Keurig Dr Pepper safeguards coffee’s future by partnering to empower coffee growers
Friday was International Coffee Day, so did you raise a cup of joe to celebrate? Whether or not you realised it was a holiday, there’s a decent chance you started your day with a mug or two. The worldwide coffee business is booming, and it’s only going to get bigger. For the first time since 2017, worldwide coffee consumption is likely to exceed production this year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. However, strong coffee demand, combined with economic issues, climate change, and now COVID-19, poses complicated challenges that endanger the health and vitality of the coffee supply chain, particularly for smallholder farmers, who are one of the chain’s most vulnerable parts.
Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) is committed to addressing these difficulties front on in order to help ensure the future of this high-demand commodity. KDP is committed to ensuring the success of the people who make its goods, notably smallholder coffee growers and the co-ops that connect them to markets. KDP, on the other hand, cannot do it alone; its success is dependent on new partnerships.
Root Capital, a nonprofit that works with small and developing agricultural firms to revitalise rural communities, is one such collaboration that has lasted over 20 years. Root Capital provides loans to underbanked enterprises as well as financial management, climate resilience, digitisation, and other skills training to help them grow their businesses and better serve their farmer members. Through many initiatives, KDP collaborates with Root Capital to provide vital consulting services and catalytic finance to farmer-allied businesses in vulnerable communities around the world.
For example, in 2017, KDP collaborated with Root Capital and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to launch the Partnership for Sustainable Coffee (PSC), a three-year project that benefited 330,000 smallholder coffee farmers and their families in Colombia, Honduras, Indonesia, Peru, Rwanda, and Uganda. In 2020, KDP, Root Capital, USAID, and a new partner, the Ezrah Charitable Trust, expanded on the success of PSC to create the Partnership for Sustainable Supply Chains (PSSC), which will help agricultural firms affected by COVID-19.
