Trabocca: In pursuit of poverty free coffee
On their journey to fair poverty-free coffee, Trabocca saw the importance of transparency and traceability, and employed our new platform, Trace, as a tool to answer the question whether coffee farmers are earning a fair living income. What started out as a question slowly morphed into a reality where Trabocca’s specialty coffee from the Guji region in Ethiopia became 100% traceable.
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What did we do?
Know your farmer
The use of Trace in Trabocca’s coffee supply chain reinforces their human-centric approach. Trace enables the company and their customers alike to, in addition to a Fairtrade certificate, also see who actually grew the coffee, how much they got paid for it per KG and whether this is enough to make ends meet in that specific area. In total, 278 coffee farmers participate in this project.
Fair prices
In its ‘pursuit of great coffee’, Trabocca considers a living income for the outgrowers a basic human right. Following this motive, Trabocca used Trace to find out whether its coffee growers in Suke Quto earned enough money with their coffee. “In the specialty coffee sector, we tend to believe that because we pay a premium for higher-quality coffee on our end, the farmer earns more. But how sure are we that that is actually true?”, says Sander Reuderink, commercial director at Trabocca. The company found an answer to this question by tracking and tracing every transaction made by the coffee farmers. The results were conclusive: the outgrowers earned 63 percent more than their usual earnings per kilogram. Is this enough to make a living income? This is the next step which Trabocca hopes to answer with the help of Trace.
Brand promise verification
As a specialty coffee brand, Trabocca promises unmeasured value through its good prices, 100 percent traceability and organic produce. Trace not only makes it possible for Trabocca to confidently make these claims, but it also makes the verification of such claims friction-free. With the blockchain technology, roasters can trace the journey of their coffee from the farm all the way up to their business doors. This public verification is exactly what Trabocca wants to achieve according to Reuderink: “We want to provide irrefutable proof that our farmers were paid what we promise. We will use blockchain to create transparency all the way up to farm gate.”
Added value
Moreover, Trabocca wants to investigate whether transparent production information leads to added value, that ultimately can make its way back to the farmer. Whether it’s a marketing department, consumer or roaster, who sees value in transparency about the provenance of the product? And how do you channel that value to make sure the farmer gets her or his fair share.
Testimonial
We used Trace to track both the farmers’ deliveries and the payments they received. The platform allows us to provide our customers with insights about these transactions.
