Sustainable Harvest

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing alone on a damp, narrow, forest path with honeybees swirling angrily around me. The tally of stings on my legs and hands was growing quickly.

It was the fourth day of Food Security Solutions, a farmer training event organized by Sustainable Harvest in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, and I had come to this forest to visit beehives as part of the beekeeping workshop. From where I stood on the path, I could make out my fellow workshop participants in a clearing up ahead, listening intently to the trainers talk about hive maintenance and honeycomb harvesting. Minutes earlier, some bees had swarmed around me, and the singular layer of denim I had worn did not protect me from stings. I had retreated into the woods for a few minutes of respite.

Despite the constant hum and all-too-often prick coming from the bees that had followed me into the woods, I was not thinking about bees or pain. I was thinking about mushrooms. My seemingly incongruous train of thought stemmed from a simple question posed on the first day of the event, one that has stuck with me ever since:

What is the best way to utilize the resources we have at our fingertips?

One workshop at Food Security Solutions taught participants how to grow edible, protein-rich mushrooms using materials already available on their farms.

Recognizing the value of the resources around us was a pervasive theme at Food Security Solutions, the four-day event which gathered together representatives from coffee cooperatives, NGOs, finance institutions, and development organizations together to learn innovative ways to tackle food insecurity in coffee communities. How can coffee growers with few resources see new potential in what they already have on their farms? How can they use those resources in different or better ways to reduce their families’ hunger? A final cup of brewed coffee represents a small percent of the tree that farmers work so hard to nurture — what are other ways to use the rest of the plant?

Throughout the event, I noticed participants and trainers answering these questions. I saw plump, delicious oyster mushrooms grown out of coffee pulp, a harvest byproduct which normally piles up unused on farms. I saw everything from riverbed rocks to molasses to leftover eggshells from the morning’s breakfast thrown into the mix during a lesson on the production of organic fertilizers; the idea being that effective fertilizer can be made using many resources already available on the farm. I saw bees carefully tended to, producing honey for consumption and sale.

These sights are why, in the midst of a harrowing swarm of bees on a forest path, I was peering at a decaying log, studying the clump of mushrooms growing out of it. I widened my gaze and pondered how the leaves and moss scattered around me could be harnessed in a healthy, sustainable way to improve the livelihoods of the people living in the area.

Today I am far from that forest path in Nicaragua; my bee stings are healed. The Food Security Solutions participants have all returned to their homes throughout Central America, bringing with them new skills to teach and projects to implement. And while I don’t live on a farm, I find that the idea of utilizing resources to their fullest potential often applies in a much broader context. To me, Sustainable Harvest’s relationships with coffee cooperatives, finance institutions, development foundations, and NGOs are resources at our fingertips. Bringing these heads together to share ideas and tackle the critical issue of food insecurity in coffee communities is our best idea for a new and effective way to utilize this network.

- Wynne McAuley, Finance and Communications Assistant, Portland

When Clemente Oblitas delivers milk to the primary school in his town in Peru, his neighbors call out, “Buenos días, lechero!” (“Good morning, milk man!”). Clemente has been a dairy farmer for many years, in addition to producing coffee on his land. Over the years, Clemente has been successful in both his dairy and his coffee endeavors, and he has become a leader of the APROECO coffee cooperative. But there is more to his nickname: in Peru, lechero also means “the lucky one.” Given his recent good fortune to visit the United States for the first time to learn about the coffee industry and supply chain, he’ll tell you his luck has rarely been better.

In the past month, Clemente experienced several firsts, including an airplane flight and a visit to the U.S., where he attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) annual conference in Anaheim, California and visited Sustainable Harvest’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

Clemente came to the U.S. with three fellow Peruvian co-op leaders – Dario Roman from the APESI cooperative, Cesar Montalvam of CAPEMA, and Alvaro Prada from ADISA, as part of an exchange visit organized by Sustainable Harvest and funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Four coffee producers from Peru joined Sustainable Harvest at the SCAA's annual conference this April to learn about coffee in a consumer country. From left to right: Alvaro Prada, Dario Roman, Katie Gilmer, Clemente Oblitas, Chabela Cerqueda, Cesar Montalvam, Olga Cuellar.

During the visit to the SCAA annual conference, the farmers had the opportunity to meet with several of their business partners from other countries, as well as with NGOs and institutions that work to improve coffee producers’ lives, and learned about coffee marketing and retailing in the U.S. marketplace.

After the SCAA conference, the four Peruvians traveled to Portland to see firsthand the roasting and retail segments of the coffee supply chain. Most small-holder producers only hear bits and pieces about how coffee is consumed in countries like the United States, and there were many things that surprised the farmers. None of them were prepared for the sheer number of coffee drinkers they encountered on the street with to-go cups and in coffee shops and bars.

“When I got up this morning,” Dario from APESI commented one day in Portland, “and looked at the hotel window, I saw three people walking past carrying cups from local coffee shops. That seemed like a lot to me, but when I came to the Sustainable Harvest office and told this story, people laughed and said, ‘What, only three people? Where was everyone else?’”

