Wrapping up Colombia research

Two weeks ago I was in Colombia, covering a serious amount of distance as I talked with five groups of producers, totaling 101 total, to share the results of the study on microlot premiums and quality coffee practices that they participated in with Virmax and Counter Culture in January and February of 2014. I was of course involved with regular coffee buyer’s agent tasks toward the end of the week as well but I wanted to share a few more detailed thoughts on this piece of doing the microlot research.

(This was the group at the 3rd meeting of sharing research results in Pitalito).

Though as I continually told the producers, I believe this type of research continues to generate more questions than answers and could go a number of different directions, here are some thoughts I’ve come to hold as true: - Participatory research is where it’s at. Why? Because it is research at it’s most meaningful. At it’s least exciting it is sharing results with participants. At it’s most incredible, it is involving them in each step – from initial research question development, to survey tool construction, to presenting results. And, it is an educational and, though the concept is overused, capacity building opportunity - participants can hear how others responded, to learn what a larger cross section of their compatriots are doing and can begin to draw their own analysis and conclusions.

- I want to get my hands on as much cost of production research in small scale coffee farming as I possibly can The desire and necessity for assigning real numbers to these costs is felt across multiple producer groups in multiple countries. I know folks like Michael Sheridan with Catholic Relief Services and Ben Corey Moran now with Fair Trade USA are working on similar initiatives within the supply chain – thorough analyses to be able to communicate to the industry what fair pricing would really tangibly look like in different contexts. For me the question remains, can we do this in a unified, transparent way that can best serve producers, importers, exporters, roasters, and consumers alike. Which gets at the next thought…

- Over the last two years, myself, my company and I others in the industry have come to see the value in this type of research. For me the question remains – how do we maintain the momentum if we want to? And how do we define the “we?” In our sphere we continue to partner with local universities, good links and sources of energy. We continue to do coalition work in certain topic areas. Yet I am still left with the feeling of “what next” and “with whom?” I am curious to see what some of the ripple effects and reactions to the research may be. And, I also know (though I have to remind myself every day) that greater change and analysis of systems takes time and I have to be patient.

(Parabolic coffee drier and the Colombian countryside).

I just finished breakfast in Guatemala city at the start of a two week stint I’ll be doing here. It occurred to me that in a lot of ways this job, the travel part at least, always feels a little like getting your sea legs back – remembering how to be alone in foreign places, trusting your instincts, reading people and asking the right questions.

I’ll likely be back two more times this spring and I am excited for the opportunity to dig into one place and better understand new and old purchasing relationships we have here. Online community – I’ll be looking to you as a space to bounce ideas around – don’t be shy!

And if you haven't seen the flickr sets yet from the trip you can find them here and here.

Peruvian musings

Just back from a week in Peru visiting with members of the Cenfrocafe cooperative. This was only my second-ish trip flying solo and there have been so many opportunities for growth and reflection.

I find that traveling, especially traveling for work, is like a magnified microcosm of the usually unnoticed extremes of every day living – there are ups and downs, there are long winding drives that provide you with (sometimes too much) time to think, and there are so many diverse human interactions.

Some days you are so nauseated you don’t want to leave the bed, others you want to eat every new thing in sight. Some days you think this really might not be the line of work for you at all, others you can’t stop finding things to celebrate about the job’s nuances. Some days you can’t stand to talk to another person, other days everyone is your best friend with a brilliant gem you can’t wait to hear about.

Here are some of the highlights from this past week’s trip in a stream of consciousness:

Connecting with producers – Often, after numerous hours on the road and in the air and assorted meetings over the course of 5 or so days, it is this hour, face to face with producers, that is what makes my heart expand, reminds me what it’s all about. This trip for the first time I got to see producers that had received quality premiums for their coffee taste their own coffees. The feeling was…incomparable, a way of connecting the dots – both for me and for them.

We also decided to hand out certificates of recognition this trip. The work of a coffee farmer is no easy task on so many levels and who doesn’t like to be honored by their business partner, someone who truly sees (if can’t fully understand) all that they are putting in on their end.

Farm visits are their own kind of magic. Walking up steeper than steep inclines with producers so they can show off their land always reminds me in the most tangible way possible the circumstances of coffee farming; It is both breathtakingly beautiful and a hard jagged steep climb and never-ending effort.

Cupping – This time I got to take an active role from start to finish tasting, selecting, and then separating green coffee bags in the warehouse that will be destined for the ports, our roaster, and ultimately our consumers. Not coming to the coffee industry with this experience or yearning for this kind of experience necessarily, I was surprised and excited by what a high it gave me!

