Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. and Heifer International Form Partnership: Working Together to Improve the Lives of Coffee Farmers

The partnership has three goals:

• To help struggling coffee farmers become self-reliant
• To raise consumer awareness about organic, Fair Trade coffee
• To inspire donors to help Heifer International in its fight against world hunger

The partnership joins Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., a publicly held company which has made a commitment to social responsibility and the environment (annually setting aside 5% of its pre-tax profits to support charitable causes), with Heifer International, a nonprofit organization that combats hunger and poverty around the world through gifts of livestock and training in sustainable agriculture.

Heifer provides cows, goats and other livestock to impoverished families who then promise to "pass on the gift" of their animal's offspring to others, lifting up whole communities. Since it began in 1944, Heifer has helped more than 4.5 million families move toward self-reliance.

The partnership comes at a time of crisis for small-scale coffee farmers. With prices for coffee beans at historic lows because of a glut of low-quality coffee on the world market, as many as 25 million growers and their families face financial ruin.

Green Mountain Coffee helps coffee farmers by purchasing high-quality, certified-organic Arabica beans used by specialty coffee roasters, and by paying the Fair Trade price to its suppliers for many of its coffees.

Heifer International helps coffee-growing families diversify their sources of income, giving them livestock to help them earn extra money when coffee prices are depressed. Extra income means better nutrition, housing, health care and education.

Green Mountain Coffee says it is committed to helping coffee farmers by supporting projects that foster self-sufficiency and individual empowerment. Green Mountain believes that such programs work to the company's benefit by helping to insure that it will have reliable sources of quality coffee.

The partnership endorsed by TransFair USA

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., headed by founder Robert Stiller, introduced its first certified organic coffee in 1990. In 1992, Green Mountain Coffee launched a line of "Stewardship™" coffees, which, the company said, "are grown and harvested with proper care and respect for the land and the workers."

The company has worked to earn Fair Trade certification for most of its certified organic coffees. Fair Trade means that a coffee co-op is guaranteed a minimum floor price that allows it to make a profit even during times of low market prices. This guarantees a living wage to small-scale farmers who are members of a Fair Trade cooperative.

TransFair USA, an independent certifier of Fair Trade and organic products, recently endorsed the Green Mountain-Heifer International partnership.

Under the new partnership, Green Mountain Coffee and Heifer will work together in coffee-growing communities. For example, coffee farmers who receive a Heifer goat or cow and training in sustainable agriculture will have new sources of income when prices fall below what they need to make a living.

Green Mountain Coffee buys coffees in several of the countries in which Heifer works. Heifer will help strengthen the communities that supply Green Mountain with high-quality coffees that are grown in a sustainable manner, respectful of local eco-systems. Then together, Heifer International and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will seek to educate consumers about the importance of buying sustainable coffees.

A history of social responsibility

Stiller is enthusiastic about the partnership. "Green Mountain is looking to do as much as we can to support these coffee-growing areas, and if we all work together we will be able to do them more effectively," he said. "I felt it was a great fit," Stiller continued. "With Heifer's track record of success, I think there are many things we can learn from each other."

Stiller is considered a visionary among business executives. Fortune Small Business magazine this year ranked Green Mountain Coffee among the top 20 on its list of the 100 "Fastest-Growing Small Companies" in the United States, as it had last year. For three years running, Forbes Magazine has honored the company as one of the "200 Best Small Companies in America." The October 2001 issue of the magazine named Stiller its first "Entrepreneur of the Year."

Green Mountain Coffee (GreenMountainCoffee.com) is primarily a wholesaler whose customers include grocery stores, gourmet shops, convenience stores, restaurants and offices. It also sells its coffee directly to consumers through its website and catalog. One mark of the esteem in which connoisseurs hold Green Mountain's coffee is its position as supplier to the Culinary Institute of America.

Green Mountain Coffee also supports Coffee Kids, an international nonprofit organization that works to improve the quality of life for children and families in coffee-growing communities. And it was one of the founders of Grounds for Health, which offers health care to coffee-growing communities.

Jim Hoey, Heifer's Latin America chief, said of the partnership: "We've hooked up with a socially and environmentally responsible corporation; it's vital that we as non-profits find new ways of doing things. One of those is trying to support socially and environmentally aware corporations. Those companies need to be encouraged. I think it's a win-win situation for both of us."

Contact Heifer International at (800) 696-1918 or visit us on the Web at www.heifer.org. Contact Rick Peyser at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters at (800) 545-2326 x 1117 or visit on the web at www.greenmountaincoffee.com.