At the end of the trip, Clemente, el lechero, said that he felt luckier than ever to have had the chance to visit the United States for the SCAA show and to see first hand the coffee industry in Portland. Bringing this information back to his cooperative, he can better lead the other farmers in negotiating the specialty market and producing top quality coffee.

- Olga Cuellar, Development Manager, Lima, Peru

The many members of the coffee supply chain have a lot that they can learn from one another. A Colombian producer who makes his own fertilizer can be a great resource for a Nicaraguan cooperative looking to make some fertilizer of its own. A water-saving technique used at a Tanzanian washing station can be valuable for a Burundian washing station as well.

At Sustainable Harvest, we promote the efficiency and quality improvement that come from peer-to-peer information exchange among coffee producers across the world. Often, though, those that stand to learn the most from one other live very far apart, and the opportunities for them to collaborate face-to-face are few and far between. This is why our staff at origin make a point of facilitating peer exchanges among producers in our supply chain,  using the technology that we have available in our origin offices.

Diracsema and Israel of the 21st of September cooperative, used Skype to share information on women's coffee lots with interested producers from the Aprocassi cooperative in Peru.

Clemente recently sent us a snapshot of such an exchange happening at our office in Oaxaca, Mexico: Diracsema Jose, the President, and Israel Paz,  staff at the 21^st of September cooperative in Oaxaca, having a Skype conversation with members of the Aprocassi Cooperative in Cajamarca, Peru.

Two years ago, the 21^st of September began separating and tracking the coffee grown by its women members. The co-op sold these  ‘women’s lots’ as a specialty item for consumers who wanted to support the economic development of women in origin countries. When Clemente learned that Aprocassi was interested in doing a similar project, he arranged for them to have a conference call with the 21^st of September. Over Skype, Diracsema imparted her experience tracking, cupping, and separating women’s lots for special sale with a producer from Aprocassi, providing him with an understanding of how he could implement the project in his own community.

To learn more about how our offices situated at origin facilitate peer-to-peer interactions and support the production of quality coffee, check out our new video.

Sayda Granados from the Soppexcca co-op in Nicaragua had never had a class quite like the Let’s Talk Coffee Regional cupping training this past week. In one day, she evaluated nineteen different samples of coffee. She honed her ability to recognize the subtleties of aroma, body, and acidity in each cup and to discern the differences among each coffee sample. She was exposed to myriad flavors and scents, some of which she had never experienced before, and was later quizzed on what she had been taught. Sayda learned quickly, and her quiz scores were the proof.

Sayda participated in the Let’s Talk Coffee Regional event held by Sustainable Harvest in Jinotega, Nicaragua. She joined representatives from six other Nicaraguan cooperatives for the training event. There, she gained an understanding of the rigor needed in order to become certified as a Q Grader within the CQI system. With this preparation, Sayda earned the opportunity to participate in a Q Grader certification course later this year.

During the cupping workshop at the Let's Talk Coffee regional event, Sayda Granados of the Soppexcca cooperative in Nicaragua calibrated with her peers

The Let’s Talk Coffee Regional event reinforced the importance of quality control for cooperatives. Having skilled cuppers on staff helps cooperatives manage their sales and exports well, thereby fostering successful long-term business relationships with roasters. During the Let’s Talk Coffee Regional training, Sayda joined certified Q Graders around the cupping tables and learned from these expert peers. After three days of cupping sessions, meetings, and presentations, Sayda and the other cuppers returned to their communities, bringing with them experience and expertise to implement in their own cupping laboratories.

The Farmers of Loma Bonita

Relationship Coffee Manager Adam McClellan was the first coffee buyer the farmers of Loma Bonita had ever seen. The cooperative, more formally known as ACDI, comprises 44 families who pooled their money to purchase an abandoned estate farm near San Marcos from the Guatemalan government. The remote farm lies in a high saddle between two volcanoes, one of which, Tajumulco, is the tallest peak in Central America. Loma Bonita’s organic coffee grows from rich volcanic soil beneath a shade canopy of tropical cloud forest. The fog-like clouds are so constant that when the farmers play soccer on a patch of bare soil at the farm, they call their team “Real Mist.”

Adam toured Loma Bonita with the farmers and their families, talking about the Sustainable Harvest model of transparency, communication, and quality. In turn, they shared information on their organic cultivation techniques and Fair Trade labor practices. After dark, the farmers showed Adam the coffee warehouse by candlelight; the farm is so remote that it has no electricity.

Sunset over Loma Bonita

Despite the challenges the farmers of Loma Bonita face due to their isolation, the market connections they have established with the help of Sustainable Harvest enable them to sell their coffee to U.S. buyers at a fair price. With income from expanded sales, the farmers are close to paying off their debt to the government and owning their land outright. Loma Bonita: “beautiful hill.” One sees why they chose this name not only in the photos of their home, but also in the new-found success of the cooperative’s members.