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Stoddard: Rick Peyser

Peyser with coffee farmers.
Peyser with coffee farmers.
Peyser with coffee farmers.

(Stoddard) Green Mountain Coffee Roasters began in 1981 as a small cafe in Waitsfield. Now it's the largest Vermont based business. With annual revenues reaching nearly $4 billion and 5 % of its pre-tax profit granted mainly to coffee farmers, Green Mountain's impact on coffee growing communities and influence on the industry as a whole is significant. Overseeing this work, is Rick Peyser, Director of Social Advocacy and Supply Chain Community Outreach. To assess the needs of the coffee farmers, he began talking to them individually. One farmer's reply to a question about hunger touched him deeply.

(Peyser) The woman just paused and tears started to well up in her eyes. When she finally composed herself, she told me she and her family had 3 to 4 months of extreme scarcity of food every year and these are months that come after the harvest when basically the money from the harvest has been depleted... and when basic staples go up in price. Every single family... gave me the exact same answer.

(Stoddard) With the help of a research firm, Rick found that 67% of coffee farmers experienced extreme scarcity over three to eight months each year, a situation not acknowledged by the coffee industry.

(Peyser) People were as shocked as I was about these months. It was... virtually unknown and unspoken of within the coffee industry yet extremely common in these communities. I felt a responsibility to generate awareness within the industry and felt that would be our best audience.

(Peyser)So we went back to the communities where we interviewed and we shared the results and we also brainstormed with them. They provided all kinds of suggestions that they prioritized.

(Stoddard) Diversification jumped out as a strategy to try. Teaching farmers how to grow and market more than one crop was the core of Green Mountain 's first food security project. Results have been impressive.

(Peyser) From this first project ...(this is now) that started in 2008 that assisted approximately 250 families, we have developed a portfolio that is now supporting over 50,000 families, close to 300,000 individuals focused only on food security

(Peyser) Unless we can provide a better quality of life in these rural areas, I believe that the coffee industry is threatened.

(Stoddard)Rick, who has served on multinational NGOs and formed a non profit for coffee farmers, is now mobilizing competing coffee companies to work together for greater impact.

(Peyser) We're now at the point where there are 5 companies that have agreed to fund a food security project together in northern Nicaragua. So in a marketplace of competitors, for the first time ever, aside from disaster relief, these companies have come together (to deal with a problem that they feel is critical to their supply chain). My hope is that other companies will soon join this effort (and it will expand).

(Stoddard) As Rick learned here in Vermont , grassroots people coming up with their own solutions, is a powerful strategy for positive change anywhere. And businesses can leverage their influence and partner to make the world a better place. For more on Rick's story, pick up his book called Brewing Change. For VPR, this is Fran Stoddard.

Fran Stoddard was the co-host of Switchboard.
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