Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company’s mission has been clear for 26 years: To use high-quality, specialty coffee as a vehicle for positive change throughout the coffeelands of Asia, Africa and the Americas.
In 1994, we set out to prove that a for-profit business could create meaningful change through ethical business practices rooted in respect for the earth, the farmer, our co-workers and the consumer.
Our work starts with decades-old direct relationships with coffee farmers. From them, we source only organic, shade-grown coffee. This guarantees that the soil is pesticide-free, and that the farmer is protecting the soil and water quality of their farm. We also ensure the surrounding environment, including critical migratory bird habitat, is conserved, optimizing conditions for growing outstanding coffees.
Our business model is radical and, some say, totally backwards:
- We BUY HIGH and SELL LOW. We pay as much for that coffee as we can! Then, we sell it to the public as low as we can, so everyone has the opportunity to be a part of socially-just trade.
- We design and fund People-Centered Development projects in each community we work with, based on the communities’ chosen priorities. This award-winning approach focuses on the real needs of local communities for the ecological, economic and social necessities of life that are often disrupted by conventional development assistance.
Right now, many cooperatives identify climate resilience and food sovereignty as top priority. Together, we have created reforestation projects in Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Sumatra, setting up native fruit tree nurseries and planting over 350,000 trees to date. We are engaging young farmers in Guatemala to continue farming the land of their ancestors, while utilizing new technologies that offer solutions to a changing climate, as well as green jobs to a new generation.
We are currently scaling up our 20-year long agroforestry and water conservation project in Sumatra to save the critically endangered orangutan. Our “Reclaiming Sumatra” project includes purchasing land from palm oil plantations, cutting down oil palms and reforesting with indigenous hardwoods grown in nurseries we started with our farmers. So far this year, we’ve planted 11,000 trees.
The project is decreasing palm lands, increasing orangutan habitat, adding bird-friendly and carbon-neutralizing acreage around the coffee farms, and providing alternative income to the farmers growing and planting the trees. We will donate the Green America award to this project, immediately increasing orangutan habitat and sequestering carbon in Sumatra.
Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company is a certified Organic company, proud to work in cooperation with Fair Trade Federation and B Corps to promote business as a force for global good.
A proven pioneer in the field of social responsibility, social justice, sustainable practices and ecological stewardship, we ask you to join our movement. Together, we can brew great coffee and create real change.
