Third Coast Coffee Roasting Co

Realtime Farms shows the love

the cobbler's elves — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:02:27 +0000

Transparency Warriors

The folks at Real Time Farms (website) are right up our alley with their commitment to and focus on sourcing transparency. From their website:

Real Time Farms is a crowd-sourced online food guide. We provide you one location where you can learn about where your food comes from, whether staying in or eating out, so you can trust the food you eat.
As crazy as it sounds, our vision is to collectively document the whole food system. We are powered by the people!

Along with including us in their database of local food sources (our profile page), they’ve done us the solid favor of writing up a recent visit to our shop. Read Robyn Metcalfe’s take on our approach at the Real Time Farms Blog. Thanks Robyn!

Heretics: Apply Within

Clay — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:57:47 +0000

The Shot at Coffee Ratings posted a “defense of coffee heretics” on their blog recently, and we’ve got something to say about it. Please take a moment to read their post, then continue for our take on it.

In defense of coffee heretics : theshot.coffeeratings.com

Coffee bean – what a misnomer, that. The humble coffee bean is in reality half of a seed of a cherry of the coffee plant, a waxy-leaved shrub that inhabits a tidy tropical belt wrapped around our fair Earth. Each seed holds a tiny treasure trove: a myriad of acids, fats, amino acids, and sugars, among multiple other organic compounds. The collection of these molecules contained in the seed of a given plant varies from that of a plant grown on a different face of the same mountain, across the valley or on the other side of the planet; the varied influences on a plant — such as climate, the mineral content of the soil, type of fertilizer used, and altitude — are jointly referred to as terroir, which determines much of its final taste profile.

Coffee growing at a PROCOCER member's farm in Nicaragua

All this is to say that every region produces a unique coffee; each lot of coffee has the potential to display a novel combination of flavors, aromas, acidity and mouthfeel that may never be reproduced. Every coffee has its own story to tell, and like us humans, some tell their stories in different ways, through different means, in different contexts. So why would we think that every coffee should be roasted, ground and prepared in the same way?

In that vein, why would we think that our customers should all like exactly the same coffees that we do, or that our personal choices for coffee might dictate the terms of what our customers might like? There’s a reason we do have a few very dark roasts; it’s the same reason we keep sugar and cream here in our shop for our guests — not to suit our tastes but because we respect the coffee experience, whatever that might mean to the person having it.

We also choose to respect the history of coffee roasting and the nature of the craft itself; we are, after all, cooking the coffee seed, not selling it to our customers as a raw product. We believe that roasting is itself an art; invisibility (roasting light to let the coffee’s pure nature illuminate the taste) is hugely difficult to achieve, as is wielding the subtle presence of roast flavors to attenuate acidity, enhance body, and otherwise complement the green seed’s character. We have a varied palette with which to work and find satisfaction in variety. While roasting a coffee to a light roast will allow the inherent characteristics of a coffee to shine through, that’s not the sum of every coffee’s story.

Like roasting, the preparation of coffee takes many forms, and rightly so: the coffee experience should not be limited to the specific angle of a glass cone’s spiral grooves or the brand of kettle from which we decant our 201.5 degree reverse-osmosis filtered spring water. Coffee will be enjoyed for different reasons, with different groups of people, and in so many different contexts — my recent favorite such context being this :

sing it, sister!

(I love the image of Kait taking a moment away from her journey to savor the bright juicy melon of our Sidama; sitting in her car in a gas station parking lot, door open, the rising steam from her cup marking time in a wholly different way than the rhythmic rushing pattern of the traffic passing by.)

To honor these multiple contexts, we craft our coffees in suitable ways: blends that will survive the coffee pot warmers of diners, restaurants, and cafés; espresso blends that emerge from the pressured extraction of a commercial or home machine with complexity and balance; single origins whose best showcase is a french press, or simple pour-over cone, or aeropress.

Sure, we have opinions, as individuals and as a company. But so do the people who buy our coffee and support our business. As Luke rightly says, “Every batch has its own unique story to tell; it’s our job to help that story develop, then step back and let the coffee speak for itself.” In doing so, we hope to balance our respect for the coffee with respect for the drinker’s palate: the two are not exclusive. While we recognize that roasting a coffee darker may not perfectly display only its terroir, we still respect both coffee and customer by selecting the right high-grown coffee for a dark roast, ensuring that the roast highlights things like body and carbony, smokey flavors and that the customer gets the best damn roast imaginable, regardless of degree.

This long-winded ramble is just a way to say to the folks at The Shot that we wholeheartedly agree, and if the above makes us coffee heretics, or at least heretics of the “Third Wave,” then heretics we are.

Word from the Road: Fair Trade’s Future

Luke — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:49:36 +0000

Joe is in Mexico this week, attending the annual at-origin meeting with our friends and allies from Cooperative Coffees and many of our Latin American trading partners. We’ll have some in-depth reporting on the meetings (as well as visits to Rio Azul in Guatemala and Prococer in Nicaragua) in the coming weeks; however, we wanted to go ahead and direct all of you to this article, from our friend Matt Earley over at Just Coffee in Madison, WI.

Many of you will know that it’s been a complicated, and often troubling, few years for the Fair Trade system, particularly in the realm of coffee. The current meetings in San Cristobal seek to address these changes and chart a course through the ever-shifting waters of fair trade and what Matt calls out as Fair Trade (TM).

