Lansing’s Paramount Coffee Partners with MSU to Support Rwandan Agriculture

Lansing-based Paramount Coffee Company is partnering with MSU's Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL) endowment program. The company is donating $1 from every bag of Fair Trade Rwanda Coffee sold.

According to excerpts from the article:

After the Rwandan genocide, MSU's Institute of International Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development developed a program that linked Rwanda's struggling coffee farmers with Paramount and other members of the coffee industry throughout the world.

The proceeds from the sale of Paramount's Fair Trade Rwanda coffee have funded, for example, the purchase of 400 goats for the rural coffee-growing village of Gashonga.

The goats serve as a source of protein through their milk and cheese and, when they die, their meat. The goats also produce fertilizer for coffee growers and — since the number donated was so sizable — procreate to sustain the herd.

Read the entire article here.