It is a hot day in October and a large truck pulls up at the farm gate. The truck has been expected for the past two days so everyone is happy when it finally arrives. The buyer is impatient; he wants the coffee loaded up fast so he can move on to the next farm. The price had been previously agreed but now he turns up with only part of the agreed total. It is a take it or leave it situation for the farmer. This year’s crop is a marked improvement over the past few seasons, the result of the extra attention to detail and the small investments the farmer has struggled to make over the past two years. The coffee is now of excellent quality yet the buyer is only paying commodity1 coffee prices. But there is no alternative and the top quality coffee will now be sold on as only commodity coffee, to be mixed with dozens of other coffees in the area and, eventually, coffees from the whole country. This story repeats itself thousands of times around the coffee growing regions of the world. It is a situation that benefits neither the farmers nor the consumers. What can be done? What follows is the story of a Brazilian farmers co-operative and two of their farms that have now become part of a project selling their coffee directly to consumers in the UK offering a model for a new way forward.

.