For us, this is a hugely energizing time, signaling as it does the chance to roll up our sleeves and set to work, alongside our trading partners in Latin America and around the globe, in building a better, stronger, ground-up vision of the coffee trade.

We’re including Matt’s article in full here; we think you’ll find it makes for a compelling read.

Fair Trade is Dead | Matt Earley, Just Coffee Coop

Sitting in San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico things are crystal clear. Underneath the din of organizations in the North clamoring to set the definition and terms of Fair Trade, small-scale coffee farmers– the original and supposed main beneficiaries of the system(s)– have a unified opinion that Fair Trade™ has not worked. This of course, on the surface, is not a new revelation. However, where in the past we often discussed Fair Trade as “not working”, we now are closing the book on it– we are speaking in the past tense. In the wake of FLO’s slow and steady sell out of the model to large corporations and TransFair USA’s sprint to complete the deal, Fair Trade™ has bitten the dust. Now is the appropriate time to spill an espresso shot in the dirt and say a few words.

Now dry that tear because I have some good news. Out of Fair Trade’s™ ashes there is already a movement to build something better and it is coming from the people who were virtually shut out of the old system– the producers themselves. After four days of meetings with coffee farmers from all over Latin America, as well as mission-based coffee roasters and other allies, it is clear that there is abundant energy for rebuilding a model of fair trade with true representation from all involved and that comes from farmers themselves. This new spirit can be seen in many initiatives, but most concretely in the Coordinadora Latinoamericana y del Caribe’s (CLAC) new label that highlights products grown and sold by small-scale producer cooperatives under terms defined as fair by the producers themselves and agreed upon with buyers in true partnership. This small farmer-owned certification system is up and running and will be a market force to be reckoned with by the end of 2012.

During our conversations a veteran of the small-farmer movement in Mexico summed up the situation nicely:
“In 1997 we were in meetings with other fair traders when FLO announced that they were forming and would be setting the standards for our movement. Many of us stood up and walked out.” He said that from that moment on farmers knew that, despite good intentions, they had already lost control of what would become branded as “Fair Trade”. Over the years the certifying bodies in the north controlled the conversation and set the norms with “feedback” from farmers, but without farmers truly having any ownership of the organization. Consumers could see farmers’ faces on marketing materials and bags of coffee, but could not hear producer voices. Now farmers want their voices heard.

Fair trade is not a brand owned by companies and non-profits in the global north. The “look for the label” movement bet that people were simply “consumers” who could not stop for longer than a few seconds to think and truly care about what they were supporting with their purchases. They were wrong. True fair trade can start with a simple communication on a product, but it goes deeper as people start to ask questions about every product that they purchase– including those bearing “the label”. Real fair trade is in small-farmers and their democratic cooperatives as well as in our hometown farmer’s markets, small businesses, and communities– these things are connected and worth supporting and fighting for. Authentic fair trade is a mutual agreement between people who produce things and the people who buy them. Its standards are the result of equals transparently negotiating in good faith with the intention of both parties satisfying their basic needs. All of this results– little by little– in a world where “producers” and “consumers” see each other as people and together work toward creating a sustainable global economy and global society.

Fair Trade™ is dead. It is played out, stale, corrupted, and largely meaningless. When the CEO of the US body that claims ownership of it makes a quarter million dollars a year, drops gems like “Small is not beautiful”, and brands small farmer advocates as “fanatical”, you can go ahead and close the coffin lid. When Starbucks becomes corporate leader of the system while it simultaneously boasts of paying under world market prices for its coffee in its own CSR report, rigor mortis has set in. When plantations– with their traditionally indentured labor forces– are welcomed in with open arms while small farmers’ voices fall on deaf ears, the bucket has officially been kicked.

Fair Trade™ is surely dead.

Long live fair trade.

Washed and Natural Coffees

Luke — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:24:18 +0000

Washed coffee cherries, awaiting a trip to the compost.

One of the most common questions we hear from our customers deals with “unwashed” or “natural” coffees, so we figured we’d address the unique process that makes these coffees so exemplary.

Many coffee drinkers don’t realize that coffee processing is enormously complex, and has a huge impact on a given coffee’s ultimate flavor. The vast majority of the world’s arabica coffee, particularly from Latin America, is “washed,” meaning that after harvest the green coffee seeds (“beans”) are removed from their fruit casing in a de-pulper, then fermented in water for roughly 17 hours to do away with the thin layer of pectin and mucilage which surrounds the coffee seed. This process generally results in a very clean flavor with substantial brightness and balance–and, because un- and under-ripe coffee floats and can thus be sorted out, it provides for more control over the coffee’s consistency.

“Unwashed” or “natural” coffees, by contrast, are dried while still contained within the fruit, which yields a much fuller body and, above all, a phenomenally juicy berry flavor. The upshot is that unripe and over-dry coffees are harder to sort out, and as such some natural coffees betray a range of inconsistencies–unripe, nutty-tasting beans called “quakers” are the most common–unless the mill or the roaster, or both, take great care to ensure consistent quality. Traditionally, most natural-process coffees come from the low-lying mountains surrounding the Red Sea, the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and above all Brazil, though they can be produced anywhere with predictable weather and abundant sunlight.

As a case-in-point of how dramatically processing can effect the ultimate flavor profile of a particular coffee, we offer both a washed and a natural-process coffee from the same cooperative: currently, Ethiopia’s Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. The washed coffees from SCFCU are generally very bright and spicy, with melon-like sweetness, while their natural counterparts are wild and juicy, with up-front blueberry and strawberry that settles into semi-sweet baking chocolate.

