The red berrylike fruit yields green pits that are roasted and ground, she said, extending a pamphlet with a photo of ripe cherries on a brown stalk.
Education and advocacy are the heart of the modest Missoula-based international coffee nonprofit. With a budget of $330,000 in 2004, just two employees and an office with no windows, the six-year-old organization still has an outsized impact on the international coffee market.
"Not in terms of the number of bags of coffee that move through the Cup of Excellence program, but through the impact of the auctions," Ferguson said.
Cup of Excellence is an alliance-run program through which individual farmers in Brazil, El Salvador, Colombia, Bolivia and Nicaragua compete at tasting contests. The tasters come mainly from the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, many of whom own coffee roasting companies. After the contests, the top-ranked beans are sold by Internet auction.
There are other programs to promote quality coffees and to aid farmers, and there are a number of other bean auctions, Ferguson said. But none generates the amount of competition and the frenzied atmosphere of Cup of Excellence, he said.
At the most recent auction, on Tuesday, the top Brazilian grower, Francisco Isidoro Dias Pereira, sold his coffee for $49.75 per pound.
By comparison, the commodity price for coffee on the New York Board of Trade sold Friday for $1.19 per pound.
More important than one small-scale grower's sky-high profits are the connections made between coffee retailers and growers, said Susie Spindler, founder of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence. Many of the coffee judges, known as "cuppers," buy beans from the farmers they meet.
And that's the point, she said.
When the alliance was founded in 1999, it was funded by a United Nations project. The goal was to find ways for coffee farmers to get more money for their produce.
"Typically, you've got millions of small farmers who don't have access to the marketplace," Spindler said.
The small farmers sell raw beans to exporters, who lump all the beans together and ship them. The quality control is sketchy; the beans are simply an indistinguishable commodity.
In 1999, Spindler came up with the coffee competition to help individual farmers to stand out from the pack.
"That was great, but you can't take a certificate to the grocery store," she said.
That year, Spindler also experimented with an Internet auction. The results were stunning - the prices broke all records for coffee sold in Brazil.
Three years later, the U.N. was out of the picture, and the commerce departments of coffee producing countries in Central and South America maintained the program. Also, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence has about dues-paying 160 members, most of whom are roasters or retailers, Spindler said.
"What's so great about this program is it puts cash into the farmer's pocket, cash with no strings attached," Spindler said.
The main focus of the organization this year is to continue growing its membership and expanding its service to other parts of the world.
One member is Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea Inc. of Chicago. Geoff Watts, a co-owner, has long traveled the backwoods of distant countries to hand-pick coffee beans from the best farmers he could find.
Intelligentsia is small by national coffee roasting standards. The company, with two coffee shops and 70 employees, sells a fair amount of coffee wholesale and over the Internet.
Watts said the footwork is great, but the Cup of Excellence makes his task much easier.
There are hurdles to dealing with small producers. For instance, it's expensive to ship small amounts of coffee. But when Watts works with a handful of producers, he can assemble enough beans to fill a shipping container. If other Alliance for Coffee Excellence members are involved, it's even easier, he said.
Coffee roasters such as Hunter Bay Roasting Co. in Lolo are a perfect example. Before joining the alliance, the family-owned company couldn't afford to travel to coffee fields, said co-owner Glenn Junkert.
"We always talked to green importers," Junkert said.
The importers would travel to the countries of origin to meet with farmers' cooperatives or with representatives. As a member, Junkert has been a cupper, judging competitions and meeting one-on-one with farmers.
"Here we are, able to communicate with farmers and discuss common issues, like coffee," he said.
The price of coffee is still connected to the commodities market. In recent weeks, it has jumped, pushing even higher the prices of quality beans.
But some farmers and roasters have been able to get beyond the volatility and uncertainty of the commodity market, Spindler said. Some members have purchased beans from top producers four and five years into the future, she said.
"The winning farms often go into long-term contracts. We focus on quality, because that's what's sustainable," Spindler said.
"Both sides of the marketplace win," she added.
Reporter Robert Struckman can be reached at 523-5262 or rstruckman@missoulian.com.
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