Dean Cycon, owner of Dean’s Beans – an organic, fair-trade, kosher coffee roaster in Orange, Massachusetts – and author of Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee, recently visited Boston College to share his insight on sustainable business as a vehicle for social change.  Recounting his journey from lawyer to coffee connoisseur, Cycon explained the great change that an environmentally friendly, fair-trade business has on the ability to produce with little sacrifice on behalf of the owner.

Cycon was originally interested in social justice and therefore went to law school in order to pursue a career in environmental law. Once he found a job at a firm, though, he realized that he had trouble tolerating the surplus of individuals who spent their time not upholding the law, but rather trying to cheat it.  According to Cycon, the “best day of [his] life” was the day his law firm fired him.

After abandoning his love of law, Cycon began giving lectures at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Rhode Island, one of which at URI concerned the deforestation in Brazil. After his speech, Cycon was approached by a professor who spoke of a friend in Providence who founded “Coffee Kids,” an organization dedicated to buying coffee in third-world villages and conducting projects for social betterment, such as the building of wells in the villages. Out of “purely circumstantial” luck, Cycon happened upon this opportunity to create social change; he seized it.

However, after witnessing the building of a new well in Guatemala, Cycon realized that he wanted to do more than just charity work. Cycon knew that although acquiring obtainable water for the well was paramount to the village, the people’s lives would not be significantly impacted because they still did not have the necessary resources to provide better lives for their families. Cycon stressed that “charity is good, but not when it interferes with the possibility of real change.”

With this notion, Cycon developed the idea of Dean’s Beans, an organic, fair-trade coffee company that focuses on the maintenance of the environment and the betterment of economic and societal problems in the third-world countries from whom the coffee is purchased.
Dean’s Beans buys only 100% organic coffee, meaning the coffee does not contain the dangerous pesticides typically found in inorganic coffee that are dumped in third-world countries. As a result, the men, women, and often children handling the coffee in countries like Guatemala will not be in contact with life-threatening pesticides.

Additionally, Cycon has worked with his coffee suppliers to come up with a minimum price-per-pound of coffee, about $1.50, that will still ensure the coffee growers a well-nourished and cared-for family. In other words, no matter the fluctuation of the supply and demand for coffee, Cycon will never pay his coffee suppliers less than their minimum price-per-pound.

On the contrary, enormous coffee franchises like Starbucks have paid as little as 35 cents-per-pound to the coffee suppliers due to steep increases in the supply of coffee. Because it costs approximately 60 cents to grow a pound of coffee, the coffee growers in third-world countries were actually driven deeper into poverty while Starbucks saw its most successful corporate profit on record.

As Cycon noted, “fair-trade can    not make a living by killing the farmers.” In addition to guaranteeing his coffee suppliers no less than their minimum price, Dean also gives the farmers the opportunity to receive 60% of the value of their contract in advance. Although many companies do engage in fair-trade, few offer this “pre-financing” option.

However, even with these beneficial updates to the normal coffee company system, it is still difficult to “break the cycle of poverty.” Therefore, Cycon continues to work towards “people-centered development” enabled by “Coffee Kids.” He works with the coffee farmers and their villages to shape development programs based on the needs of the villages. For example, he recently devised a plan for reforestation in Peru that he is helping to fund. With donations from supporters like Cycon, the villagers helped create and manage the program, selected the trees for the new ecosystem, and paid for the labor.

In order to advocate for “social change and respect for farmers,” Cycon has used his public speeches, such as those at the United Nations, as platforms to make known his story and the success of his business. Although his business is profitable, Cycon maintains that Dean’s Beans is not focused on profit but rather on “social change and environmental sustainability.” He believes that other large companies, such as Starbucks, could adopt the same goals as his company and still turn a profit while improving the lives of the coffee farmers and their families.

Cycon encouraged his Boston College audience, the upcoming generation of business owners, to look toward the future of business and see what can be changed. He emphasized the fact that the world environment and economy will suffer the blows of business “until business changes its fundamental operating principles.” According to Cycon, our generation can make this change, do “good work in the world,” and continue to profit.

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