Lately, we’ve also been exploring the possibility of doing some limited-run natural coffees with our Latin American trading partners, and we’ll keep you posted as these plans (hopefully) bear fruit–so to speak.

Transfair gives FLO the shaft

Luke — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:46:04 +0000

Fair Trade USA (Transfair) v. the global Fair Trade system. Photo by Mat_the_W

For those of you who follow this blog, you’ll know by now that Fair Trade as an economic model has experienced massive growing pains and internal divisions over the past few years, particularly in North America. Well, things are about to get a whole lot more interesting. Transfair USA (recently, and controversially, rebranded as Fair Trade USA) has officially left Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) to chart their own course. This is big news, and has the potential to be equally transformative and disastrous for the future of Fair Trade in the United States.

The most immediately troubling aspect of Transfair’s breakaway is that they can now apply their widely-known black and white “Fair Trade Certified” logo to whatever they like, according to their own standards rather than those used internationally. And by their own declaration, those standards are going to be “more inclusive” (“Our goal is to double our impact by 2015”). This is the problem most of the old-guard Fair Traders (ourselves included) have had with Fair Trade certifiers for years now: in their eagerness to expand the market share of Fair Trade products, they’ve badly diluted Fair Trade as an economic model.

Historically—and allowing for a little variation in certain types of product—Fair Trade certification has only been available to cooperatives: that is, member-owned organizations through which workers reap the direct financial rewards of their labor. When implemented properly, a cooperative system is the biggest economic “carrot” imaginable, with shared ownership giving every member real equity and a financial stake in the success of the organization. What’s more, they give small farmers the market access and bargaining power that they lack in comparison with large, single-owner estates, opening up the sort of healthy, level-playing-field competition that is the bread and butter of a successful capitalist economy. In short, Fair Trade certification was conceived as a way of bringing small farmers into the global market as real players, rather than nameless “producers” whose livelihoods are tied to a volatile commodity price.

However, over the course of the past few years, Fair Trade certification has been gradually extended to larger companies and single estates, and FLO has faced increasing backlash from cooperatives: Santiago Paz, managing director at CEPICAFE in Peru, has likened Fair Trade certifiers to the drivers of a car careening down the highway so eagerly that they fail to notice their passengers flying out the window.

I want to say up-front that there is no problem with single farms or large estates, and many of them produce exquisite coffee. But because these farms have both economies of scale and, frequently, hefty financial backing on their side, they don’t need Fair Trade certification—they have other avenues, notably the microlot-focused “direct trade” buyers of the “third wave.”

All of that said, Transfair also has some very good projects in the works as a part of their new Grand Strategy. Notably, and I suspect as a preemptive move against all the flak they will inevitably take for expanding the Fair Trade net, they’ve launched Co-op Link, a program designed to funnel huge amounts of capital, financial training, and agricultural support to Fair Trade cooperatives. The program is currently in the pilot phase, but aims to go global within the next few years. It’s worth checking out, but you’ll need to approach their initiative’s beautiful website and buzzword-dense verbiage like Odysseus lashed to the mast: their branding is so compelling that it may just keep you from noticing how problematic some of Transfair’s new policies are.

Indeed, Transfair’s promotional and “educational” materials have always been heavy on messaging and light on useable information. As such, only consumers with an already extensive grasp of the Fair Trade system will be able to glean much about their coffee’s “fairness” from visiting Transfair’s website. What most will be left with is a big “trust us” from Transfair, and assurances that their logo denotes a more inclusive form of fairness.

We’ll keep you updated as this story develops—surprisingly, the Fair Trade blogosphere has yet to light up over the news, which I mainly attribute to the fact that most Fair Trade blogs get all of their information from Transfair anyway. Nevertheless, there will certainly be a lot more to report, and we’ll ride this story like Pecos Bill and holler at you with whatever we learn.

Northern Peru 2011 #2 : Diversity

Clay — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:35:04 +0000

Following up on last week’s post looking at CEPICAFE and the coffee market, let’s look into their efforts at diversification.
The northern Andes, rich and fertile
The many slopes of the northern Andes provide fertile ground to grow more than just coffee, and the members of CEPICAFE take advantage of this to cultivate sugarcane, cacao, fruits for marmalade and more. Truly believing that strength comes from diversity, CEPICAFE also generates revenue from the intangible — they sell carbon credits based on the tree-rich lands of some of their members. This strategy of a many-headed approach to revenue lends great strength to the cooperative, keeping their product base resistant to the potential trouble of any single market.

This guillotine-like device cuts open roasted cacao beans for quality inspection

Let’s look at each of these products in turn, starting with the cacao. CEPI’s cacao farmers grow enough cacao that the coop exports 250 metric tonnes of Fair Trade beans and liquor a year, some of which is a very unique and high-quality white cacao. White cacao pods are similar to other cacao pods to my untrained eye, only differing in the color of the beans when dried. Once roasted and ground into the liquor, the white cacao is indistinguishable from a standard cacao liquor by color and texture; however, its distinctive taste sets it apart from the others. According to Santiago, while conventional cacao has three perfumes, and a special cacao from Venezuela may exhibit seven, CEPICAFE’s white cacao boasts ten perfumes. It is this rich bouquet of aroma and flavor that led the judges of a recent multi-national cacao-tasting competition to grant CEPICAFE three of the competition’s five prizes. While some in the international cacao community may contend the place of the white cacao in the global market, other cacao buyers with discriminating and adventuresome palettes find great value in CEPICAFE’s offering. Along with their other high-quality cacaos, the white cacao grants the northern Andean cooperative access to higher tiers of the cacao market.

