Strategy

Chiapas project:

- location – high location which forest and covered trees to shade

- farmers unwilling to change their farming because of the potential threat to their income and salary that will feed their families. Therefore they had to be ready and provide the right technical assistance to the farmers that would “improve growing techniques and coffee quality for farmers”

- problem was partnering with larger companies, I.e. Starbucks, which was actually that goal of trying to partner with

- because quality standards didn’t meet that of Starbucks, they donated 150,000 for the farming of the coffee beans to see if they would meet Starbucks demanding qualities (under the assistance of CI).

Operations

“CI had a team for three full-time and several part-time extensionists who visited every farms and monitored progress and results against these criteria”

CI had a very good and complete database

- CI provided training courses in the villages to the farmers, co-op mangers and technicians on quality control, organic farming methods, tree planting and pulping methods, among others. Business planning and management courses were given for the cooperative leaders.

- CI operated a training center and nursery where it grew a wide variety of trees that it gave free to cooperative members and coffee plant that it sold for a nominal fee. The center also product organic fertilizer, which was sold for 1/3 of the chemical fertilizer price.

- Problem = the farmers/ producers did not know what the coffee should look like, taste like, etc. Therefore Starbucks had to communicate and the share the information with farmers/producers of what they expected to receive.

- Starbucks does not deal directly with farmers and therefore CI has to go through the quality control check and make sure that farmers are delivering coffee that meets Starbucks demands. If farmers did not meet the right quality, it was communicated back to the farmers through feedback.

- Farmers lacked...