Just Coffee Cooperative

"The new relationship between Just Coffee and Ancora is more of "an alliance," says Earley, that lets both companies -- which remain separate -- do what they do best. Just Coffee, having outgrown its digs at 1129 E. Wilson St. on the near east side, needed a bigger roasting facility. Ancora, with a large roasting facility at 3701 Orin Rd. (just off Stoughton Road near Madison College-Truax), was "not roasting enough to justify that space," says Earley.

So the two are combining their roasting operations in the Orin Road space, which will allow Just Coffee to produce three times the volume it can currently. Ancora's beans will come from Just Coffee -- all fair trade and organic, from Just Coffee's grower-partners -- making Ancora Just Coffee's biggest customer. And Ancora's master roaster, Casey Blanche, will go over to the Just Coffee side.

Bottom line: "They don't own us and we don't own them," Earley affirms.

"Our strength is wholesale; Ancora's roots are in the cafe," says Earley. By shifting roasting responsibilities to Just Coffee, Ancora will be able to concentrate on expanding its retail and cafe spaces.

Earley believes the Orin Road site will be the only coffee roasting facility in the Midwest with both a drum roaster (Ancora's equipment) and an air roaster (Just Coffee's method). And Just Coffee is investing in a new air roaster that will use 80% less gas and emit 80% less particulate into the atmosphere, says Earley. The roasts specific to Ancora will continue to be produced with the drum; Just Coffee's will continue to be produced with the air roaster.

There are no plans to have Just Coffee roasts or signage in the Ancora cafes. There are no plans for a Just Coffee cafe. The bicycle deliveries that helped make Just Coffee's reputation will continue from its new base, even though it's much further east. "The delivery guys will have to plan out their routes more carefully because they won't be able to go back and forth so much," says Earley.

The company's mission, trading fairly and transparently with small farming cooperatives in Latin America and Africa, "will never change," says Earley. "It's why we do what we do."

Read the full article at the Daily Page...

I am back in Madison now hunched over my computer and almost recovered from what was almost certainly a nasty little amoeba. Looking around the office it is almost as if I had never left– everything sits exactly where I left it some two weeks ago. Readjusting has been hard. It is always a little difficult, but this one has been a different beast. Not only have I been physically sick, the temperature has dropped to a balmy one degree fahrenheit today which seems especially bitter after being in the warmth of coffee country for so long. Adding to the disorientation of returning and getting back to the day-to-day is the information that I am carrying around. How can I communicate it to you all in a way that is true, positive, hopeful, and helpful?

I’ll give it a whirl.

About a year ago I wrote a blog post entitled “Fair Trade is Dead”. I thought it was a pretty provocative title (although unbeknownst to me at least two other bloggers had already beat me to it) and I got a fair amount of feedback from the article. A year later I have not seen anything to change my mind about that statement. As a matter of fact, I would go even further to say that “fair trade” was never alive to begin with. It was a phrase a lot of us used to frame something that was– as Jonathan Rosenthal has called it– “slightly less unfair trade”. But even this just scratches the surface of what “fair trade” is, is not, never was, and now needs to be.

A lot of us who “do” what we have collectively identified as fair trade have been struggling mightily to prevent the term from being co-opted and carried off by the forces of big business, their friends, and their apologists. We have just not been able to stomach the idea that this moniker– one that so many have poured years of sweat equity into– can simply be taken away by folks in a real hurry to sell it to the lowest bidder. Even though many of these good people know that their time is better spent building their own visions, they find that they cannot quite stop fighting for the identity of “fair trade”.

The organizations in question– best exemplified by Fairtrade USA– are trying to capture and further commodify the idea into a simple label. They are experts at avoiding the above conversation, painting their detractors as zealots, and using the opposition’s own points against them with louder voices, more money, and better media contacts in a way that would even make George W.’s press folks blush with humility. They see that it has cracked wide open and there are a lot of dollars to be had in capturing the identity of “fair trade” and associating it with their own programs. They want to own the concept and they are willing to play hard ball to make sure that they control the conversation.