Santiago proudly displays a cacao contract

Unlike coffee, cacao often trades apart from the market price. Negotiations between cacao producers and importers may take significantly longer than those for a coffee contract, potentially consuming a year or more of time. This results from a greater intimacy between the buyer and the quality of the product, and contributes to the freedom to trade based on that quality rather than slavishly follow the trends of the commodities market. While we were visiting Santiago, he signed a rather large contract for the sale of twenty metric tonnes of cacao to a reputable buyer in the Pacific Northwest. As he excitedly pointed out to us, the cacao sold for 33% over the current market price, a true coup and a mark in CEPICAFE’s favor when negotiating other contracts in the future.

Also unlike coffee, cacao doesn’t adhere to any one international standard for preparation or processing. Each chocolatier represents a potential difference in opinion on fermentation times, drying methods, and other aspects of the processing. To engage this difference, CEPICAFE works with each buyer to produce a cacao to their taste and to their desire for quality so that all parties can be satisfied with the trade.

One of many gifts of Europe to the Americas, sugarcane grows well in the various sun-blessed fields of South America and the Caribbean. This large grass, when cut and pressed, yields the familiar and seductive sweet nectar with which we are all familiar. However, prior to being processed and refined, evaporated sugar cane juice contains numerous mineral salts, proteins and other nutrients in abundance. The farmers of Norandino, among them the members of CEPICAFE, press, evaporate and crystallize the cane juice, resulting in brown, moist and fluffy clumps of powder — panela. This rich product emanates a seductive aroma far more complex than conventional sugar, with hints of sweet tobacco and raisins.

Development in panela production is one area where CEPICAFE’s contributions to its members communities and home lives really stands out. As Santiago tells us, the move away from in-home production to crafting the panela in cooperative-built plants manifests a number of improvements, among them a reduction in sugar-derived alcohol distillation, an increase in hygienic habits and increased productivity. Santiago says “They take this home with them, which is an indication of development. This has made a change in their reality.”

CEPI's eco-tourist lodges in nearby Montero give visitors a chance to see panela production first-hand
When it comes to the market, panela shares a few similarities with coffee. As it stands now, the market for sugar is rather high, meaning that competition is fierce. Santiago described for us some of the plans CEPICAFE has for developing their production, including the addition of more automation, improvements in their secondary or satellite production plants, and increasing yields. Also, while CEPICAFE doesn’t sell a finished chocolate product, they do distribute a retail-ready sugar product. Santiago related to us the story of how they have recently begun a program to implement better monitoring of their packaging quality, after a painful situation in which their retail packaging allowed product to harden on the grocery store shelves.

The nascent marmalade production at CEPICAFE faces its share of obstacles as a product line, but Santiago tells us that it is growing. Their main goal now, he says, is generating the funding needed to build a proper plant. Today, producers jar the marmalade by hand, and they have struggled with returned product due to potential contamination. A more modern plant, with machines capable of delivering a consistently high-quality and clean product, will go far towards making CEPICAFE a great source for delicious organic marmalades.

The Andes provides for its inhabitants in many ways
Ever looking to the future, Santiago told us about more plans for diversification: chiefly, he wishes to invest in ever greater and more efficient plants for the panela and marmalade; he is looking to build a plant to produce chifles, dried plantain chips; and he wants to make good use of the recently-acquired Rainforest Alliance “Carbon Fix” certification, which allows CEPICAFE to sell carbon credits based on trees planted on farmers’ lands. As if that isn’t enough, he’s also planning to develop a roasted coffee program for the domestic market. Like the rest of these projects, all will come in due time; each phase requires a significant investment, and at the moment, Santiago’s main concern is navigating dynamic markets and keeping the cooperative a vital force for its members.

The varied sources of income for its members gives CEPICAFE the chance to remain a flexible and responsive cooperative, not dependent on any one basket for their proverbial eggs. After meeting with Santiago for several hours over the course of a few days, I trust that he is a great man for the job, and he will help lead CEPICAFE to prosperity, even through unpredictable times like the present.

So, faithful reader, next time we meet I will take you through the Andes to Jaén, where we will roast some coffee, meet two other coffee cooperatives, and greet farmers as they turn in their coffee for collection. Until then, ¡que tengan buen día!

Northern Peru 2011 #1: CEPICAFE and trials of the market

Clay — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:44:56 +0000

A farmer waits while his coffee's quality is assessed

Greetings, faithful readers. As you may know, I traveled to northern Perú for the first part of this past August, there to meet with three of our partner cooperatives on a USAID Farmer-to-Farmer assignment. I’ve been mulling over the experience (not to mention catching up with a stack of exciting work in Austin) for the past few weeks, and now I’m ready to get down to the business of relating my story to you. I’ll do so over the course of three or four posts, each one focusing on a different aspect of the trip; I’m sure you’ll silently thank me for splitting it up once my tendency towards the verbose becomes apparent.

