Jose Ernesto - Transparency

Farmer: Jose Ernesto
Importer: Semilla

Price we paid Semilla for the landed coffee in our Montreal warehouse: 18CAD/kg

FOB price: 10,76CAD/kg. The price Semilla had to pay different parties (farmers, milling, exporters, etc) before the coffee departs origin.

Farmgate price: 3,100,000 Colombian Pesos per carga
The National farmgate price in January was 2,450,000 Colombian Pesos per carga.

Semilla paid 25% above market price. To compare to just 2 years ago, the farmgate price was below 2,000,000, and has low as 1,400,000.

This is the third time Semilla bought Jose's whole production.
The family's passion for coffee brought them into contact with many buyers over the years, buyers who appeared to be supportive but never lived up to their words. Sadly, in Colombia, it’s very common for producers to be offered high prices, but for these prices to be continent on cup scores that they have little to no information on our access to understanding how it was arrived at.

We love working with Semilla for this very reason: they always try to get market access for smallholders who would otherwise often sell on the local market for less money.
We also love that Semilla buys tasty coffees, but that cup score isn't the main driver in their buying process.

Indeed, many producers have never cupped themselves and these are left at the
mercy of buyers who know that they will have to pay more when they score a coffee high and as such, often seek to score low in the means of obtaining solid coffees at lower prices. In the interim, the producer is never offered feedback on what they can do to improve, leaving them perpetually beholden to the standards of a system they don’t understand.