Darrin Daniel, Allegro Green Coffee Buyer

Armenia, Colombia October 2nd thru 6th

The 6th Annual Let’s Talk Coffee has just ended in the beautiful southern coffee region of Armenia, Colombia. One of our most unique coffee supply partners, Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers, organizes this event in different coffee producing countries in Latin America in order to bring together coffee farmers, exporters, importers and roasters from all over the world. The goal is to find a common language to help support the entire specialty coffee supply chain. This year nearly three hundred attended from twenty countries; the theme was “Certified Quality” and people from as far away as Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, Ecuador, Mexico and Brazil represented their coffee producing nations.  For Allegro, this represents a golden opportunity to meet one-on-one with our supply partners, hear their concerns, share our accomplishments and further understand what the relationship between farmer and roaster means. Each year the event has grown and thanks to the hard work of Sustainable Harvests staff, this year was extraordinarily successful.

Highlights included a presentation by author and academic Michael Conroy on the future of coffee certifications, a barista latte art competition, a presentation by the Colombian Coffee Federation on the future of coffee traceability with their new high-tech Beantrack program, former Starbucks African coffee buyer, Mark Schonland on the successes and challenges for African specialty coffee, and a guest appearance by 2008 world barista champion, Stephen Morrissey. Other noteworthy events included a day trip to a farm near the event: Finca La Placer, which is a large producer of conventional coffee that incorporates many environmentally sustainable practices. To top it all off we visited a coffee theme park in Armenia with a museum, rides for the kids and a varietal coffee lab with many different cultivars of coffee.

For Allegro, the most important aspect of the weekend conference was our meetings with 8 different groups with whom we purchase coffee from. One of the most interesting meetings was with our Tanzanian supplier, Kanyovu, in Kigoma. We have been purchasing coffee from the cooperative for two years. Chris Thorns, Director of Green Coffee for Allegro, was just in Tanzania a little over a month ago and this recent meeting in Colombia was a chance to re-cap her trip, give them input about the coffee for this year’s harvest and to look to the future of the project. Our 3rd quarter Special Reserve was a huge hit as we partnered with the Goddall Foundation on this wonderful coffee from the western region of this east African country and we look forward to buying more in the coming years. We were able to meet with the chairman from the cooperative and discuss how things were going in his community and to build a plan towards future growth together. Click here to learn more about the event.

Finca La Rochela, Valle del Cauca, Colombia October 7th and 8th
Julian Duque the son of Luis Arturo Duque speaks to me about his father’s farm, “…our goal is to get our coffee to score a 90 and quality is the most important thing that we can hope to achieve.” Julian and his father and uncle are driven and have been organically producing coffee for 9 years and the farm has been producing coffee since 1990. But I am getting a head of myself here: at the close of Let’s Talk Coffee, there were optional field trips to visit various coffee related organizations in Colombia. The choice was easy since we already source from La Rochela. 17 folks from the U.S., Ethiopia, Mexico (members of our own Organic Mexican Zaragoza cooperative coffee), Brazil and Peru travelled from Armenia three hours by bus to the southern region of Valle del Cauca to see this organic coffee producer. La Rochela, just outside the quaint town of Trujillo has a population of 9,000 people and is known for coffee.

La Rochela’s coffee is uniquely processed and currently is used as a blend component in our popular Whole Trade Organic Espresso Sierra. Many coffees throughout Colombia do not fully ferment their coffees in tanks once they remove the cherry in order to break down the sticky substance known as mucilage so that the coffee does not pick up off flavors or mold. We tend to favor these fully washed coffees as they help to impart a brighter more sparkling cup profile. La Rochela uses a water conservation method which minimizes its naturally occurring spring water that runs throughout the farm and filters its waste water with rocks to absorb any bacterial matter which would affect nearby rivers and streams. In the future they are planning to purchase what is known as an aqua-pulper that will save even more water in the future.

The farm is not only organic certified, but also has Rainforest Alliance certification, which provides even more guarantee of social and environmental initiatives. They have five sub-divisions which each have on-site housing facilities that I found to be quite impressive in that they were clean, well built and provided all the necessities for excellent living quarters. In addition to coffee, they also raise their own cattle, plantain (which is inter-planted along with the coffee and an extensive compost program). The compost is re-applied to the coffee plants throughout the year to provide organic fertilizer through vermin-culture methods incorporating all waste from the farm, manure and the pulp from the wet mill. Those worms really are a miracle to the industry and now you see this practice has almost become commonplace on organic and conventional farms alike.