I spent my time on this trip with two others who rounded out a proper skill set for the assignment, so I’ll start with brief introductions before getting to the meat of it:

Dry mill = extremely loud
Julia Baumgartner, Producer Relations, Just Coffee
Coming straight from several months of travel among other trading partners in the Americas, Julia began her trip to Perú with groups in the nearby mountain community of Montero where she researched the cooperative-managed eco-tourism project and visited local producers’ farms and communities. She then joined Ariel (below) and I for hours of intensive meetings with CEPICAFE’s commercialization manager Santiago Paz Lopez about the unstable coffee market and its effects on cooperatives in Perú and worldwide. For more on Montero and her take on this trip, visit her blog at Just Coffee’s website.

Kola guarantees smiles all around
Ariel Chait, UC Berkeley
Ariel arrived in Perú after several weeks working with cooperatives in Mexico on the same project he brought to our partner coops in Perú — an inventory system for green coffee that leverages mobile computing technology to streamline, simplify and improve current inventory processes at the cooperative level. The inventory system, his masters project, uses free, open source software and inexpensive hardware, making it accessible to a much broader range of people than similar attempts. Thanks to the excellent translation assistance from both him and Julia, my inability to speak Spanish was placed far in the background during this trip.

Meet Pappá Caffe

Clay Roper, Third Coast Coffee
Yours truly; a neophyte and newcomer to the realms of international business and the grittier aspects of the coffee trade. My primary function on this trip was to lead a roasting workshop and subsequent tasting while providing support and journaling our meetings on the coffee market and general interactions with the partner cooperatives. This blog post and those following will explore this trip in as much detail as I can summon and articulate appropriately.

First, we’ll take a look at our time with Santiago Paz at CEPICAFE:

CEPICAFE’s administration occupies two floors of a well-secured building in a dusty neighborhood near the airport in eastern Piura, perpetually watched over by the same amiable but capable-looking security guard. Ariel, Julia and I spent the first two days of my part of the assignment meeting with Santiago in his upstairs office. He started with an overview of CEPICAFE’s background before moving on to outline the present woes of northern Peruvian coffee farmers.

(Check out our profile of CEPICAFE for a quick rundown)

A stout electrified fence keeps our friends safe at CEPICAFE

After years of operating in relative stability, farmers and their cooperatives alike face a myriad of disparate challenges that have arisen over the last few years. On one hand, the continuous interest of stock market speculators in coffee as a pure commodity creates an unnatural and unpredictable distortion in the price of coffee separate from its value as a good. Beyond this, shifts in global weather patterns create serious problems for tropical agriculture by disrupting the normal yearly rain cycles and altering the microclimates that coffee plants find favorable for peak production. Further still, the demand of newfound connoisseurs in countries like Brazil, India and China means that the global demand for coffee burgeons with every new year, pushing the price higher even as the supply (especially of specialty, organic coffee) faces yield issues due to climate change.

This unintended conspiracy of influences makes for a volatile but generally upward trending global coffee price, one that has seen a startling increase from 1.30 USD per pound in Feb 2010 to a 34 year peak of 3.05 in May 2011. Unlike some other comestible commodities such as cacao, coffee’s trade cleaves tightly to this ‘C’ price set by the New York Stock Exchange (with the rare exception of so-called alternative importers like Cooperative Coffees – more on that later), which means that coffee farmers’ lives are governed by financial storms not unlike the vagaries of their local weather — unpredictable, uncontrollable and possibly devastating.

The knee-jerk reaction to the news of escalating coffee prices might be that higher prices for farmers are good, but as many voices have cried out in blogospheres and traditional news media alike, all is not as it seems. As Santiago tells us, the long and short of it is that cooperatives exist to enable their farmer members to live better lives by providing access to a number of community services. Broadly speaking, rural agricultural communities like our trading partners’ never see credit or financial assistance until they organize into a cooperative. When they do, they have the combined resources to develop community banks; teach industry-related workshops to farmer members; invest in more efficient production infrastructure for coffee and other agricultural products; develop programs for general education, medicine, and public works projects; become a conduit for information exchange with other producers and along the product line all the way to the end consumer. Unlike a coyote or other purchasing intermediary, a cooperative uplifts coffee farmers by opening and maintaining access to a panoply of resources that will enrich their lives beyond the simple earning of coin. Also, as a rule, when the market is low (near or below the Fair Trade minimum price), membership in a Fair Trade cooperative affords the best opportunity for a coffee farmer to get the most out of their coffee harvest.

Farmers await the tally of their harvest at CENFROCAFE

As wonderful as this sounds, it only works as long as the farmers turn their coffee into their cooperatives for sale down the line to importers and roasters like ourselves. And in the historical, “normal” course of events, this happens; the farmers harvest their coffee and truck it down out of the mountain to the acopio (or gathering point for their cooperative), where they receive payment. For those who grow organic coffee under fair trade certification, they gain the extra benefits afforded by those certifications’ premiums, resulting in a healthy markup over the market price.

Until now. Santiago tells us that with the price of coffee now significantly higher than the mandated Fair Trade minimum price, farmers lack the financial incentive to turn their coffee into the cooperative, which is an issue we’ve seen crop up all over the world recently. Any farmer can turn his coffee into a coyote or other intermediary for a handsome price (again, based on that abnormally high NYSE ‘C’ price) without the need for certifications. Often, coyotes are able to offer the same or higher prices as the cooperatives, and there are reports of coyotes accepting coffee from the farmers at points closer to their fincas than the coops’ acopios, which makes the entire process too easy. One of the greatest long-term threats of this trend lies in the renunciation of certifications; if a farmer finds that she can achieve a higher price for a harvest by turning it over to an intermediary and doesn’t need to deal with the hassle or expense of organic or Fair Trade certifications, it’s possible that she will let them lapse. Of course, if and when the market takes a sustained dive and the Fair Trade model proves to be the superior financial model once again, those who have shed their certifications will find themselves behind, unable to reap the rewards of Fair Trade and organic premiums.