The casual “consumer” is eventually either confused or turned off by the labels, the argument, and the frankly dumbed-down claim that by buying a product with a snappy label on it one can “pull a farmer out of poverty”. This oversimplified daydream may work for a while, but the info is now too easily available and the overall skepticism too rampant for the average “fair trade” consumer to believe in it for long. They eventually and rightly sense that something is not quite right here.

But you know this story by now.

So let’s call it what it is: Fair trade has never been “fair”. Ask a farmer– any farmer– who has been involved in “fair trade”. He or she is almost certainly still living in poverty and most likely still caught in a market that he or she has little control over using personal labor and arable land to grow a fragile crop that his or her family cannot eat and dependent on nameless buyers thousands of miles away. So the dirty little secret is out: you will not change the world solely by buying a bag of coffee.

Alright, that hurt a little. But now that it is out of the way, we can get to the good parts– the pieces we can use to build this thing that we are all hoping for and working for in one way or another. What I am about to write comes straight from the farmers who we work with and who we visited with on our recent journey. I hope I can do our conversations justice.

1) We need to build a movement, not a brand, because trade is only capable of doing so much. There is a stark imbalance of resources in this world. Trade– if it is done responsibly– can help with that, but it cannot be our only response. We need to connect with movements for local, regional, national, and international social and economic justice. There are all sorts of opportunities in any area to do this. Plug in!

2) We need to create relationships with those who make or grow the things that we depend on. When we know where our things come from and who is responsible for producing them we begin to honestly care how those people are living. When we have relationships we are willing to put ourselves out there and do a little bit more to make sure communities are cared for. This can be done by visiting your local farmer’s market, visiting local companies who are doing cool things, or even joining a “delegation” to meet the people that grow your coffee. Connect!

**I am standing in front of complete devastation. I arrived in the spot 5 minutes ago talking to Julita and joking about her shirt– one that sports the “Just Coffee” logo. As we chat I look over her shoulder and notice the dead shrubs, rows and rows of them. They are spindly, leafless, and discolored, with pale blotches and what looks to be moss growing at their bases. And then it hits me– this was Julita’s coffee. And what I am seeing is the worst case of “la roya” sickness we have seen. This was Julita’s cash for year. And it is, more or less, gone.**

After a day of riding “El Jodon” through the lowlands of El Salvador and Honduras we finally reached the border with Nicaragua. Jodon was very low on gas, but we found a station at the perfect time, and resumed our trip toward Esteli and the offices of Fundacion Entre Mujeres. In the last 15 miles we ran into some rain and found out that another thing that El Jodon lacked was a working driver-side windshield wiper. Luckily the rain did not last and we descended a bit into the coffee town of Esteli. What we did not know at that time is that the rain would foreshadow a slow-moving disaster that we had not foreseen.

Arriving at the office of FEM we had a quick reunion with some of the women in the office and with our friend Felipe from Cooperative Coffees who was waiting for us. After chatting a little with the awesome Juana Villareyna– who some of you Madisonians have met once or twice– we were joined by our good friend and ally Julia Baumgartner. Julia has worked with Just Coffee for around three years and is currently employed by FEM as the manager of the reconstruction of El Colorado– a community largely wiped out by a mudslide in late 2010. Thanks to generous donations from people in the Madison area JC was able to help contribute to purchasing land to build new houses. The Basque government gave FEM  a grant for the houses themselves and Julia let us know that we would be heading out the next day to see the mostly finished houses and check out the coffee fields there.

The next morning we met up with Dana and Kerstin from the excellent “Fair World Project” and started with a quick meet up and FEM’s office with women from the 6 different cooperatives that work under the FEM umbrella. over their history and basic platform. FEM is an all-women’s NGO in northern Nicaragua that promotes ideological, economic, and political empowerment of rural women. Their projects include working against against violence by creating community networks of rural defenders, education with a focus on gender equality and alternative careers, the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights, access to health services, and prioritizing food sovereignty, diversified and organic production. Through these programs, women from the rural communities are able to participate and be real actors in making decisions in the development politics carried out by la FEM. After discussing their successes and challenges we turned to talking about fair trade and what it means to them.

