Stone Creek Coffee recently hosted a presentation and coffee tasting with Daniel Neves and Stephanie Palms-Neves from the Conquista Coffee Farm in Brazil. The husband and wife team shared details of how Stone Creek partners directly with their family farm to help provide resources to harvesters through the farm’s nonprofit organization Socially Conscious Coffee.
According to Steve Hawthorne of Stone Creek Coffee, the Conquista Brazilian coffee is used primarily in Stone Creek Espressos but is mixed with a number of different blends as well.
By the beginning of next year, Stone Creek will be purchasing two containers of coffee from Conquista which equates to around 90,000 pounds, Hawthorne said.
According to Neves, the coffee Stone Creek purchases makes up nearly 20 percent of the exports that come out of the farm, but the relationship is more because it serves as an example for other coffee owners.
“(The relationship with Stone Creek) is pretty significant,” Neves said. “We use them as an example of how much good other companies could be doing by being socially responsible.”
Palms-Neves is the originator of the nonprofit organization Socially Conscious Coffee, which creates sustainable prosperity for coffee harvesters and their families.
“Our organization takes 95 percent of the Socially Conscious Coffee Revenue and puts it directly back into education, healthcare, and environmental programs for the coffee harvesters and the surrounding communities,” Palms-Neves said.
According to Neves, Eric Resch, president and founder of Stone Creek Coffee, was very supportive of the Socially Conscious cause from the beginning.
Socially Conscious Coffee is different from the more familiar Fair Trade Coffee, Palms-Neves said. Fair Trade coffee’s mission is to focus on coffee prices paid to coffee farm owners while Socially Conscious Coffee focuses on providing education, health care and a clean environment for coffee harvesters and laborers, who according to Palms-Neves are the most impoverished group of people in the coffee industry.
To meet Daniel and Stephanie, and to get a better idea about how Stone Creek helps provide funds for the Socially Conscious Coffee cause watch the video below.
