Our Mission Coffee: Changing the World, One Cup at a Time

FRANKLIN, Tenn., Feb. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- In the last decade, world coffee prices have doubled while coffee farmers' wages have decreased by 24%, leaving most coffee farmers subsisting as modern-day slaves. One new company aims to change that. Our Mission Coffee (http://www.ourmissioncoffee.com) is purchasing, marketing and selling fresh-roasted coffee through cooperative marketing -- a business model that benefits everyone from small farmers to consumer.

The first direct-to-consumer provider of fresh-roasted, 100% organic and Premium Fair Trade coffee, Our Mission Coffee is bringing socially responsible entrepreneurship to an industry that has been built on the backs of some of the world's most vulnerable people. Although coffee is the number-one agricultural product in the world and the most traded commodity after oil, only one percent of coffee sold globally is Fair Trade. The other 99% is purchased at well below a living wage for coffee farmers.

Our Mission Coffee, however, purchases coffee directly from farmers in small cooperatives at a minimum of 70% above the Fair Trade floor. While the most recent Fair Trade standards dictate that a minimum of $1.26 per pound be paid to growers Our Mission Coffee pays farmers no less than $2.15 per pound. It's a practice the company refers to as Premium Fair Trade.

"Our Mission Coffee believes in meeting and surpassing the needs of private and family coffee farms. We pay direct to the farmer through our cooperative, which cuts out middlemen and ensures the farmer receives the majority of the price per pound," explained Our Mission Coffee CEO Tod Bell. "As a system of trade based on respect for workers' rights and the environment, Fair Trade can help reverse the environmental degradation and growing economic inequities that have been a result of the growth in existing world trade practices."

Premium Fair Trade isn't the only difference between Our Mission Coffee and conventional coffee companies. Shade-grown and 100% organic, Our Mission Coffee is roasted by hand in small batches the same day it's shipped to the customer. Customers can buy as little as one bag or become part of the Our Mission Coffee Club and receive automatic monthly shipments. Those who want to play a bigger role in bringing justice to coffee farmers can share Our Mission Coffee with friends by hosting coffee talks. The company even offers consumers the opportunity to become profitably compensated representatives of Our Mission Coffee.

The company has also introduced CoffeeIQ®, a quantifiable means of measuring the total economic impact the direct-to-consumer business model has on everyone involved. Every pound of Our Mission Coffee sold has a CoffeeIQ®, or economic impact, of $5.75 on growers and their communities.

"Our Mission Coffee is proving justice and profits can go hand-in-hand," said Bell. "We hope coffee lovers everywhere will want to help us change the world of coffee by changing the world with coffee."

Learn more about Our Mission Coffee and its groundbreaking approach to purchasing, roasting and selling coffee at http://www.ourmissioncoffee.com.

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SOURCE Our Mission Coffee