Lingering questions (please sound off in the comments section if you have any thoughts or further questions to add to the fire on these topics!):

- “Traceability” I feel is starting to become a buzzword much like “sustainability” – What are some key indicators that can be documented that insure we understand what is being said when cooperatives say they are committed to traceability?

- Repeat success as a quality coffee producer – is this possible everywhere or only in certain areas and for certain producers? The refrain of “it’s a mystery” or “why can’t all of my coffee reach these quality levels” continued to echo on this visit.

- Cooperative structuring – Cenfrocafe is a rare bird, how can we identify and encourage or help build capacity of outstanding cooperatives elsewhere?

- Money, money, money – inroads are being made to examine the financial viability of smallholder coffee farming. Yet, we still don’t entirely know what the viability and impact of pricing is for farmer’s livelihoods across different countries and cooperative groups. How can I continue to be involved as an employee of a business and as an individual in asking these questions that are essential for social justice?

I’m grateful for the opportunity to have these experiences, ask these questions, and continue the work.

First Annual Leaf Rust Summit, Guatemala

I thought I'd share the write up that I sent to Counter Culture staff last week about my experience at the Summit. But, before I get to that, I'll add just a little bit more of a personal narrative, because, what is a blog for?!

Overall - it was incredible to see what a diverse group of stakeholders were at the table. Granted, it often takes an emergency to get people there, but, getting them there and getting them on the same page is no small feat. A great deal of credit for that goes to folks from World Coffee Research and SCAA working behind the scenes. My only critique would be the fact that there were too few seats occupied by producers. We can talk all day long about the best research, the funding, the need for the extension services needed - but if the solutions can't efficaciously be applied by those working in coffee production every day, we all lose. There were folks there representing this demographic and I felt appeased the moments in break-out sessions when there were mumblings of "what will make sense for the producer?"

Given that the message seems to be that the true crisis will be in 2014, and it seems the writing has been on the wall for some time, I feel more confident that the solutions, the resources, and the unified message will ultimately arrive at the producers' door.

Also - NPR did a great job during coffee week touching on the subject.

And, as always, Michael Sheridan's synthesis in the last four entries on his blog goes above and beyond what us mere mortals could put together.

Recap of First International Coffee Leaf Rust Summit

The end of last week I found myself in Guatemala city alongside multiple stakeholders in the coffee industry to discuss the impact of and way forward dealing with leaf rust. Here is a quick link to learn more about the disease. The summit was initially expected to have about fifty participants but quickly grew to almost two hundred given the amount of traction the topic has currently. If there was ever any doubt that coffee was truly a multi-sector, international industry that was cleared up immediately. The goal of the summit was to bring together the science community, national coffee institutions, roasters, and finance entities to work together on behalf of the industry.

As noted in their press release: “The coffee leaf rust disease has devastated Central American coffee production this year affecting the livelihoods of over two million people and causing a loss of nearly 500,000 jobs. Guatemala and other countries have declared a national state of emergency. Total coffee loss for the region is predicted at 20-30 percent and could increase to near 50 percent next year unless a focused, coordinated strategy is put into place soon.”

Presentations over the last three days were initially descriptive of the problem and then moved quickly into solution-based strategies – everything from the need for more scientific research to more streamlined extension services to funnel information back to the producers. Financing and overall international project coordination was also on the table for discussion. Promecafe – a conglomeration of seven producer countries – will oversee the initiative and an idea that came out of the summit was to hire one person whose sole capacity would be to respond to the needs of this crisis as part of Promecafe’s team.

Other themes that emerged were that leaf rust, while currently the most visible issue, is merely a symptom of multiple challenges facing the industry. These challenges include everything from climate change to a need to engage the entire supply chain – from producer to consumer – in discussions about structuring an economic solution that works for everyone. In this sense, the other theme was that these challenges are also an opportunity. Having individuals from so many different backgrounds at the table, all discussing some of the most pressing needs of the industry and how to solve them in the short, medium, and long term was unprecedented. This approach can’t help but leave one feeling hopeful about the future of collaborative work.

The group reached consensus that leaf rust is not just a trade issue where we are concerned about the global supply of coffee – it is also an issue that could have grave socioeconomic implications for producers and producer countries. As Ric Rinehart of the SCAA said “how can trade make the highest impact?” There was a clear ask for coffee roasters to continue to make long term purchase agreements and structure pricing with awareness of the situation to maintain optimism for producers. Here I felt confident that we are already a part of the solution as Counter Culture intentionally prices coffees with this mindset, crisis or no crisis.

All presentations from the summit will be put on WCR’s website (http://worldcoffeeresearch.org/) and I encourage you all to take a look at the variety of topics and approaches that were covered the last few days.

