A Collaboration With Impact 

Green Mountain Coffee and Heifer International are joining forces to help coffee-growing communities build sustainable solutions to poverty and hunger.

Each year in Chiapas, Mexico, coffee farmers and their families face a period of food insecurity known regionally as los meses flacos (“the thin months”). Coinciding with the rainy season from May to September, this is the time when income from the coffee harvest is depleted, farmers’ food reserves have diminished and prices of nutritional staples like beans and corn have risen. Community members are forced to eat less, consume less nutritious food, and borrow against future income to sustain themselves.

With your gift to Heifer Internationaland support from Green Mountain Coffee, Heifer is providing resources and training to these coffee-growing communities in the mountains of southern Mexico through a unique pilot project. The goal is to reduce the dependence on coffee as their only source of income and ensure that they can maintain a healthy diet throughout the year. The people in these communities, members of the CESMACH (Campesinos Ecológicos de la Sierra Madre de Chiapas) co-op of coffee farmers, have received fruit trees, livestock and training – resources they will utilize to supplement their income and stabilize their livelihood.

Each community chose the animals that best suited their needs. Several communities chose pigs or rabbits for the income they can provide during the lean months. One chose draft horses that will allow the farmers to transport goods to the nearest town. And most communities will receive honeybees, which will pollinate their crops and provide them with another marketable product: honey.

The result: Communities that grow Green Mountain’s high-quality coffees are economically stronger, and the organic coffee they produce is environmentally sustainable. Heifer and Green Mountain Coffee – a collaboration that combines commercial enterprise with social responsibility – and improves the lives of small-scale family coffee farmers.