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11 Origin & sourcing

Cooperative

A producer-owned organization that aggregates coffee from many smallholder farmers, processes it together, and sells it under the cooperative's name.

  • Availability: Common

In countries with many smallholder farmers (Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, much of Central America), cooperatives play a central role: they pool cherries from member farmers, run the wet mill, manage drying, and negotiate sales. A cooperative-sourced single-origin is traceable to a region and a co-op rather than to one individual farm, and is often the structure behind a Fair Trade certification.

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