Cooperatives, Supply Chain, Community Needs

“Thank you for visiting my country, thank you for buying our coffee.” This is a refrain that is heard often on the annual visits I’ve been a part of to date. There is the sense that we – the producer and the coffee roaster – are in a sort of symbiosis, much like the cows and the white egrets I see in coffeelands. Without producers to sell us a product, we would not be in business; and without the market that we offer, producers would not be making a living off of coffee.

This trip I spent the first couple of days checking out a cooperative in Mexico that is not a current partner and then ventured on to two cooperatives in Guatemala that we already buy from The first group brought to light all of my questions about the strengths and difficulties that ensue in the day-to-day running of a cooperative. The second group had me thinking about the economics of the supply chain itself in greater detail. Both groups continued to fan the fire of my interest in defining best practices as coffee roasters join forces with and become a part of development projects. How can we best go about providing support that will enhance our relationship with producers and also meet community needs.

Cooperatives After Mexico, I found myself waiting at the Guatemalan border without my contact to pick me up as planned. Come to find out, I wouldn’t be meeting him at all as he had passed on his leadership role to another man in the cooperative.

I know that shifts in leadership can be common in cooperatives. And, perhaps just as often as you find someone fit for the role, you also find the cooperative members struggling to get their needs met when someone without adequate training takes up the new post. In this case, the previous leader was the information holder and left his replacement and his support team in the board of directors without much of the necessary information to continue on successfully in his absence

One of the guys I was traveling alongside said he thought his job was potentially easier because he did not deal much with cooperatives. Yet, the cooperative fills a truly necessary space in the coffee supply chain – allowing smaller producers access to the market in a way they would not otherwise have. Still, it seems that the advantages to cooperatives are often counter-balanced by an equal number of challenges including leadership that is lacking and understaffing. These challenges can make the goals of the cooperative (the selling of their coffee) difficult.

As I gather more experiences here, I wonder what capacity building at the cooperative level could look like – i.e. intensive workshops on communication, goal setting, and shared leadership… capacity building that would be to the advantage of both co-op members, leaders, and buyers alike. A more functional cooperative would seemingly be a more productive cooperative…it’s members and leaders would be more satisfied, and buyers would have a more efficient and effective team to work with.

Supply chain - All I’m asking is that you open up a space in your consciousness to the experience of the small producer.

Andre, the cooperative manager at the second cooperative must have said this to me at least a handful of times. Truly though, it’s not difficult to imagine the plight of the small producer for anyone who has been to coffee origin countries or really listened as others spoke of the experience. Walking up winding steep hills and and then imagining carrying sacks of coffee cherries on one’s shoulders is certainly empathy building, as is learning about and experiencing the maintenance involved in keeping trees healthy (and more so now, with the leaf rust epidemic)– pruning, fertilizing, etc. all spread out over rough terrain- the effort is endless.

At the end of the day, I feel like I work for the type of business that does have that space in their consciousness opened and recognizes the effort involved. We work with cooperatives; we pay higher premiums; we build long-term relationships; we are as transparent as we possibly can be, to try to bridge the numerous gaps we are conscious of already. Yet somehow I become tongue tied when I try to communicate this to cooperative leadership, to a producer.

Each meeting with producers, in addition to hearing “thank you for buying our coffee” I also hear “this is a really difficult life.” And more often than not, when I ask most producers if their children are learning how to be coffee farmers or if they want them to farm, they say pretty resolutely, “no.” They want them to get an education, to have a career, to make a “better life” for themselves. So, I continue to search for ways to contextualize for myself, to explain, as I referenced in the first entry, why our business partners at the beginning of the supply chain continue to struggle and how my company and I can be an effective part of the solution.

Community needs

There is a delicate balance between focusing on the business of coffee and an awareness of the other needs in coffee communities that may decrease their ability to focus on the coffee. I agree wholeheartedly that as an employee of a coffee company, it is my role to seek out other resources that can help and that it is not my role to take on the work of development myself. However, the nuances of the best way to go about building these alliances remain blurry to me.

Who else, besides the cooperative and besides the coffee company should be at the table? And what if there are few other resources around to help diversify the assistance?

As previously noted, cooperatives can get spread really thin, and when they start to focus on other community needs, they can potentially lose the nucleus that held them together to begin with – being good at the sale of coffee. In many ways, I think neither the cooperative nor the roaster is the best party to carry out such projects. Leveraging the power we have as a buyer and the knowledge of capacity and needs the cooperative has can enable us to bring in a third party to help. The challenge comes in finding localized, smaller non-profits (my personal preference) in more remote coffee communities. Here is where I see great potential benefit in collaboration and coalition building among various roasters and even across producer groups – trends that are catching on more and more. I think the details are important, however, and more intentionality and more monitoring and evaluation as this spark starts to catch will be necessary.

