Baby Steps: The Las Mingas Program

The Las Mingas Program is one of the most responsible and direct source models available to specialty coffee roasters throughout the world.

Still, it only represents 0.025% of Colombia's annual coffee production.

Photos of the Las Mingas nursery by Colleen Anunu, Gimme! Coffee.

Although not a competition, the Las Mingas Program is similar to Cup of Excellence, in that it rewards individual estates for producing high quality coffee.

The program works from the ground up by attacking the fundamental value set of Quantity vs. Quality.

The farms that produce the coffee are not huge estates, but are the basis of the land upon which the growers and their families live.

The total area of the land is roughly 2 acres.

The production from each farm is roughly 400 lbs. of high quality green coffee.

The program is designed to encourage the growers to take better care of their coffee crop.

They are given feedback on their production methods and are educated on improved techniques of growing, harvesting, and milling processes.

The Colombian government guarantees that every coffee producer will get paid for their crop one way or another.

Although this assurance is a step beyond what most governments of coffee growing countries do for their producers, it creates a system where low prices and low quality dominate the marketplace.

When the growers participate in the Las Mingas program, they are aware that the end user is a tostador (coffee roaster), rather than an exporter.

They are aware that their increased education is coupled with ours, creating a symbiotic relationship in which all of the participants learn and benefit from one another.

Gimme's coffee buying ambitions acquiesce 100% with the aims of this program, but it's baby steps for now.

In our 2nd year with this program, we are set to release our new crop Las Mingas offering (stay tuned!).

The example is set, and each year promises more coffee growers and more coffee roasters. We can only be optimistic about the years to come.