Building Value Chain Efficiency with a Global Company: The Case of Starbucks and Shade Grown Mexico Coffee (Presentation)

Edward Millard of Conservation International presented, “Building Value Chain Efficiency with a Global Company: The Case of Starbucks and Shade Grown Mexico Coffee." The seminar was the 8th installment of the monthly Breakfast Seminar Series, “Linking Small Firms to Competitiveness Strategies.”

Millard focused his presentation on a USAID-sponsored intervention that led to the successful partnership between Starbucks, Conservation International and coffee cooperatives in Chiapas, Mexico. Millard explored this successful value chain intervention, highlighting the various relationships established and improvements implemented to create a globally competitive specialty coffee — Shade Grown Mexico — raise environmental awareness and conservation levels, and a achieve new level of transparency in the coffee market in Chiapas. He went on to discuss how Conservation International’s partnership with Starbucks has enhanced the social and environmental sustainability of the Starbucks supply chain and increased the incomes of participating coffee farmers.