The gist of the conversation was like the others that we had in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The term “fair trade” does not mean a lot to the farmers we work with outside of our relationship with them. As a matter of fact, it was almost a source of amusement to some. Diana said FEM said that she feels fair trade certification has been broken with its emphasis on large businesses and large producers. She also made the point that fair trade certified minimum pricing does not adequately cover the cost of production for the smallest farmers let alone “pull them out of poverty”. She went on to say that our movement should be one that connects with other movements for social justice and that it is worth trying to rescue this space that small farmers have worked so hard for. In the end we all agreed that commercial markets are only a window for the change and that we need to work together with farmers and people from the global south leading the way. It only makes sense that if we seek to build spaces of true equality that it should be led by the farmers themselves.

I was charged up after the meeting and we all poured out of the office to head out to the community of El Colorado. After a nice lunch of beans, eggs, and tortillas we headed out to tour the rebuilding project. The houses looked great– most built by FEM, but some built by another co-op called PRODECOOP and others by the local government. They were in various states of completion– some lacking latrines and others without their windows and doors installed. However, the overall state of the community is very impressive. We walked down to a storage house to take in the distribution of fruit trees for the yards of the homes. And we stood around and chatted with the various women and their families who are getting them for planting. It was while we were talking that I witnessed what had once been Julita’s coffee parcela. It totally startled me and I asked her about it. She estimates her own loss at around 70%. That is 70% less income she will be receiving this year on an income that was not sufficient to begin with. This is not good.

Leaving Colorado it was becoming clear that the challenges to FEM’s coffee production were more than we understood. We reached the community center in the little town of Los Llanos and unpacked into the dorms. There were kids an women everywhere and we were informed that we would be having a cultural exchange. The men-folk were milling around outside the room– they seemed to be too timid to come in and check it out. They would occasionally stand in the doorway and smile. After a quick dinner we geared up for what looked to be a rocking time.

And it was. A DJ set up and played some hot latin dance music and a few people got out on the floor. But then something unexpected happened. We went around the room and did introductions. Our crew talked a little about what we were up to and what we hoped to accomplish with our trip. When we came around to one of the last women she told us what was on the minds of all of the women from Los Llanos. It basically went like this:

60%-70% of their coffee is gone. The roya has devastated their crops and the plants will most likely have to be cut down and replanted with different varieties of coffee that are more resistant to the fungus. But this takes time and it takes money. A new plant takes 3-4 years to become productive and it will costs thousands of dollars to buy the seedlings. They already were barely making it and now many of the women– a lot of them single parents– are considering migrating in order to make the cash the need for their families to survive. And she said that she expected us to not come back because their coffee would be gone and they knew that we have businesses to run.

As she spoke many of the women broke down. And we did as well. What was going to be a party became a serious turning point for the women and for us and for a moment we sat in silence. And then we began to talk. I told them that coffee really was a vehicle for our relationship, but it did not define our relationship. Chris talked about how this type of trade meant that we did not simply walk away when times got hard. The women began to realize that we really were there as partners and not simply as “buyers”. And an incredible conversation started. What had broken down into a very real sadness was then elevated into a palpable energy. In the energy there was hope.

The women then did a play about their situation that was sad and hysterically funny. Then there was traditional dancing. When it came to our turn Chelsea and I played and sang and people laughed and hooted. And the night ended with smiles and handshakes and embraces.

So this is where the the nice words become real or they are exposed as total BS. What does a coffee roaster do when their supplier has very little coffee? What does a company do when their supply becomes unstable? What does a farmer do when their crops fail? The free market doctrine has sober and cutthroat answers for this situation. And these answers and the logic behind them are what keep our world separated and commodified. We are not going to walk away from FEM. We are going to help them get the resources that they need to get to where they want to be. It is heartbreaking for all of us to see them take a step backwards when they have done so much hard work to get to where they were. But we cannot be crippled by that feeling. We can do this and we are going to need your help. This is what “fair trade” should mean. This is our chance to build something real that goes light years beyond a label or a slick catch phrase. Stay tuned for opportunities to get involved and please plug in.