With stiff competition from coyotes and member turn-in rates on the decline, cooperatives are scrambling to make ends meet. This dire situation is further complicated by the short-term volatility of the market. If the price only climbed, the coops would make out by collecting the coffee from their members at one price and later selling it to importers (or closing contracts) at a higher price, netting a profit and allowing the cooperative to survive and invest for another day. Unfortunately, as the days go by, the market cannot be counted on to do any one thing. Santiago frequently expresses his apprehension over the opaque future of the coffee industry, saying that “it’s like we’re in a jungle and there’s no way out.”

Note the aggressive uptick starting mid-2010

To illustrate the pain of the wildly varying market, let’s take a look at CEPICAFE’s harvest for 2011, which started in late April. Remember that record high ‘C’ price we looked at earlier? As farmers turned in their coffee to CEPICAFE, they received payment based on the market price the day of collection, resulting in a hefty outlay of cash from the coop. From the peak on May 3, the price fell fairly steadily apart from the occasional two or three-day uptick. By the time we spoke with Santiago at the beginning of August, the ‘C’ was at its low for the last six months at $2.34. Any coffee that CEPICAFE was holding at that time represented a loss of about 16% (most coffee was collected on the downslope at around $2.80 per pound). By losing money on coffee, the cooperative would forsake its main source of income and lose the ability to provide services for its members — the very services that form the reason for the coop’s creation.

In a great example of the uncertain ground coffee cooperatives find themselves treading, the market has exploded upwards again since our trip, reaching $2.88 as of this writing. While this doesn’t remove any of the long term concerns for coops, this should alleviate some of Santiago’s apprehension, especially if CEPICAFE is able to sell their coffee or at least close any extant open contracts while the ‘C’ is above their collection price.

Julia and Santiago at CEPICAFE

Our conversation with Santiago opened up to discuss the entire diverse range of income streams CEPICAFE produces, led by coffee but including cacao, fruits, sugar and the production of carbon credits for companies in the “developed” world. In my next post, I’ll delve into those a little bit to explore a more nuanced picture of what a Peruvian coffee cooperative does to provide for its members, and to expose more of the challenges to their development currently on the field.

Quickie: Peru, August 2011

Clay — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:50:43 +0000

I just returned from a journey to northern Perú, where I visited and worked with our trading partners CEPICAFE, CENFROCAFE and Sol y Café – when I finish wrapping my head around it all, I will share the details with you all here. For now, I’m just going to drop a couple of photos to give you a tiny preview.

Sunset in the northern Andes between Piura and Jaén

Nothing takes your mind off the winding velocity of a trip on mountain highway more than a sunset in the Andes. The peaks become illuminated, golden, and the light that falls on the fields of rice below seems utterly timeless. It’s not hard to imagine that you are seeing the mountains in exactly the same way as the residents here have for centuries (aside from the highway, the occasional satellite dish and the petrochemical aroma of traffic).

Clay and Ariel examine the Norandino beneficio

On Tuesday, we visited the dry mill that services a number of the Fair Trade cooperatives in the northern Andes. Known as the Coop Norandino beneficio, it is capably managed by our partner coop CEPICAFE.

People proudly display their political affiliations

We arrived in Perú in the wake of their presidential election. The areas we traveled through displayed unanimous support for the election’s losers, Keiko Fujimori; most buildings were completely covered with candidate’s names and party logos.

Clay consults the roaster's window for bean color

The roasting workshop we held in Jaén was a process of discovery for myself and my attentive students alike. Here I’m peering into the small porthole on the roaster to inspect the color and physical state of the roasting bean.

A moto taxi driver recharges on a street corner

My favorite mode of street transport – the ubiquitous mototaxi. I couldn’t quite discern how they are variously allied, but there seemed to be some rivalry among the myriad cliques, leagues and companies of mototaxis. Aside from the occasional direct exposure to a gust of city dust, the mototaxi provides the best means of getting around a city like Jaén – or Piura, for that matter.

I promise you’ll see more details of the trip here soon. We all spent days discussing the tenuous positions of cooperatives in this current volatile market; I met with a group of very eager pupils for a roasting workshop; the subsequent cupping was enlightening; I witnessed the peak of harvest and the effects that has on the participating cooperatives; and the entire experience left me wanting more.

Travel Dossier: Nicaragua, July 2011

Luke — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:37:39 +0000

Greetings, all!

You’ll be glad to know that Joe managed to de-shackle himself and made it back from Nicaragua safely. He had a very productive trip, as part of yet another Farmer-to-Farmer (USAID)-sponsored Cooperative Coffees delegation to do cupping training and talk quality control.

We decided to structure this trip report a little differently: meet the travel dossier. Contained herein are the “official” USAID trip report and the “unofficial” Cooperative Coffees report, both prepared by CC jefe Janet Utecht, along with a wee library of links to fill out the backstory of our Nicaraguan trading partners. This way, you can get a sense not only for what our travel experiences are like, but also peer into the more technical aspects of coffee-related travel and see what, exactly, these trips are all about.

Happy reading!

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Farmer to Farmer Trip to Nicaragua
(Janet Utecht)

Relationships Matter!

