Dean's Beans Owner to Discuss Coffee Trade
WILLIAMSTOWN - Dean Cycon, a leader of the American Fair Trade Coffee Movement and owner of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, will speak about "Coffee, Economics and the Environment: Can Business Make the World a Better Place?" on Tuesday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the Wege Auditorium at Williams College.A coffee and java drop tasting will begin 7 and last throughout the evening. The event is free and open to the public.
This event co-sponsored by the Class of 1960s Scholars Program in Environmental Studies and the Center for Development Economics. Water Street Books will host a posttalk sale and signing of Cycon's book "Javatrekker - Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee."
A self-described "biting dog on the ankles of Starbucks," Cycon, who graduated from Williams in 1975, is considered by many to be a moral compass of the coffee industry. "Dean has made Starbucks a better company," said Sue Mecklenburg, vice president of sustainable procurement practices at Starbucks Corpn.
Cycon is co-founder of Coffee Kids, a non-profit development group, and of Cooperative Coffees, the world's first fair trade roasters cooperative. Dean's Beans has grown steadily over the past 15 years. It designs and funds people-centered development projects in the coffee lands in partnership with the growers, and returns a percentage of profits to the growers as a social equity premium.
Dean's Beans is the winner of the Best Practices Recognition Award from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Specialty Coffee Association of America's Sustainability Award. In August 2004, it become the first coffee company in America to conduct an independent fair trade audit. The results and supporting documentation are posted on its Web site.
