Introducing our North American Coffee Tribe
We're often asked where our coffee comes from. There are several parts to the answer for this question and in this post we'll start with the organization that supplies the majority of our green beans.
We are happy and proud to be members of Cooperative Coffees – a group of 23 dynamic, value driven coffee roasting companies in the US (16 members) and Canada (7 members). The Cooperative’s headquarters is in Augusta, Georgia, and our cupping lab and green coffee buyers are in Montreal, Quebec.
We're constantly amazed by the dedication and hard work of our fellow co-op members and their support of the coffee farmers (and their producer cooperatives) that supply us from around the globe. Laughing Whale Coffee Roasters shares with Cooperative Coffees these three guiding lights: the commitment to social justice represented in Fair Trade, the goal of sustainability embodied in organic production and carbon neutrality, and the overarching principle of transparency – without which there is no basis for trust and as our way to counter the “green washing” and “relationship coffee” hype so common in the industry.
Members of Cooperative Coffees set aside $.03/lb from all green coffee sales passing through the Co-op into a common fund to support our coffee producers. In the beginning that fund was to help coffee farmers deal with infestations of roya, or coffee rust, and to improve coffee production and quality through projects such as composting programs and better moisture control in processing the green coffee. In the last two years we have turned that fund toward Covid relief to provide vital supplies quickly and efficiently.
As a roaster concerned with the ethical and environmental effects of our supply chain, these are exactly the kind of people we want to be working with.