Thanks for reading, and, as always, your thoughts on any or all of the above are more than welcome! Please share.

Next up… more on microlots, a theme that has become popularized throughout the supply chain and will be discussed at SCAA Symposium in a couple of weeks.

February 11, 2013

Traveling for work to remote coffeelands amongst different producer cultures can sometimes be solitary. Over the last four trips to origin countries, I felt the desire to share the experiences in a more nuanced way. My hope is to continue to best be able to bring the voices of producers and their communities to the greater coffee community and the community of those that support me in the work that I believe in every day.

My hope for this blog is that it is a place for some deeper analysis, for sharing, and for connecting. Fair warning – this first entry is a little long since some material has been percolating for awhile. More conciseness to come! And, I truly encourage any feedback or commentary that may be jogged through reading. While the idea for starting a blog has been building for some time, the final impetus was this most recent trip to Nicaragua. From January 24-Feb 2 Counter Culture travelled on their annual Origin Field Lab with eleven baristas and coffee shop owners that serve Counter Culture coffee. I was so inspired by the group that came and being still new to the coffee industry myself, I felt we were all in it together. Over the course of the week, watching us all contextualize and share something that to this point I had experienced alone or with very few others was incredibly rewarding. In addition, I was filled with a different sort of pride – the sort of full circle that the coffee supply chain was making for them was happening for me as well, only in reverse. I was connecting with those serving, compassionately and competently, the fruits of the producers’ labors with whom I was in continual communication.

After eight months as a coffee buyer’s agent, I find the more I see and think I know, the more “it depends” becomes the classic answer to most everything. In particular, the variability in approaches to the following: - how coffee pickers are paid - on farm practices (i.e. picking, fermenting, varieties planted) - Cooperative structures and management - Coffee as part of local/national economies - is coffee working as a livelihood for people? If not, what are they diversifying with? These are topics I hope to address more in depth as the blog grows.

This trip in particular, due to the large impact of the leaf rust disease on the volume of the coffee harvest, I found myself realizing in a different way how precarious it can be for producers to be dependent on this crop. A crop that is at the mercy of its environment and a 2 to 7 year cycle in which it can be reproductive when pruning or replanting occurs. As business partners, we are constantly examining what it means to help pay people a price that allows for a sustainable livelihood amidst these circumstances.

My own path as an advocate of social justice with social work training continues to push me to understand how the moving pieces fit within the bigger picture. How can I be simultaneously realistic (i.e. yes coffee producers the world over are truly living on less than we do in the U.S.A.), and not operate from guilt (an emotion that I have come to recognize as a starting point but not a long term productive motivator) and instead, be a part of moving the whole paradigm forward. Questions that remain for me include – does the economic stability achieved through the sale of green coffee truly do something for righting inequalities or does it do so only if roasters and other entities (NGOs and governments) are committed to addressing other issues such as education, food security, and health.

After the week with the group, I stayed another few days with the cooperative, Cinco de Junio. Mostly, I followed their lead and visited with producers that were part of Fredman’s plan for the day already. As Clarissa, an employee of the cooperative said, “the fact that you are just integrating yourself into the daily operations means that we aren’t putting on a show for you. This is very real, this is what we do every day.” To me this sense of trust and pride is indicative of the solid, healthy relationships we are able to build, the way we do business that sets us apart.

This trip I recognized in a different way that part of what I appreciate about working with producers and cooperatives is their connection to the land. I think in part I was able to see it differently in Nicaragua than other trips because I was alone with the cooperative representatives as opposed to being with another coworker as well. Thus, I was able to soak up and connect to their experience of the experience in a different way.

On our five or six hour winding hike through the mountain range, Fredman and our other companion Anastasio must have stopped at least ten times to point out a town or school or mill or neighborhood across the vista from where we were. They were so intimately aware what the dips and tree lines and colors denoted. I could no more stand in my back yard or on top of a hill nearby and point out a variety of towns than successfully communicate in Afrikaans. But, they know, and they are excited to show you and to express their sense of awe at what their town has to offer.

As I settle back into my daily routine in the states, I will continue to mull over each of our pieces as parts of the greater whole in this coffee industry, cheesy as that may be. And, I am incredibly grateful to now be extending the conversation outside the confines of my own head. Here’s hoping that this space can be an interactive one, one where we can sort through challenging topics together and share the joys involved in this complex supply chain. As Fredman said to me when I asked him why he got into coffee “Do you see anyone coming here to check out our yuccas? To check out our cheese? Nope. But they sure do come from all over to see the coffee plants and the people that grow them.” Yes, Fredman, they do.