We had a full afternoon and it was starting to get dark as we finished our tour of the farm and made our way back to see the wet mill begin processing the day’s harvest. During the height of the harvest the mills will work throughout the night so that the coffees can ferment over night before the next step of drying the parchment. La Rochela is not only producing excellent quality coffee but it is also experimenting with new varietals, such as the famed geisha from Ethiopia, and tracking each of their plots by coffee varietal like an appellation system that is used in vineyard grape production throughout the wine world. The combined effect of good altitudes (over 1500 meters), excellent soil types, fertilization, La Rochela is redefining what organic coffee can be in Colombia. The Duque family has a beautiful farm and we at Allegro are proud to work with farmers who are committed to sustainable land use and quality in the cup.

7/11/08 Oro Verde co-op, Lamas, San Martin, Peru
I am travelling through the northern Peruvian provinces of San Martin, Amazonas, and Caja Marca with our other Allegro buyer Darrin and Claudia and Angel from Sustainable Harvest Importers. Sustainable is helping build labs and train cuppers at the four cooperatives from whom we source coffee beans in this vast agricultural region situated between the Amazon and the Pacific. In the last few years we have moved our sourcing from the southern Cuzco province, which perhaps is more romantic given that it is the home of stunning Machu Picchu, to this northern coffee belt where we aim to build more direct links with growers and find more consistent quality. From Lima, we caught a flight to the bustling town of Tarapoto in San Martin, which at one time was the epicenter of the coca trade in Peru controlled by the FARC-like, MRTA (Revolutionary Movement of Tupac Amaru*).  The MRTA brought a temporary prosperity to San Martin, where according to the locals, everyone benefited in some way from the coca trade and walked with their pockets stuffed with silver. It was also a time when there was very little worry about crime with the paramilitaries acting as the local law enforcement. Fear of a knock on the door by men in camouflage discouraged most lawbreakers. Supposedly the MRTA so controlled the area they used the local roads as landing strips for their airplanes that would literally land, dump bags of money out one door as people on the ground would load up bundles of coca in the other in less than a minute without stopping the plane. Those days are over now, as coca has been completely wiped out in this region by the US round-up eradication campaign that so destroyed the land which was sprayed that nothing has been able to grow there for the last 15 years. Farmers moved into new areas to plant coffee in the highlands and cacao, rice and palm in the valleys. The pockets of the locals may no longer be overflowing with silver, but Tarapoto is once again bustling as the center for legit agricultural products and noisy with the sound of the local motor taxis or tuk-tuks imported from Korea it seems.

*Tupac Amaru was a revolutionary Incan leader who led a failed revolt against the conquering Spaniards. The MRTA used him as inspiration for their movement.

7/12/08 Lamas, Peru
Today we are visiting with the Oro Verde group in the small, hillside town of Lamas near Tarapoto. The co-op has 1000 members after starting in 1999 with only 53 farmers. The group is starting a new Rainforest Alliance carbon offset project, first with the planting of a variety of trees on land around the coffee farms to add some additional income for the members. Down the road this may also add some agroforestry income. On the coffee side, the co-op is developing an appellation focused database for each farm, documenting environmental aspects of each including shade levels, soil type and health, elevation, etc…and tying this to the cupping profile of the coffee that comes from each farm.  Oro Verde is both a coffee and cocoa producer, the cocoa coming from the farms lower in the valley and coffee from farms above 4000 feet. This morning we walked through a cocoa field and tasted the sweet, slippery pulp that surrounds the cocoa beans inside each colorful gourd-like pod. The Oro Verde group is Fair Trade certified and we saw first-hand the benefits of the social premium that is being used here to build a new dry mill for coffee, a new cupping lab, and new fermentation tanks and drying patios for the cocoa.

