By Katherine Hutt Scott*
Small things occasionally grow VERY big. That’s what happened when Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) projects to support small-scale coffee bean growers in Peru and Honduras became linked to a 30-second television commercial aired during Super Bowl 50 that was worth an estimated $5 million.
The coffee producer cooperatives of Norandino in Peru and COMSA in Honduras supply beans to Death Wish Coffee, a small roaster in northern New York state in the United States, which promotes its product as “The World’s Strongest Coffee.”
Last year, Death Wish Coffee entered a competition for a free Super Bowl advertisement sponsored by Intuit, the U.S.-based parent company of TurboTax and QuickBooks.
Intuit narrowed the field of a reported 15,000 small businesses that entered the competition to 10 finalists, and said that the winner would be determined by a public vote. Death Wish Coffee revved up its base of dedicated customers to solicit votes and emerged as the winner. Its ad was televised on February 7.
The beans that made it all possible came from quiet green slopes thousands of miles south of New York.
In Peru, the MIF administered a Social Entrepreneurship Program project financed by its parent, the Inter-American Development Bank Group, which aimed to provide credit to some 2,500 small coffee producers in the Peruvian highlands and also training to help the farmers increase their incomes and diversify their production. The Social Entrepreneurship Program focuses on solutions for the poorest people in Latin America and the Caribbean. The project in Peru worked with the CEPICAFÉ coffee cooperative, which eventually became the Norandino cooperative. During the 2003-2008 project, the producers adopted organic farming techniques, which resulted in a 60% increase in their revenues. They also achieved the standards and certifications required to sell to international markets.
In Honduras, the MIF managed another Social Entrepreneurship Program project with four coffee cooperatives, including COMSA, which also involved financing and technical assistance that aimed to boost the incomes of the producers. The $460,000 project, carried out from 2007 to 2011, provided loans for working capital and investments in machinery and other equipment. The technical assistance covered a range of issues: from requirements for obtaining organic and/or fair trade certification of their coffee beans, to proper irrigation techniques, to inclusion of women in the management of the businesses. The result: sales for the 800 producers in the four cooperatives skyrocketed to $4.5 million in 2010, from $500,000 in 2005.
Furthermore, the MIF continues to assist COMSA, this time with a $740,000 project that focuses on in various climate-smart techniques. Starting in the latter half of 2015, the MIF has provided:
• A measurement of COMSA’s carbon footprint
• An audit of the water consumption and energy consumption at its coffee plant
• A plan of action to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and increase its efficiency in the use of water and energy
• A business plan for the production and marketing of organic fertilizer
