Coffee 5: To market to market

So. I am a small farmer. I have picked my crop, put the beans through either my or the co-operative’s beneficio, I’ve dried them…

and now I’d like to sell them. Maybe to another farmer or org down the road who buys and sells, or if I belong to a cooperative, or a union of coffee coperatives, we might have a Faritrade certificate. Then they will take my coffee and sell it on the Fairtrade market.

Now. In the same way you can’t have half an Investors in People standard, your farm can’t be ‘a bit Fairtrade’. You need to show that you are feeding and paying people right, that you are treating your rivers right, etc. Or that it’s organic, or shade grown…

BUT of the four organisations I am aware of that are certified, only one is selling 100% of their coffee on the Fairtrade market. In some cases it seems that this is because not all of their farms are certified yet, but in others its simply because there is not enough global demand. Yup, that’s right, not enough demand.

The Fairtrade organisation only give a certification. You don’t need to pay initially, so you don’t lose out before you’ve found your buyers but you do then have to find your market. It’s two separate entities. But those buyers then guarantee to come back and buy a specific amount year on year. If you think your farms are going to produce more, you can go back and ask if they’ll buy more… but they might not be able to find a big enough market for that amount of fairtrade coffee.

“Oh, that’s funny Rebs, cos Starbucks told me that there isn’t enough speciality fair trade coffee for it to stock it?”

Well, yes, it is isn’t it, because I have asked and asked and checked my language and checked it again and the fact of the matter is that there is coffee being produced by Fairtrade certified farms in Nicaragua that has to be sold on the ´normal´ market. However all these organisations still think its worth having the certification, even with these percentages - as its far more than just a guarantee of price.

There are other certifications, and projects. In a way, this is good – people here are able to sell speciality coffee at a good price and have a relationship with the buyer. On the other hand, it´s becoming confusing for the farmer and I still think that some – like Starbucks´ Cafe Practices – are a greenwash. They make you pay upfront, they don´t guarantee to come back and buy, and they don’t guarantee a price. And that’s the difference, Fairtrade does.

I found someone that seems to agree with this opinion… and she’s trawled through some weighty documents to back it up.

http://greenlagirl.com/2006/02/11/starbucks-cafe-practices-part-i/

So. When you are next in Starbucks buying your Fairtrade coffee ask them why they’re making you look like a prat having to demand it especially. And when they start with their stock answer about there not being enough say PIFFLE. There is Fairtrade coffee sitting here waiting to be bought.

Please comment if I've got any of this wrong adn you are more knowledgabe than me, once again - it's all from speaking to people in Spanish... eeek!

Coffee 4: The Union

When I was in Jinotega the other day, as well as talking to a singing policeman I found out a bit about Soppexcca. They are a union of 18 Coffee Cooperatives, and every one of their 600 small farms is Fairtrade. This is one of them that also has rooms for tourists and coffee tours...

The premium they get by selling their crop to organisations that buy Fairtrade goes on: schools, uniforms, roads, health projects, the infrastructure of their coffee mill. That other farms without certification in the area benefit from all these things is no bad thing in the eyes of the manager – she sees it as good motivation for the other farmers to join eventually. The farmers in their union of cooperatives also don´t have a problem this year even though the price is lower in the ´normal´ market: they’ve been selling Fairtrade for 6 years and the farmers understand the concepts behind it. The union have done workshops and produced information about the benefits, and the obligations. I've got a great little booklet they produced for the farmers, it's useful for my spanish too...! This general education is no mean feat when you imagine that a large chunk of those 600 farms will be relying on those local buses I´ve talked about for transport, they’re all spread far and wide around the department of Jinotega, up dirt tracks and the sides of old volcanoes, and their main type of work is agriculture and not sitting around chatting about quality standards.

But Soppexcca are only able to sell about 80% of their coffee Fairtrade. And that’s a good percentage from what I’ve found, some organisations are as low as 20%. So you work to get the certificate, you pay to keep it year on year, and yet you don’t get that much-needed social premium money back on 100% of your produce. There just aren´t the people buying Fairtrade... so it has to get sold on the normal market.

Here's their website.. More coffee soon!

http://www.soppexcca.org/en/

A Dam and a Singing Policeman

Jinotega has a BIG lake with a power plant at the end of it to make electiricity for about 60% of Nicaragua. Or something. We went to find the plant on Sunday, but ended up at a Dam instead....

which was still incredibly exciting as they were building a great big new one too.

We arrived just as the workers were wandering off shift, so we found out a bit about it but not where on earth the money was coming from. It's near a little pueblo called Asturias, so we wandered in to find some coffee. I don't think they're use to visitors - they refused to charge us. So we had to buy peanuts from their little shop cos we felt bad. That´s not the way to fleece the tourists guys!!