7/14/08 San Ignacio, Cajamarca, Peru
The two day drive from Lamas provided us the opportunity to see the ever changing, dramatically beautiful scenery in this rugged countryside of northern Peru, reminiscent to me in a way of the drive through the four corners area of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, but with the addition of rice patties and palm trees in the valleys. Spectacular photo opportunities seemed to lie around every bend; stunning red sandstone cliffs rising above green fields of rice; boisterous rivers cutting down through steep canyons of granite with small clay huts flanked by stands of corn and banana precipitously perched on the soaring ledges above; and vast lonely horizons that seem to stretch to the coast. Then the long, battered road literally dead ended in the town of San Ignacio, but what a great surprise this end-of-the-road town turned out to be.

We are buying coffee from three cooperatives in San Ignacio. Our first visit is with the Aprocassi (San Ignacio Association of Supportive Producers) group from whom we buy a couple containers of Fair Trade Organic coffee and aim to support a women’s micro co-op, Programa Mujeres. There are currently 474 members of Aprocassi which has grown rapidly since their founding in 2000. Programa Mujeres was formed in September of 2007 with 69 members, all of whom own and farm their own land. Today we met specifically with the women’s group to discuss the potential for separating their production from the rest of the co-op’s coffee in the future. Currently 50% of their farms are certified organic, 21 are in the 2nd transition year, and 14 in their first transition year. It takes three years for conversion from conventional to certified organic, so it will be a little while before we can see their full potential volume-wise. We discussed the farming techniques and needs around infrastructural improvements. Cement and ceramic tiles to build better fermentation tanks and materials to improve their drying beds topped the list of needs.  Despite some challenges they feel that they have good quality control and organic practices in place with the assistance of Aprocassi’s three agronomy technicians. They also talked a lot about their focus on picking and/or processing only ripe red cherries. I found it interesting that the women who own large enough farms to hire labor for the harvest prefer to hire other women for the job because they feel women are more selective when it comes to picking.

Later we toured the president of the women’s program, Roxana Nuñez’s 4 hectare farm, which she shares with her mother Julia, also a member of women’s group. They showed us how they make both a dry and wet organic fertilizer. The wet from composting coffee pulp, kitchen waste, trunks banana trees, used sugar cane, animal waste with red worms.  The dry was made from a simple mixture of pulp with phosphoric rocks and bird guano. Walking through their amazing diverse and botanically rich farm with one of the co-op’s agronomists we saw a biological predator at work against coffee’s biggest pest, a borer weevil called broca. A natural fungus attacks and kills the broca before they have a chance to enter the bean through the outside layers of pulp and parchment to lay their eggs. We also saw the white fungus that literally attacks a common foliage disease called leaf rust. It was so uplifting to visit with farmers who believe in and understand organic farming and to see the balanced, healthy ecosystem that is the result.

7/15/08 San Ignacio
Today we met with members of the two other cooperatives in San Ignacio, Chirinos and Frontera. This will be the first harvest that we will buy coffee for Allegro from these two co-ops, so our initial visits are really to get to know one another and do some cupping to see how the harvest is coming in. From what they tell us, Darrin and I are the first coffee buyers from the States to visit San Ignacio, but it is such a great little coffee town that I doubt it will be below the roaster radar for long. I was especially struck by the sense of community and openness that all of the coffee co-ops shared. Both Chirinos and Frontera cuppers brought their coffee samples to Aprocassi cupping lab for us to evaluate together and we shared meals throughout our two days here with members of all of the groups.

Chirinos co-op has 275 members or socios as they are called in Peru, who cultivate their coffee specifically in a small district with the same name outside of San Ignacio. The group is focused on educating their farmers through a clever youth program lead by their head cupper, Abel. Abel trained 14 young socios to assist with cupping sessions with other members that address cultivation and processing problems and their affects on quality. These “jovens” also travel to the various farms to communicate and help implement needed improvements. They feel this program is a success and has brought down defect numbers in the green coffee and led to more consistent cupping scores.

Frontera co-op has 340 socios with an average farm size of 2 Hectares. They gave us an excellent sunset tour of the new wet mill they are constructing on a hillside overlooking town. The mill will use the traditional full fermentation and washing method to process their coffee and we saw a line of brand new pulpers set above a maze of cement washing channels and neat row of fermentation tanks. A large, yet to be used, drying patio extended out to the edge of the hill. We saw an interesting organic planting method which I had never seen used anywhere before. They grow a type of edible white bean plant alongside newly sown coffee seeds (typically we see coffee plants grown in nurseries until they are around three months old and then transferred to the fields) to add nitrogen and a small amount of shade. After three months, when the coffee trees have grown hearty enough, the beans stalks are removed, the pods are hulled by beating them inside big wooden hoppers with sticks, the husks and leftover plant material is dried and used in the compost that goes back into the coffee fields. The hulled beans are then consumed or sold as an additional cash crop by members.

