source: Untours.com

Untours Supports Fair Trade Coffee

Several years ago Hal Taussig, owner of Idyll Untours, and Bill Harris, co-founder of Cooperative Coffees, were introduced to one another by a mutual friend, Monika Firl, who worked with a budding small-farmer coffee cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico. Bill wanted to help these farmers develop a direct market for their coffee in North America. Hal had recently visited the cooperative, Mut Vitz, and offered to help finance the project.

Three years and two trips to Mexico later, Idyll Untours and Cooperative Coffees have now partnered to prefinance a portion of the harvest of Mut Vitz coffee. The resulting arrangement provides the producers with cash during the difficult three to six month period between picking the beans and actually collecting funds from the sale of the coffee.

Hal Taussig and Bill Harris with sacks of Mut Vitz coffee.

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