And on the way home, we got a ride in a truck before the bus had a chance to arrive, and shared it with this young chap. (looks like 2 different members of the village people eh?).

A very earnest trainee policeman on his way to Managua, with a bit of English that he wanted to practice, who assured me he was the honest type of policeman and not the other kind. He then announced that he writes songs, and throught the bumps and the wind sang us a very romantic ballad about stars reflecting in eyes, and something about the moon. aaaah.

Coffee 3: A bit about Fairtrade

“The Fairtrade inspectors don´t check every farm and they ask the cooperative workers where they should go... round here the farms are quite bad with environmental targets but the checkers always get taken to the good farms.”

“Our Cooperative has had a Fairtrade certificate since 2005. We are checked every year. Prohibitions include toxic substances and water contamination: you have to have a clean farm. We do know when the inspectors are coming, but they decide which farms they go to”

"There are still too many middle men"

There are more than two sides to every story aren’t there. I’ve talked to unions of coffee co-ops, co-ops, farmers, coffee cuppers and I’ve even read a book. The facts are that coffee plants produce only once a year, picking is labour intensive for a short period, the processing is many-stepped and fiddly, and life is basic for any coffee farmer here. The opinions are harder to pin down.

One cooperative I spoke to are passionate about the Fairtrade certificate, and even more so despite the current climate where the price on the normal market is actually above the fair trade price. I’ve encountered a lot of short term thinking here in Nicaragua, and this is another example. When you have a Fairtrade certificate you are guaranteed trade year on year, and the price won´t go down. But it doesn´t go up either. So when the price is lower, farmers are sometimes more interested in taking their chances on the normal market. The co-operative is encouraging their farmers to look at the longer term picture involving guaranteed trade and money to spend on education, health etc.

This co-op is spending its Fairtrade premium on supporting the “Casa Materna” – a small building in Yali housing mothers-to-be who are just about to drop their sprogs, meaning its easier for them to stay healthy and be kept an eye on.
































That's Mariel in the background, a groovee Peace Corps volunteer who also lives and works in Yali and is incredibly understanding when I have one of my characteristic flip outs.

The Casa Materna means it´s then easier for the women to get to hospital in Jinotega (still 2 hours away) when the time comes. That's the ambulance there, just outside my house.

The co-op have also built bus shelters, useful when rain is heavy and times are vague: they all leave on time, but who can say who or what they’ll have to pick up on the way.

This is also the cooperative that was working on the Beneficio (coffee mill) right at the beginning of my trip that is planning to reuse or recycle all its water, and use the gaseous waste from their composting husks to power the plant. They are hoping to provide 60%of their power in this way next year. Here's a skanky pool of the old water from cleaning the coffee, and then a picture of the mechanism to clean it.

This one will get me noticed...

A philosophical musing on the subject of energy.

I’m reading this book. It’s bloody good and I’d recommend it to anyone – including you Grandad, there’s a part in it that made me think of you. (Revenge of Gaia - link on the left). Among other things, it talks clearly about the different energy options we have and our relationship to electricity. On Saturday, I had a timely reminder of my relationship with it when I was meant to be teaching 2 computer classes and “no hay luz” – no electricity from 3 am until the afternoon. That was quite a long one, but every week in some way or another we have an outage and I’m starting to understand: just how much we take for granted, how we feel in control over our energy, and how it affects a nation’s psyche – You can’t hold anyone to anything, and with good reason frankly. Constant outages lead to this feeling of impotence and lack of control – you never know when, or how long. And when the water goes too that’s when you start to feel they’re doing it on purpose…

I’ll be honest, I’ve been surprised thus far that the blog’s not been head hunted by the Guardian and I’ve not been offered all sorts of money for serialising my experiences… isn’t that what happens with blogs? I reckon this one’s the clincher though. I’ll let you know

The Bus.

I have become more aware of what people are saying these days. First sign was when I heard on the radio in a taxi that a chicken bomb had exploded somewhere in Nicaragua. I checked with the guy, but yes, I wasn’t hearing things. I think I cam across a little surprised, so the guy started explaining how sometimes people hide explosives in things when they want to make a bomb ‘escondido’. Yup, I’m aware of that concept, I’m from London… I just think that our terrorists have moved beyond the size of a chicken already. Perhaps the size of a cow.

And then on the same day, after hopping off taxi into bus,I finally was able to understand the majority of what Bible Guy had to say as he had our rapt attention waiting for the bus to leave. “Brothers I wish you are having a very pleasant journey here on this day today. Esteemed brothers and sisters please spare a moment of your time to listen to the word of God… As it says in the bible chapter blah verse blah…” and up behind him comes a tough looking woman wearing an apron and holding a big bucket shouting “Enchiladas Enchiladas Enchiladas…” Bible Guy barely misses a beat and continues reading from his battered leather tome as she sells her wares. And we the passengers get food: for the belly and for the soul. If we pay.

