Thursday, July 28, 2011

"If people knew how the coffee was produced, they probably wouldn't drink it."

Nick Lamatrice of More Than Coffee talks about why it's important to living intentionally in the coffee you buy.

More than Coffee. What in the world?
Instead of asking people for donations, handouts, we ask people, if you're going to drink coffee anyway, why not our coffee.

I like the opportunity that the consumption coffee has for our ministry and for the people we serve.

I'm not a fan of coffee, so it's ironic that God called me to this ministry.
Apparently you sell coffee direct from the people who grow it.
Absolutely. We buy directly from the farmers.

We go to the source, which is not easy to do, but it's the only way to go.

We take the coffee, we roast it, we package it, and sell it over the internet.

I don't talk very much about the quality, not being a coffee drinker myself. But we get a lot of feedback from people who love the coffee.

If people knew how the coffee was produced, they probably wouldn't drink it.

We make great coffee that you don't have to feel guilty about drinking.

Unfortunately coffee is a slave trade, even in 2011.

You're going to buy coffee anyway. So why not buy coffee that will further God's kingdom?
Let me ask you this, Nick. What you want to do is put Christian farmers and Christian organizations, what does that do for the kingdom of God?
All the ministries we support - four of them - their main focus is spreading the gospel.

By buying coffee from More than Coffee, we are enabling these missionaries to do the work they're called to do.

Many, many times we've been asked (by the coffee farmers) why are you doing this? Why do you pay so well?

There are some that we advance money to...so they don't run out of money before they're ready to go.

For the farmer who puts food on his table, clothes in his back, is able to enroll his kid in education, coffee is his lifeline.

We're able to change lives through this process.

Because of the way we do business, we stand out from other coffee companies.

The coffee industry is not a fair industry. Fair trade has been established because of the coffee industry.

The reason I bring fair trade up is that most people have some sense that what goes on in 3rd world coffee farms probably isn't very fair.

You have to think about the things that you purchase. You have to think about the products you buy.

Nobody wants another human being to suffer, just so they can have their coffee.
You're talking about living intentionally here. What other implications are there to living intentionally outside of buying coffee?
I think as consumers and as people of faith, we have to be concerned with how things are produced. If you don't question where you purchase things, they can have consequences that are unintended.

Eventually we are going to be dependent on foreign products.

It has consequences that if you're a consumer, you have to realize that your support, when you buy products, you really are voting for the way companies do business.

I think now we're experiencing some of the hidden costs of buying things without caring where they came from.

What are some things besides coffee that we need to consider how it's produced?

Gold, oil, chocolate.

Diamonds are another one where humans are exploited.

If you buy those products, you're enabling these practices.
If people want to do research on that sort of thing, how do they begin to do that research?
There is a lot of information available on the internet.

You can go to coffee farms, and we've found a lot of hidden abuses.

You can't believe everything you read online, but you can start your research there.

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