One of the biggest problems most smallholder coffee producers face today is that they run out of money before the year is over. The end of the year for a coffee producer is harvest time and they need to pay the pickers. To pay the wages, the producers often have to sell their coffee at the local market price leaving little to no coffee to sell at the higher, export market price. Selling coffee at the local market price is unsustainable as the income isn’t enough to maintain the costs of running the farm for a whole year which makes them sell their coffee at the local market price...
Many smallholder coffee farmers use cheaper, more damaging applications (chemical herbicides, pesticides,...), pay lower wages or use less labor or even have their farms on sale because they literally don’t have the money to sustain them.

Over the last two years at bridazul we have been supporting many local farmers faced with this problem and with money from our own pockets. We believe that we could help many more smallholder producers by helping them get the coffee to the export market. Last year we worked with 12 producers, we have 21 confirmed for this year and possibly up to 25.

That's why we want to ask for your help.

We are asking for $5,000* which is the equivalent of 5,000lb that enables us to prepay to those producers during the harvest that is happening now. If we are not able to prepay them, they will have no other choice than to sell to the local market and lose the extra margin.
It's 5,000lb of coffee that those producers can take to the export market and receive extra money for. Every $1 we receive on top of the $5,000 goal, we will prepay another 1lb of coffee of the same producers.

*In reality we're asking for €4,100 as Fundrazr, or any other platform for that matter, doesn't allow funds to be collected for Nicaragua. Tim, one of the founders of bridazul, being originally from Belgium has made it possible to collect funds through his account, that's why the goal is in Euro. All possible bank charges and valuta changes to transfer the money here will be handled and paid by bridazul. We pledge that every $1 will be used to get 1lb of coffee on the export market.

Picture 1. One of the coffee producers we've been working with for the last 3 years and one of the buyers that has been buying his coffee consecutively for the last 3 years together bought a fridge for the farm (most coffee producers don't live on their own farms here) which we helped deliver.  It changed the lives of the people living and working on the farm as they now could store fresh-made juices, cheese, cream and meat they bought at the market. It seems like a relatively small and easy-to-do purchase, but it created a ripple effect in the community around the farm and the producer in question was asked by several other producers why he did it. This is what he answered them:"Because I finally could. The money I received for my coffee was sufficient to share with the people I've been working with for such a long time."

Figure 1. From the traditional model, where coffee producers don't have enough income to cover the costs of the year, over the 'bridazul fund', that makes them earn more for their coffee, to being a self-sufficient farm, where income surpasses expenses.

By contributing to the 'bridazul fund' you pledge to help coffee producers get a fairer price for their coffee, forever!

The 'bridazul fund' is used to pre-pay the producers $1 when they need money, the same as if they would sell it on the local market. But the difference is this: the producers are still able to sell their coffee on the export market at a higher price. Actually, we're even going to help them sell it.

After export we pay-out the Farm Gate Price minus $1 (which we already paid) to the producer. We charge all our service fees directly to the buyers and don't touch the agreed upon Farm Gate Price.

The bridazul fund is self-sufficient, the fund empties during harvest and refills after export by design, year after year. We try to make all farms we work with self-sufficient too.

Every time we succeed in making a farm self-sufficient (Farm Gate Price ≥ Cost of Production) we succeed in making the fund obsolete for that farm thereby making room for other farms to participate. Therefore we need to get producers to be able to sell their own coffee on the export market, which is why we're asking for your help.

More contributions to the 'bridazul fund' means more producers can sell more of their own coffee directly on the export market earning more for their hard work, in order to do this we need to break the vicious circle of having to sell coffee at $1/lb just to pay the pickers.