest in circularity focuses on close-to-home initiatives. Moyee participates in many of those initiatives but our focus is on turning waste streams into value at the farmer level. Zero Poverty, Zero Carbon, Zero Waste
The first Child labor study was done, and community-led ideation sessions were organized to identify and find a solution for the reasons for child labor. Read the blog here.
We are finalizing a 360k intervention program.
A lot of impressive stuff coming up. We will bring our learnings on carbon credits and agro forestry from Uganda and Kenya to the 12.000 Ethiopian farmers in our program.
Read our full impact report here
Swipe right!
The second roastery was set up. 100% owned by Moyee to ensure full focus on the impact of the whole value chain.
Invested in bio fertilizer production to replace chemicals and reduce carbon footprint.
Collaboration with EOSTA to invest in avocado intercropping, collection, and value-adding export.
Collaboration with de Heus to invest in animal feed production distribution and collection.
Swipe right!
Started connecting Mount Elgon Farmers to our Kenian roastery.
Launch of first 100% female produced Microlot roasted in Uganda.
Curious about the impact we make? Join the journey of our impact report.
This is the map of farmers that you make an immediate impact on by drinking Moyee. We have been helping these farmers to earn a living income for years.
Zoom in on the map below to see the impact per farmer.
Do you have any questions, feedback or suggestions? We look forward to hearing from you!
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