As one of our coffee farmers, Fernando, puts it, "El café une la planeta", meaning coffee unites the world, it brings people together. At Daisuke, we know exactly where each bean was grown, who harvested it and how it made its way to the consumer's cup. We even know the farmers and their families well, shaking hands and talking to them from time to time. They are our friends.

We take care of them, pay a fair price for the beans, support the development of the farms and children's education, and in return we get high quality products within the specialty coffee category, through a controlled, transparent and sustainable system.

We believe that we do not want to exploit those we know. Our fair trade systemserves both the producer and the customer. We build a community of individuals and companies who care about quality and the mission behind the product, the "purpose".

Our company is named after Daisuke Tanaka, the Japanese master of coffee tasting and former judge of the Cup of Excellence, a competition for the best coffees on the planet. His partner Szabolcs Szelei decided to dedicate his days to sustainable, socially just and quality coffee after successful decades as a senior executive in multinational companies. Daisuke and Szabolcs share a passion for finding the best coffees in the world and bringing them to their customers.

That's how they discovered the organic farms of Eudoro, Fernando, Felipe, Luiz, Samuel and Sergio in the prime coffee-growing regions of Latin America. Small and medium-sized farms are geared towards achieving excellence rather than mass production. Our shrubs are perched on steep slopes at 1,100 to 2,000 metres, the temperature at this altitude is most conducive to the sugar content of the beans. They are sheltered by scattered tree canopies, and more than 5-6 hours of direct sunlight per day would be detrimental.

Exploitation is a sad part of coffee production. Child labor is part of everyday life, and children do not even go to school during harvest time. But child labor is nonexistent on Daisuke farms. Why? We pay a fixed amount, several times the world market price per kilo of beans, so not only do we pay the farm workers a decent wage, but we also support the children's education.

In our experience, obtaining fair trade certification places a heavy financial and administrative burden on farmers, but once the certification is awarded, the issuers lack the capacity to continuously monitor whether the principles of worker protection are being implemented in practice. We do, however, continuously monitor compliance with the rules.

Infrastructural improvements are essential on these farms, and the high price paid for coffee allows for these efforts. One way to make a serious difference is to improve biodiversity. Coffee production is traditionally monocultural, which exhausts the land and does not provide workers with work in the off-season. Our friend Felipe has dedicated his life to polycultural production, and his method is already used on nearly 100 farms. The 24 varieties of crops grown on the farms provide food, work and income for the people, as well as nutrients for the land.

The path of the beans is completely transparent. We deal personally with the farmers, the money paid goes entirely to them, there are no other traders or distributors in the chain. We give our corporate partners, the companies that order from us, the opportunity to contact the farmers, learn about their lives, their needs and the coffee itself.