We can do this.

Las Marias sits back on a curve in the road sitting on a hill overlooking the “El Cerro del Tigre”. The fact that Marias overlooks these mountains is no mistake and is very relevant for the farmers of Las Marias. Almost all of the farmers fought here together in the ERP– a guerrilla group in the revolution of El Salvador that took place from around 1980 to 1992. The FMLN movement– that they are still a part of– would almost certainly have won if not for US support of the Salvadoran government. The army massacred thousands in a desperate attempt to stave off a revolution that had deep support in the Salvadoran countryside. Their guerrilla unit fought in these same hills and, when the war ended in 1993, they were given title to the coffee beneficio here along with many of the lands where they lived, fought, and died during the conflict. The regional signing of the peace accords happened on their drying patios and the UN observers stayed in a little casita between the patios and the warehouse where they make their organic fertilizer. It is not a stretch to say that this is a historic place.

Marias put down their arms in 1992 and picked up machetes. They cleared the brush from many of the places where they camped and planted coffee. But their revolutionary views did not change. They developed their organization over the years and they began exporting coffee to the US selling to a conventional importer. Two years ago, just after we met them, they had signed a closed contract with the importer when coffee prices spiked. The price that they agreed on was well below what the market price was when the coffee was processed and shipped. Even though it was a “certified fair trade” transaction, the importer refused to amend the contract to give them a better price. The importer then turned around and sold the coffee for a much higher price realizing a windfall profit on their coffee. This type of “fair trade” deal was not lost on Marias and it has loomed large in their understanding of fair trade and its marketing in the US. Last year Co-op Coffees bought their coffee for the first time and this year Just Coffee was able to use it in our “Revolution Roast”– which seems completely spot on.

Las Marias is incredibly dedicated to the sons and daughters of their members and has made developing opportunities for their kids a major piece of their co-op. El Salvador is home to “maras”– ruthless street gangs whose leaders were deported from the US in the eighties and nineties after learning how to organize in the streets of L.A. In a country with a lot of guns, a hangover of violence, and a high level of poverty, the maras have grown like an aggressive fungus reaching far out into the countryside reaching even the remote villages. Las Marias is purposely keeping their children close– getting them involved in growing coffee, teaching them how to grow tomatoes and other plants, and even starting an onsite cafe where the kids are learning how to be baristas. Some are also training to be “tecnicas” learning all aspects of coffee so that they can have a marketable skill. The programs are already paying off as the “jovenes” are very present, focused, and involved. They even have young woman on the board of directors of the co-op to represent the young people.

Yesterday several of the farmers led us up into the Cerro del Tigre to see their fields and to take us up higher to the places where they camped and operated during the war. For most of them it was the first time they had returned since the fighting stopped and we took breaks often as they explained what had happened in each place. As we walked they showed us the spring where they got water and the caves that they dug to hide their arms. Twice as we walked we found discarded uniforms– one from the guerrillas and one from the army. It was very powerful and I can’t overstate how honored we are that they shared this with us. One farmer– Marina– took her 13 year old son Kevin with us as she returned to the area for the first time. It was very moving to see her explain to her what had happened and to watch how he took it all in.

Las Marias 93 is fairly small– with 63 members– 22 of them women. They are planning and working for a future for themselves and for their children. A plant disease called “la roya” has affected their coffee significantly and production is down. However,Marias has a plan to use more resistant plants and to have them producing in the next 3 years. For the farmers of Marias there is no quick fix and there never has been. Change happens very gradually, but it is measurable and real. I am proud of having them as partners as our organizations work together to build a “fair trade” that is real, movement-based, and in direct opposition to “business as usual”.