Cafecampesino’s Weblog

Because we are organized, we are able to count on a stable price for our product. Acting as a group also connects us to opportunities and organizations that we would not otherwise have access to if we were operating as individuals.”
-Rogelio Ramirez, General Manager, APECAFORM

Arnolfo Ramos President of APECAFORM

APECAFORM is a producer cooperative comprised of roughly 400 members in 19 different communities throughout the department of San Marcos, located in the western highlands of Guatemala, where shade-grown coffee thrives. Its extended name, Asociación de Pequeños Caficultores Orgánicos Maya-Mames, translates as Association of Mayan-Mam Small-Scale Organic Coffee Producers. The Mam community is one of the largest of 22 distinct Mayan ethnic groups that share the country’s unique and challenging history, along with the ladino (Amerindian-European) populace. The Mam community makes up about eight percent of the approximate 5,200,000 individuals of Mayan descent in Guatemala today.

APECAFORM was established in 1992, with collaboration from the Catholic diocese in Guatemala, as part of an initiative to support the development of local farmers. It has since held a strong connection with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Fair Trade program.

The relationship between APECAFORM and Cooperative Coffees and Café Campesino originated through Manos Campesinos, an umbrella organization owned by eight producer cooperatives and associations from four regions of Guatemala, whose main goal is the commercialization of its member farmers’ coffee in the Fair Trade market. Representatives from APECAFORM and the seven other cooperatives created the organization in 1997, which according to its website, now represents 1,073 individual small coffee producers.

Manos Campesinos’ vision is to “be the first financially independent exporting organization a buyer thinks of when he needs a first-class product and service delivered [responsibly].” As expressed, they are as equally committed to their purchaser clients as they are to their producer members.

Fair Grounds had the opportunity to interview Miguel Mateo, Marketing and Sales for Manos Campesinos, and Rogelio Ramirez, General Manager of APECAFORM, discussing the various developments and challenges in their scope.

Miguel has worked with Manos Campesinos for a little under two years, and when not visiting producers, spends most of his time in their central office, tucked into Zone 3 of Quetzaltenango (Xela).* Xela is Guatemala’s second largest city, but is no competition for the shadow of Volcan Santa Maria and her southern smoking sister, Santiagito. It’s a town where the author lived for a number of years, so before talking coffee, the discussion turned to the fact that, because of its high altitude, each day in Xela spits out a year of weather. On any given dewy spring morning, by mid-afternoon you are either coating on sunscreen or a rain jacket, then a 6pm breeze replaces the blazing sun, and by the time your cheek hits the pillow you are typically blue and shivering beneath your ‘sabana.’ Miguel has a cheery laugh…even through a shoddy Skype connection.

It was clear by mid-conversation that a calculator was needed in order to grasp the complexities of the sales and market concepts that accompany Miguel’s roll with Manos Campesinos. He explains, however, that “Manos Campesinos does not just search out new markets for our producer members, but we also help producers to achieve what is needed in order to compete in specialty coffee market.” 100 percent of the coffee exported through Manos Campesinos is certified organic and meets international Fair Trade standards, and Manos Campesinos provides technical support to each of its producers on everything from planting and harvesting, to stowing and transporting the wet-milled beans. Manos Campesinos also helps cooperatives such as APECAFORM to seek out grants and loans for expenses.

Miguel explains that each producer-member has an average of 1 hectare of land, the majority of which generates coffee.** The remainder, and often the space between coffee plants, intersperses food crops for family consumption and sale in local markets.

Rogelio Ramerez is one of these producer-members who also serves as the General Manager of APECAFORM cooperative. He lives on a small piece of land in San Marcos near the Mexican boarder with his wife and five children, all of whom assist in the production process. After a four hour journey to the Manos Campesinos office, Rogelio’s road-weary voice resonated more hesitant, and it took several minutes of conversation before the laughter met that of the dialogue with Miguel.

Rogelio has worked with APECAFORM since 1993, and says the major benefit of the coop’s membership with Manos Campesinos is the security of the price that each producer is assured for his beans. What this eliminates, Rogelio explains, is the need for member farmers to migrate to other parts of Guatemala during the harvest in order to supplement their income; they can stay put rather than abandon their land to work for someone else. As a community of producers, land is often shared between members, and as Rogelio emphasizes, this leads to higher production yields, and consequently, more income for the farmer and cooperative.

