The CDNT co-operative, or Caficultores Diferenciados del Norte del Tolima, is made up of 8 producers around northern Tolima formed by our friend Herbert Peñaloza Correa and led now by producer Diego. CDNT is, in many ways, a prototype of the LaREB structure that Herbert and the team have now built over the years. Built around creating what coffee growing communities really need and how producers can best pool resources to improve quality and secure autonomy in an industry that is notoriously one-sided, with little care for producers' needs.
La Real Expedición Botánica, or La REB for short, is a larger co-operative of producers in the region that have come together with the aim to create new avenues in the industry that trulu benefit and give power back to producers in Colombia. Offering in depth support for one another in production advice and quality control as well as managing their own milling and export logistics, an enormous undertaking in coffee, the co-operative allows La REB producers to engage with the market on their own terms and to make a living with agency, which is absolutely class in our opinion.
