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Sustainable, Shade-Grown, Direct-Trade Coffee Beans

What is Direct-TradeCoffee?

In a world where consumers buy hundreds of products every year without having any idea where they come from nevermind who they come from, Direct-Trade Coffee is an exciting and important concept.

With terms like Fair Trade Coffee, Organic Coffee, Sustainable and Shade-grown Coffee floating around the world, do we really need another term to describe the coffee we buy and sell? At Poverty Bay Coffee Company we think the answer is a resounding YES! The reason is simple; the terms Fair Trade, Organic, Sustainable and Shade-grown all require either a leep of faith on the part of consumers or a third party that is paid to attempt to give the consumer the peace of mind that the coffee what they are drinking is doing more good than harm. With Direct Trade Coffee consumers know exactly where the coffee they are drinking comes from and because of that they know exactly how it is grown and processed. Simple!!


El Malinal

El Malinal is a community of about 850 people on the southwest slope of Cerro Jan Juan, an extinct volcano that lies between Nayarites capital of Tepic and the Pacific Ocean. In 1997 Poverty Coffee Company set sail in the coffee industry with the goal of roasting and selling World-class coffee that did a world of good instead of a world of harm. This of course, ended up being quite an education for all of us. Our knowledge was shallow, our learning curve was steep and we wanted very much to get it right. As we did more research we knew one thing for sure, we needed to find coffee importers who we could trust and who shared our passion for the important social and environmental issues surrounding the buying and selling of coffee. When we made our millionth phone call we finally found our friends at San Cristobal Coffee Importers. Devorah Zeitlin and Jim Kosalos and the farmers they were working with - the farmers at El Malinal in the state of Nayarit, Mexico, had everything we were looking for. Their coffees are Shadeg-rown, Organic, 100% Sustainable and the prices Dev and Jim pay the farmers of El Malinal exceed Fair Trade Cofee standards. Best of all we have a direct relationship with the farmers.

Café Selvanica & Café Inkaiko

In 1999 while exhibiting at CoffeeFest in Seattle, we had the good fortune of meeting two young men who were determined to make the contacts necessary to sell a special coffee from Café Selvanica in Peru.
Carrying a backpack full of green coffee bean samples from booth to booth KC O’Keefe and Steve Gunderson of Jungle tech Coffee Importers convinced us that their coffee was Shade-grown, Sustainable, Organic and that they were commited to paying their farmers prices that exceeded Fair Trade Coffee standards. We tried the coffee, loved it and another long term Direct Trade relationship was born. Since then KC has move to Peru, married his lovely wife Tatiana (a Peruvian) and has dedicated his life to a Direct Trade relationship with the farmers of Café Selvanica and Café Inkaiko.

What is Shade-Grown Coffee?

Shade Grown Coffee is high altitude Arabica coffee that is grown under the canopy of larger plants and trees. The coffee bush is a shade loving plant that thrives in this micro-ecosystem and produces slightly larger, more flavorful beans than sun grown coffee. Sun grown coffee has really only been around since the mid 1970’s and it has proven to be an unsustainable micro-ecosystem that requires constant fertilization and the consistent use of pesticides. This is very good for the producers of fertilizers and pesticides but very bad for the farmers and the environment. Sun grown coffee is a hybrid plant that was “invented” in a misguided attempt to make coffee farming easier and more like let’s say, wheat farming in Kansas.

The idea was that if you mow down the rainforest and plant coffee bushes in nice neat rows it would be easier to maintain and easier to harvest. I guess in reality it is easier to walk up to a coffee bush and dump fertilizer on it or walk up to a coffee bush and spray it with pesticides and in fairness it is easier to walk up to a coffee bush and harvest it. But, one has to ask, at what price. Pollution, erosion, flooding, sickness, lower quality products and on and on and on.

At Poverty Bay Coffee Company we set out in 1997 to be a small part of the coffee business doing things in a way that supports the natural environment. We wanted to be a small part of the coffee business doing things in a way that supports the farmers. We wanted to be a small part of the coffee business doing things in a way that supports the birds and the frogs and all of the thousands of species that make the rainforest their home. We wanted to be a small part of the coffee business doing things in a way that gives you, the consumer, a coffee buying option that you can be proud of and tell your friends about.

When we looked at all of our options back in 1997 we really thought the most important issue in coffee was organic. It is an important issue. But the more research that we did the more clear it was to us that by far the most important issue in coffee was whether or not it was Shade Grown. If it is Shade Grown it is almost certainly organic naturally. The micro-ecosystem of a Rainforest gives the coffee bush everything that it needs to survive and to thrive. The soil is fertile. The natural enemies of the coffee bush are kept in check by their natural enemies. It is nature in balance with itself. The farmers are able to harvest many sustenance crops from the Rainforest as well. It is man working in harmony with nature not man trying to bend nature to his will, damn the consequences.

It is growing coffee in the rainforest not growing coffee instead of the rainforest.
Buy some today and Welcome to the family.

Introducing our Coffee Importers: San Cristobal Coffee Importers



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