APECAFORM’s membership is spread throughout 18 communities, the farthest being only 20 miles apart, but a full day’s walk through these rugged mountains. Rogelio shares that the past rainy months have been a busy time for planting; in Guatemala the harvest typically begins in October, when the weather has dried.

In the late 1990’s APECAFORM launched an artisanal coffee roastery, which now serves to generate additional income for the coop, and is run solely by the women of the community, which comprise over three quarters of the coop’s membership. In this regard, the cooperative is able to enter its finished product into the local market, rather than exclusively rely on earnings from exported beans; another significant step towards financial stability. However, there remains a limited local market for coffee. The project received a CRS development grant in 2005, with which the group was able to purchase a more efficient roaster and assistance identifying local market strategies. Rogelio noted that the new roaster has made a significant difference in terms of efficiency, and that the women are now producing approximately 100 pounds of roasted coffer per month.

Rogelio is motivated by the tangible rewards of the Fair Trade market. He reflected, “Recently a team from Cooperative Coffees came to visit the cooperative. They hiked around the area visiting farms and it gave the members an incredible amount of enthusiasm… they don’t just sell the coffee in the market and that’s it.” It is this type of commitment to relationship that was represented in Xela in 2005, when Cooperative Coffees broke precedent with the industry and raised their minimum price from $1.21 to $1.25, and the organic premium from fifteen to twenty cents per pound, a move certainly buttressed by the power of producer group organization.

With regards to the future, Rogelio expresses that “mas que todo, members want to know how they can increase volume and attract more members…while always maintaining the quality of their product.” But Rogelio also hopes to utilize the leverage of their organized cooperative to improve local APECAFROM communities. “The two largest problems right now are access to water and education.” The coop members currently organize to share water for crops and household use, another benefit of operating as a group. However, education is a little more difficult; many families do not have the resources to send their children to school. The reality is that millions in the Southern Hemisphere exist below the poverty line in rural locations without infrastructure or schooling. Fair Trade may not be the difference between a Ph.D. and an assembly line, but it concerns itself with assessing where producers and their communities are, and providing choices.

APECAFORM does not currently have a established program for receiving outside financial support from individual donors. They have received assistance in the past from Oxfam and Catholic Relief Services for the sponsorship of specific projects such as the construction of an office, the purchase of a small coffee roaster, and farm income diversification projects. Therefore, Fair Grounds asked the leaders of APECAFORM if it was possible for them to directly receive small donations from the many folks that love their coffee. We then asked what they would do with small donations if a system for receiving financial support was established. They are currently wrestling with this question – but we hope that they will run with their first idea – which is to establish a fund that provides each child of an Apecaform farmer with a back-to-school kit. The kit would include notebooks, pencils and pens and other basic supplies.

The new school year begins in January, and if the APECAFORM board approves the project, Cafe Campesino will establish a simple means for connecting our customers and local schools to the School Kit Fund Project, with a goal of raising enough to fund 1000 kits- the estimated number of school-aged children represented by the co-op. In the meantime, we encourage you to connect with coffee farmers in Guatemala through www.cafeconciencia.org .

Notes:

* Guatemala is divided into departments, like provinces or states cities in Guatemala, like Xela, are divided into zones, like municipalities or neighborhoods.

Café Campesino heartily welcomes our newest trading partner ACOES from the Ahuachapan region of El Salvador. ACOES is presently made up of La Concordia Cooperative, an 87 acre coffee farm collectively managed by its 22 members, and 6 independent farmers from El Sincuyo whose farms are about .75 acres each. ACOES is located in Tacuba, which is situated in a mountainous region of El Salvador that is especially unique because much of the farmland borders the El Imposible National Park. Tacuba is also in a region that is part of the Meso-American Biological Corridor, a network of rainforests rich in diverse plant and animal life that stretches throughout Central and South America. Because of the diversity of trees in Tacuba, the landscape is perfect for producing coffee, which grows best in shaded areas.

