This coffee comes from a single estate in the Jarabacoa region of the Dominican Republic. The Ramirez Estate employs over 400 people. 40 percent of the workers are female and many of them are Haitian migrant workers. They earn roughly 300 percent higher wages than Fair Trade requires. They use fermented coffee cherries to create natural gas, which partially powers their operation.
They also donate books and computers to the local schools, and in a more rural area, they built and funded a new school preventing small children from having to walk over 15 km each way to class. They also help Haitians obtain legal residence in the Dominican Republic, in order to receive fair wages. This estate is an example of how a coffee businesses that becomes successful should operate in their community.
As with the other coffees from the Ramirez Estate, this entire project is both environmentally and socially conscious. All water used to wash coffee is filtered before returning it to the land, and he uses natural shade with trees that create nitrates for the soil on his biodiverse farm. Eddy also employs 20-30 Haitian coffee pickers per season, assisting them to get legal status in the Dominican Republic and paying them fair wages for a Dominican picker.
