Breaking New Grounds: Skylark’s fight for positive change in the world of Coffee

Local food is sustainable food. As part of our Land Use Plus project, we’re investigating some brilliant local food businesses with sustainability at their core.

Set up around the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the main missions behind Skylark was to be the most ethical coffee roastery possible. Three years on, that’s still their mission. Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages in the world, yet Skylark is the only non-profit, transparent specialty coffee brand in the world.  

Skylark coffee takes its name from the at-risk bird species in our own backyard of Sussex, and for those who work at Skylark, it is a representative of their main goal of caring for people and for nature. Skylark’s model uses their coffee relationships to change the normal coffee trading processes.

They pride themselves on paying top prices at twice the Fair-Trade rate or more, and then donate another £1 per kilo to conservation and empowerment projects at home in the UK and in coffee-producing communities. Their hope is to help change the way that coffee itself has been traditionally traded – existing as an example model of using food (or drink) to be a vehicle for positive change.  

The problems with coffee trading don’t end there, however. Across the world, roasters generally make the largest share of the profits in the coffee supply chain. So, in keeping with their objectives, Skylark decided to donate all of their profit to charities that work on key social and environmental problems.

These charities include Knepp Wildland Foundation, a key environmental charity leading the way on rewilding, conservation and climate change in the Southeast, and The Stumping Project, operated by Falcon and the NGO Technoserve, an African project helping Ethiopian coffee farmers regenerate their coffee trees for sustainable harvests for years to come.

This means that whilst Skylark is able to help charities and organisations bring about positive change around the world, they can also work to start destabilising the pre-existing power dynamics in coffee trading. Skylark coffee is also uniquely completely open source with their financials, and you can find a complete 2022 report of their finances and sustainability practices. This alone is game changing: although not often carried out, transparency is one of the most integral aspects for creating sustainable and fair food systems. Skylark take their sustainability practices one step further and utilise their coffee ground compost and waste into regenerative growing of fruit and vegetables at Rock Farm, another project under their charity umbrella. 

Skylark don’t just cater for individual customers; they also offer a service for wholesale buyers as well. You can find Skylark coffee in a range of coffee shops and cafes around Brighton. Skylark offer many different flavoured coffees from a variety of countries around the world, so there are many different types to choose from. Head roaster and buyer Micah suggests his favourite: any of the Ethiopian coffees that Skylark carries.  

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