I recently had the privilege to travel to Nicaragua with one of our roaster members, Joe Lozano, who shall be called “Chepe” in the rest of this article. Yes, we talked about managing risk in the current market, and yes, we conducted cupping workshops and farm visits which worked out great, but witnessing the “amistad y confienza” (friendship and trust) that Chepe has developed with our partners in Prococer was a highlight for me.

We started our trip in Matagalpa with meetings with the staff of Cecocafen that is the umbrella organization that processes all of the coffee that the Coop purchases from Nicaragua. Cecocafen was founded in 1997 and currently includes 2,637 families and up to 18,000 people under their umbrella. Their processing center is Sol Café and is located just south of Matagalpa.

On the third day of our trip, we arrived in the morning at Sol Café to conduct a cupping workshop. We were greeted by 8 people from Prococer that had been travelling since 3am to get to Matagalpa for the workshop. We arrived to a loud, “CHEPEEEEEEE!” from Denis Blandon, Commercialization Manager for Prococer. This was my introduction to the power of the relationship that Joe has built with Denis and others from Prococer in his previous three visits to Nicaragua. To be fair to Jim from DOMA and Brad from Larry’s, they did ask about you two as well, but their eyes get a special twinkle when they see their good friend, Chepe!

On a visit two years ago, Joe and these same 7 promoters participated in a cupping workshop. The promoters are all young benefactors of the cooperative’s grant program. This program is partially funded by the fair trade premium and helps ensure that the children of some of the members get a chance to finish school and go to university. They have grants to continue education in fields that will also bring a return to the coop like business and agriculture. One of the objectives of our trip was to assess the current cupping skills of this group of promoters two years later.

The young cuppers themselves.

Joe brought coffee for cupping (roasted by Third Coast) from Nicaragua, Brazil, and Sumatra. The promoters as well as the cupper for Cecocafen, Uriel Chavarria, were excited to cup coffee from other origins. We set up the cupping to first give them a chance to observe and sense the differences in the three coffees and finally with a blind triangulation to test their ability to identify the unique coffee in a set of three and if possible, identify the origin. The day ended with requests for another visit in January to help cup coffee from several projects they are currently developing.

Cupping our collective handiwork with the PROCOCER students.

After the workshop we traveled up north with them to meet with more of the Prococer staff and visit some farms and communities within the coop.

Upon arrival at the offices in Jicaro and after warm greetings all around, the head of quality grabs Chepe anxious for him to see his “lab”. On previous visits Joe tells me that he was not quite so popular with this man as Joe was pointing out the need for better set up, systems, and practices. He was proud to show Joe all of the improvements that he had made since Joe’s last visits. He was also keen to discuss more issues and learn more from this special visiting expert.

We spent a couple of more days visiting farms and communities within the Prococer family, and we left feeling that we, as well, were part of the family. The skids of my induction to the family were greased by the trust and friendship earned over the years by Chepe. Thanks for a great trip, Chepe!

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Janet’s official Farmer-to-Farmer Report

Date of meeting: _July 14, 15, 16, 2011___

Number of participants: Jicaro: 13; 4 women; 9 men; 3 farm visits—2 women; 1 man (plus various members of their families).

Jalapa: 4; 2 women; 2 men—Farm visits (including El Limon)—4 women; 20 men

Names and positions of Participants:

Prococer leadership team: Ernesto Canales, Director; Denis Blandon, Commercializaiton; Roge?, Head of Quality; Celso Roque, Manager; and several other members of the technical and administrative staff

Farms: Don JoseBlandon Guttierrez, Noeme Aguieve, Norma Herera

El Limon: 4 promotors and 20 socios

Background Information
Prococer is a cooperative operating under the umbrella of Cecocafen. They were founded in October 1999. Initially they had 150 people in the organization (138 male/12 female). Geographically, they represent 4 municipios in the state of Nueva Segovia.
They now have 674 members (534 male/140 female).
They are just completing their new Strategic Plan.

Observations
After the cupping workshop with Prococer promoters, we traveled with them to their offices in Jicaro. While with them, we met with some of their leadership team and staff. They shared a PowerPoint presentation with overview information about the coop and some of their current priorities.

They talked about their local roasting project and the coffee they sell locally (El Doradito). They have several foreign embassies as clients and say their sales are strong. They are selling it at around $5/lbs roasted and ground. They are also working on artesania made from wood and coffee beans.

I walked them through the same information and recommendation on managing market risk that we shared with Cecocafen in Matagalpa.

We also shared with them our feedback on the cupping workshop with their promoters.

Farm/Community Visits:

Don Jose Blandon Gutierrez

Don Jose Blandon Gutierrez:
Located in Las Mesas at 770 meters in altitude
10 manzanas of coffee plantation; Plants range in age from 2 years to 10 years; witnessed impact of various insects and diseases on some of the plants; currently participating in an organic fertilization research project
He and 5 of his sons work the coffee plantation

Noeme Aguiere:
1 manazana that she got out of a recent divorce settlement
She and her 19 year old daughter work the plantation
Her biggest struggle is starting the new plants and getting them planted—she currently has 2,000 ready to be planted

Norma Herera:
She is on the Comite de Administracion for Prococer
They have a newly constructed wet processing area that is not 100% done
Problems with robbers during harvest

El Limon:
Community visit on the property of Mauro Gonzales Quintero
Members’ plantations are at altitudes ranging from 900-1,500 meters
Bus service and roads to their community were limited/rough
Don Mauro has started a “school in the field”, an experiential learning environment to teach youth about growing coffee
They sell their “segundos” to Costa Rica and Venezuela.

