Crowdfund Update III
Phew, folks — what a tough period we've just been through. After a perfect start, we were hit by rare hailstorms right before harvest. During the first days of washing, we discovered that some perfectly ripe, red cherries were hiding dark beans inside — ice damage…
Since Moyee only processes the best of the best, we had to hit pause, sparking major concern among farmers. After last year's big income leap, this year could’ve been a disaster for our FairChain Farming program.
“What doesn’t kill you…”
— Adne, Sustainability Assistant Smallholder Program
1. From 20% Premium to Living Income
As the only coffee company in the Netherlands, we place living income at the center of our FairChain Farming program. Read more and download our whitepaper.
So what happened?
In some pretty intense conversations with lead farmers, we mapped out a path we're now genuinely proud of:
- We collected cherries from a group of farmers unaffected by hail to maintain the high quality required for Moyee coffee. This group was actually planned for 2020 in our impact roadmap.
- We were forced to test onboarding new farmers onto our blockchain platform under pressure — which gave the platform a huge boost in development (more on that below).
- To prevent any dip in farmer income, we increased the volume of unwashed (sundried) beans for the Moyee Double. These beans can be sorted for hail damage, with the rejected ones going into conventional coffees.
- We found a buyer specifically interested in these beans. That meant we needed classic certification — so we got our program UTZ-certified in record time (yup 😏) and sold a container of beans. We’re aiming for 7 containers in the coming years, enabling 1000 more farmers to join the FairChain Farming program.
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This collaboration with UTZ sparked a project to explore how we can lower certification costs using our blockchain platform.
2. Blockchain, Unstoppable
With our FairChain blockchain platform, Moyee is moving beyond storytelling and storydoing — into story proving. Measurable, verifiable impact. Crucially, we log farmer payments, proving their earning power — a big step toward access to credit.
New this year is collecting extra data to monitor the impact of our training program. We introduced farm management software that helps our trainers give better advice and lays the foundation for performance-based services. Our goal? Farmers paying for training.
Sound crazy? Maybe — but we believe giving away training is outdated NGO thinking. It discourages farmers from applying what they learn and maintains their dependency on aid.
Next year, we plan to test pre-financing harvests and training via a blockchain-based loan. With your help!
3. New Crowdfund
50 million smallholder farmers worldwide live below the poverty line without access to credit. They can’t invest in their farms, let alone in a wet mill. Hopefully, our loyalty to blockchain is starting to make sense — it enables value transfer, delivers proof of impact, sparks behavioral change, and makes credit possible.
Your previous loan helped us get the ball rolling. We're preparing a new crowdfund campaign to finance the beans needed for 2020. Part of it will fund the world’s first tokenized loan to smallholders — a revolutionary step to bank the unbankable.
Are you in?