It’s my third week with the Fair Trade program and I’m finally getting around to posting my first blog. Why? Well, Jackie and I have been busy. Not only because it’s Fair Trade month, but also because we took a trip to Nicaragua last week for the Cooperative Coffees annual meeting. I love coffee, but this was my first chance to get up close and personal with farmers, roasters, and of course, coffee – from crop to cup.

  Jackie and I take a break from learning to do some recycled paper shopping.

Cooperative Coffees is a green coffee importing cooperative of 22 community-based coffee roasters in the U.S. and Canada. Eight of the coffee roasters in Cooperative Coffees are CRS Fair Trade partners, so Jackie and I headed to Nicaragua last week to attend the meeting and meet several partners from around the U.S. in one beautiful place. In addition to roasters from North America, farmers from cooperatives in Nicaragua, Columbia, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic were in attendance. The week was filled with visits to coffee farms to discuss best practices and challenges in organic coffee production, how to improve coffee quality, and how to diversify production and income generating activities. It was a unique opportunity for the roasters (and Jackie and I) to learn about the realities of being a Fair Trade coffee farmer.

Also in attendance at the meeting were representatives from CECOSEMAC, the CRS-supported cooperative in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. We were able to take two of our partners from Peace Coffee and Larry’s Beans to visit their new cupping lab to see how local farmers are being taught how to monitor their own coffee’s quality. The folks at CECOSEMAC are also breaking into their local market. In addition to selling their Fair Trade coffee to roasters in the U.S., CECOSEMAC is taking the beans that don’t make it to the U.S. market, roasting them in Matagalpa, and selling them in local stores. They were kind enough to give me some samples, and believe me the cupping lab is working, because this is some delicious coffee!

  Adrian from CECOSEMAC participates in a session on identifying coffee beans with defects.

I don’t want to name names, but some people arrived coffee geeks, and the rest of us had gained that status by the end of the trip. Not only was I learning about Fair Trade from producers and roasters, but roasters were learning about how to run an organic coffee farm from farmers, farmers were learning what consumers are looking for in the roast of their coffee. All in all, I began to see how Fair Trade WORKS. For some people, the taste is what gets them hooked on Fair Trade coffee. But the reason it tastes great is because the relationships exist between the consumers, roasters, producers, and educators to allow these types of exchanges to happen.  Now that the meeting is over, we’ve all returned to the places we call home, but the knowledge we’ve gained and the relationship we’ve built come with us. In each of our roles, this will help us improve our daily work, educate others and promote economic justice. What I’ve learned is that to achieve a quality final “product”, whether it’s coffee or economic justice, you need to be invested in the process from start to finish. If this makes me a geek, then so be it! I’m in good company.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.