Don Mauro Gonzales Quintero

Recommendations :
Economic: We recommended that they get a small group to complete a risk analysis on coffee prices dropping significantly. We suggested they get a cross section of folks from Prococer to brainstorm what might happen with some potential solutions or preparation measures should the coffee price drop significantly in the coming months. We suggested they think about what might happen, and what they might do now and in the moment to minimize the impact to the coop and the producers.

PROCOCER's future on display at El Limon

We shared the same recommendations on managing market risk from the previous meeting with Cecocafen (see previous notes)

We suggested that they think about the feasibility of “community lots”, and be mindful of the risks to the producers and cooperative with “micro-lots.” This was appropriate as the President of the Board, Ernesto Carnales, recently returned from a trip to Europe where they were strongly encouraging them to produce micro-lots.

They are trying to develop cupping profiles by community/altitude, and requested our help in returning to help cup these samples in January.

In the farm and community visits we re-iterated these same messages and shared our process for sampling, contracting, and buying coffee from them. We continued to reinforce the message of looking for direct, transparent relationships and providing consistent, high quality beans are critical to success.

1) Organizational: improvement to organizational effectiveness and sustainability

2) Financial: improvement of sustainable financial services

3) Environmental: improvement of environmental and natural resource conservation

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Further Reading about CECOCAFEN and PROCOCER

A fantastic background on CECOCAFEN, with video interviews and all, from Fair Trade Canada.

CECOCAFEN’s own website, in Spanish.

Trip Report from Joe’s visit in January. You know, for a little personal touch.

For the Spanish-speakers among us, check out this wonderful report on PROCOCER and their domestic-market coffee label, El Doradito (PDF).

Where’s the “Fair Trade Certified” logo?

Luke — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:37:50 +0000

A few conscientious customers have inquired lately about the absence of the “fair trade mark” on our coffee bags. As a company deeply concerned both with responsible trading practices and with transparency, we want to make sure we provided a complete answer. Doing so will require taking a quick step back to look at Fair Trade as a whole.

Fair Trade is an alternative economic model pioneered during the 1960s and 70s (see here and here), which focuses on building relationships between producers and consumers and ensuring that these relationships are grounded in a few defining principles: realistic and sustainable prices; cooperative, democratically-run work environments; financial and technical support for producers; respect for cultural integrity; public accountability; etc.

Inevitably, these goals focus mainly on the production end of the supply chain, on the “farm gate” transactions between producers and representatives of the global market. In Fair Trade’s original formulation, that supply chain was short enough that consumers in the developed world had direct access to information about the goods they were buying, in part because most companies involved in the movement saw Fair Trade as their entire business model. However, as Fair Trade gathered steam and began to spread into the marketplace as a whole, the need became apparent for some sort of third-party verification that the Fair Trade system had actually been respected. Hence, the development of Fair Trade certifying agencies.

The familiar black-and-white logo many consumers have come to look for is one such “seal of approval.” In the United States, both the logo and the term “Fair Trade Certified” are owned by an Oakland-based auditing and marketing organization now called Fair Trade USA (née Transfair USA), which launched the “Fair Trade Certified” program in 1999. Fair Trade USA audits transactions on a product-by-product basis between wholesalers in the United States and Fair Trade producers around the world, and for a fee provides its logo for use on products to guarantee that they meet Fair Trade standards. The chocolate bars, bananas, and bags of coffee you find in the store bearing the “Fair Trade Certified” logo have all been audited in this way and agreed to pay Fair Trade USA for its seal of approval.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with Fair Trade USA’s approach, there are good reasons to be critical of it. For one, many of the original Fair Trade movers and shakers in this country find it distasteful that Fair Trade USA has managed to equate the entire Fair Trade system with their own brand—especially when, at the end of the day, they are only an independent certifier of Fair Trade products. This reached a crescendo when, in 2010, the company changed its name from Transfair to Fair Trade USA; many felt that Transfair’s re-branding was a blatant move to claim ownership of Fair Trade as a whole.

Likewise, while Fair Trade USA (and its groovy logo) has worked wonders for increasing Fair Trade’s visibility in the market at large, that very visibility is not without its own problems. By focusing entirely on products rather than companies as a whole, their approach puts the onus of responsibility on producers in the developing world rather than on American corporations; a coffee cooperative must continue to follow strict guidelines to keep its Fair Trade certification, while Wal-Mart can opt to buy a few “Fair Trade Certified” products as a boost to their brand image while otherwise going about business as usual.

There are two sides to every argument, and we understand why Fair Trade USA operates the way it does. However, we also feel that Fair Trade is about more than a logo and requires a deeper commitment. As such, we opt out of Fair Trade USA’s certification in favor of the older model: a short supply chain, complete transparency, and a fundamental commitment to Fair Trade as a whole. Every bag of coffee we sell has a lot number on it, which allows anyone to trace their coffee back to the Fair Trade certified cooperative it came from and verify for themselves that it meets Fair Trade criteria. Simply by entering the lot number on our website, customers can see the contract that we signed (as Cooperative Coffees) with the farming coop, which will include Fair Trade, Organic, and quality premiums itemized right along with the price of the coffee itself. Just as importantly, by publishing trip reports, origin updates, producer profiles, and over-long missives like this one, we keep our customers up to date on all the important ins-and-outs of the Fair Trade world. It is, after all, way more than just a logo.