Many people have been far more brazen in their travels than me (surprise surprise) so if you put “nicaragua bus” in YouTube you can see their offerings and get more of a feel than simply my words. If you are bored in your constant- internet-constant-electricity lives! Actually.... Lets create a little link on the left hand side shall we... Hey Presto.

T Shirts

This has been brewing for a while but what i saw this week takes the biscuit!

When I first got here I kept catching sight of diminutive Nica girls and women who looked like they wouldn’t say boo to a goose, sporting t-shirts with really brash English phrases emblazoned on them... Yes I am good in bed... I’m the best – forget the rest... Don’t Touch... I can only please one person a day etc... After a while I became certain that they had no idea what these t-shirts said, and then I noticed that there are hundreds of second-hand clothes shops in Nicaragua. Hundreds. Too many for it just to be the discarded garments of Nicaraguans... it all comes from the US, seconds and goodwill. Hence the brash phrases. But the funniest, this week in little old Yali – Stop Staring – take a picture it lasts longer. On a fairly wizened old crone who was staring at me!!!

Obviously some people have worked out that some of these slogans might not be something they want to be associated with, cos when I was in a shop in Matagalpa a while ago i was approached by a respectable looking lady who asked me to translate a t-shirt. "Chocolate makes me smile". She explained that she wanted to buy it for work and didn’t want to offend.

And - yet more - at the time of going to press I had just seen the trainee priest wearing a picture of two moose and the slogan "Nice Rack".

Mushrooms of the Skin

There has been a bit of dissent re: no pictures of me on a horse. Let me tell you it's pretty difficult to take a picture of yourself wading through rivers or mounting a horse, and everyone else is sort of busy living their lives and stuff. But here is a picture of me standing near a horse. I think the wading and the resulting waterlogged welly situation has been the final straw for my "mushrooms of the skin" - another great example of spanish word-conservation that I found on my athlete´s foot cream packet...

and here are pictures of me enjoying a party, not the most original I know as you've seen me enjoying parties before but it is in the cafe/bar/hostel that I stay in in Esteli and here's a nice aerial shot too to give you a feel. It was Juanita's 40th birthday... and Elmo had a great time.

Some Farm Action

Thankfully something interesting happened! So I can feed the blog monster. I thought I’d include the previous to show the mundane nature of many of my days, but luckily today had a bit of what you all like – the mounting of horses, the crossing of roaring rivers on foot, the arms-up-a-cow’s-arse type of day. And I’ve got photos of it all! Gustavo – coordinator of education project, but actually a vet, has a farm a bit outside Yali. He had a few things to do there, mostly involving cows, and was happy as larry to take me especially as he’d like a few pictures of his farm. Most of the track to the farm is not good for motorbikes, so the plan was to leave it in the main carretera. A good job, as we ran out of petrol just as we got to the turn off… (that problem was dealt with much later, and by then I’d hopped on a bus back!)

The guy who works on his farm was waiting with a horse, so we took it in turns being on the horse, or being the one wading through newly-swelled rivers on foot. And on the way back we also shared the horse with a trussed up chicken, who had to wait until Yali to be put out of its misery. Nice… You can just make her out from the red bits on the right of the horse on this picture…

In between the river wading there was milking of cows… (all by hand in these parts, the calf is away from its mother a bit before milking and then gets used to start mum off, but then stays with her some of the day)…

the checking of cow’s innards…

the injecting of cows to make them more likely to get pregnant… (this resulted in some quite annoyed cows so they had to be trussed up to a tree for the event. They had good reason to be livid)…

and meeting a baby.

Aaaaah. And all on my neice’s birthday!!! Happy Birthday Kate.

Gubbins

Hmmm. What can I tell you. Esteli continues to be a place where I eat good food and speak English, Yali continues to be a place where I come to terms with small town living and attempt to impart computer knowledge. Regadio continues to be a place where I periodically teach English. I have drawn a little map for anyone who has lost track of where things are…

There you go. All clear now? What else can I say…

I went for a little walk the other day up the road out of Yali and took a few pictures, the view is pretty good…

And then I took one of Yali from above.

Also I took a picture of the little prang that happened right outside

my house the other day, it made me think of London as both guys in this terribly macho country got out of their old banger cars and laughed big belly laughs about the whole thing, No road rage here! And, yes, one car does say pride in english on the side. And one car does have a transfer of a horse. It’s not the best picture as I was being surreptitious.

And that's about the size of it!

All fine

The coast got pretty inundated but other than lots of trees down and about 36 hours of constant rain Yali was fine. And the transport barely stopped. The biggest impediment to my internet access was Mother's Day on Friday, which is a pretty huge deal here. I have just sustained a head injury on a toilet paper dispenser in the Hostel in Esteli, but I don't think I can connect that with the heavy rain. It drew blood though, I may post evidence.