Green Mountain coffee roasters: doing well by doing good.(Cup service: the beverage service & retail resource)

Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, April, 2004 by Pendergrast, Mark

We are an association of 125 members and right now we are going through a crisis." The spokesman for the Asociacion del Baluarte in the San Marcos region of Guatemala speaks in Spanish to the small group from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. It is February 2003 and they are visiting Baluarte (which means "precious little jewel") at the urging of Mireya Asturias Jones, owner of the neighboring Finca dos Marias. When the former Baluarte owner sold the farm to the workers with government funding, the families remained with new-found excitement for their future. They had faithfully harvested this year's coffee, but they could not sell it for enough money to survive to the next coffee crop season. This meant losing their livelihood. "We need a way to sustain ourselves," the...