All of ACOES’ coffee is Arabica and is grown at an average elevation of 2,790 feet. Their coffee, which is wet-mill processed, is primarily of the ‘Pacas’ variety, which is a local adaptation of the Bourbon type. The coop has been certified organic for two years, after three years of previous transition. The coffee from La Concordia is grown in the shade of 48 species of trees, with an average of 12 species per hectare. The farms in El Sincuyo have an average of 22 tree species per hectare.*

While the members of ACOES do have access to clean drinking water and a primary school education, the communities do not have available healthcare.

As more information becomes available we will blog about our friends at ACOES as well as update their profile at http://cafecampesino.wordpress.com.

Click here to view a PowerPoint on ACOES.

*The coffee: This newest addition to our Fair Trade coffee family lies on the dark side of medium. Nicely balanced with a full, smooth body. It has soft acidity, with a sweet, mellow and chocolate flavor.

Leave the Comfort of Your Cup

By Stephanie Banas

I’ve got a cup of Fair Trade coffee in my hand, what more can I do?

For a long while, Cafe Campesino has shared, through this newsletter, what we find important about the growing relationships with our partners. Whether you buy our coffee for socially conscious reasons or have received it as a gift, we want you to feel that you’re connected. You have a cup of fairly-traded joe in your fist—and, in a very real way, you’re supporting the folks that grew it. But what if you want to do more?

When it comes to the relationship between coffee and cup, we believe that we have an opportunity to raise the (coffee) bar. One cool thing is already underway—a new café in Americus, Georgia, at Café Campesino’s headquarters is currently breaking ground. Whether it’s got to do with growing, roasting or sipping—great things happen when you invite friends to join your table. And even if it is Fair Trade, coffee is not just steamy and comfortable; thought, conversation, and change unite around this stuff. Coffee cafés, serving up bottomless cups for decades, have been the center of such stimulating conversation that they’ve often been accused of spurring revolutions (or at least providing a great place for us to read the paper). And when it comes to Fair Trade, while many of us might ponder this morning’s flavor, that cup of beans translates into livelihood for our producers.

For example, Apecaform, one of Café Campesino’s producer partner coops in Guatemala, has an active membership of 400. Most development organizations would be quite proud of a success story like that. But what else, besides their product, do the 400 members represent?”

“Cooperative”, by definition, means working with your neighbors. It also indicates that you have invited others to join your table.

So, Fair Trade producer coops represent more than just growers. As much as the popular café congregates drinkers and thinkers, the fairly traded bean is the cornerstone for communities. In the case of Apecaform, it’s kept intact a growing group of 400 that has the potential to become the vehicle for solutions to other community-based issues beyond a fair price on beans.

But Coops do not always thrive amongst the obstacles. Even mutually beneficial, covenant relationships can be challenging, because people don’t always agree, tangible solutions are sometimes met without support, and really, the world can just be a frustrating place. Café Campesino aims to be honest about this stuff — there’s no point in easing our conscience if realities are still at large. But none of this provides an excuse for growers, roasters or drinkers to sit still (especially not after a really steamy cup of Easygoing Espresso).

Almost 10 years ago, Cooperative Coffees ground out a new way of supporting producer coops by forming a roaster coop that could increase the impact of Fair Trade purchasing. Through relationship-based fair trade, Café Campesino, Cooperative Coffees and its 22 other members throughout North America have since entered into an agreement with cooperative grower partners around the world who are equally dedicated to building strong unions around fairly traded beans. Now, Café Campesino is hoping to do a better job of encouraging people to ask what happens when the drinkers of fairly traded joe connect with the communities represented by fair trade growers.

We’re serious about the challenge. So take a nice, long sip and stay posted as we go to work on developing ways that you can become even more a part of the fair trade equation, and take leave from the comfort of your cup, including:

• Introduce you personally to some of the farmers that grow your coffee by organizing and hosting at least two visits, or “farmer friendship tours,” per year to our roastery and the surrounding area.
• Offer you the opportunity to travel with us to coffee communities at least twice a year. We will plan to start with Colombia in July 2008, and the Dominican Republic in January 2009.
• Connect you to vibrant, grass-roots organizations that already work in and with the communities that we serve.
• Connect you to other organizations like Global Exchange and Habitat for Humanity who already organize educational and action-oriented tours to coffee communities.

Connect Through Cafe Campesino