We are so impressed by the sustainably focused coffee farmers of San Ignacio and so charmed by the beauty and warmth of this lovely mountain town that we hate to leave, but on to Ecuador we must go. Saludos!

Day One: Visit to Espindola to meet producers

Having just completed a nearly seven day journey in Northern Peru, it was time to fly from the coastal town of Chiclayo in Peru and hop on over to Ecuador. Our plan was to fly into the southern region of Ecuador’s Loja department and visit with the members of PROCAFEQ, the producers of our Special Reserve Ecuadorian coffee known as Espindola. Loja’s high sierra plateau is part of the stupendous northern Andean chain of mountains and this was our first time visiting Ecuador. For Allegro this was a great opportunity for us to show the growers our support. FAPECAFES is the larger umbrella export group that helps aid in marketing and selling coffees from not only PROCAFEQ but five other regions within Ecuador. Our plan this year is to purchase two containers (about 500 bags) of their very best coffee.

We met Roberto Jiménez, the director from FAPECAFES early on July 17th in Catamayo along with leadership from PROCAFEQ for a little breakfast and an itinerary review. Then, after a 2 hour drive, we arrived at Fundochamba, a small community high up in the department, well over 1,600 meters (5,249 ft); the perfect altitude for the prized typica cultivar. We met with a group that represents 35 of the 331 of PROCAFEQ members. This meeting gave us immediate insight into the successes and some of the struggles that growers are facing in Ecuador’s new specialty coffee market. FAPECAFES is developing their partners’ business with technical and organizational assistance. FAPECAFES is also assisting in a program for the PROCAFEQ to have an emergency fund in order to deal with loans or other potential hardships.

We were able to follow-up on the irrigation project funded by Allegro’s Special Reserve program. Some of the growers were beginning to expand irrigation lines on their farms, such as Hector Cuevas from the Fundochamba group. Nine other growers have been chosen for irrigation upgrades. Many members of PROCAFEQ have defined irrigation as a priority. After visiting two other growers in nearby La Libertad and Castillo, we ventured on for a regional Ecuadorian lunch. The coop had many questions about the relationship between our importer, Sustainable Harvest and Allegro. We explained who we are, how we sell coffee and presented them with the marketing material we use in our Special Reserve program that highlights Espindola.

Drying patios in Fundochamba atop someone’s new home

A look at the valley and regional school in Fundochampa

Ramiro López, Roberto Jiménez from FAPECAFES speaking with Fernando Seminario of Sustainable Origins

Members from PROCAFEQ with growers from Fundochampa

Hand sorting through this year’s Espindola 2008 harvest!

Hector Cuevas showing me this year’s harvest on his farm

Warehouse facility for PROCAFEQ

Our meeting with the leadership of PROCAFEQ

Oscar Gonzalez from Sustainable Origins presenting to the group

Darrin handing out Allegro hats to the current President of PROCAFEQ

Day Two: Meeting and cupping with FAPECAFES
On our second day, FAPECAFES gave a presentation in Loja, a cultural hotspot known for its passionate soccer fans. In our meeting we sampled another FAPECAFE product, their spicy plaintain chips. Later we roasted samples of coffee to cup from Espindola, Vilcabamba, as well as other regions. Vilcabamba is famous because its inhabitants have lived mysteriously long lives. Rumors say it must be the water. Since the coffee is fermented in this water, we figured we better try the coffee too. At the dry mill, prior to our cupping, we met a 91 year old man bagging dry parchment with the vigor of a 30 year old man. I would have guessed he was 70! This just might be the fountain of youth. After cupping three full tables, we found the best of the day. The coffee was from Quilanga, a sub-region of Espindola, which produces a majority of the coffee we buy. This was a perfect way to end a fabulous trip: tasting our 2008 new year’s harvest at origin.

At FAPECAFES cupping lab with José Apolo in red, Chris and Oscar.

Setting up the table for the first round at FAPECAFES