STiR coffee and tea magazine

34 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2017 (August / September) Colombia Hands the Mic to Growers By Bethany Haye Former US President Bill Clinton joins Colombia president Juan Manuel Santos on stage at the first World Coffee Producers Forum MEDELLIN, Colombia The inaugural World Coffee Producers Forum was a growers' conference, the world's first. Growers raised their voice loudly, airing grievances, and talking publicly about what they intend to do about them. But it was also largely a conference on sustainable development ― environmental, economic, and social ― with coffee as both the road and the vehicle to equitable prosperity. Attended by 1,300 people of which 80% were from outside Colombia, and hosted by the Colombian National Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC), the conference was opened by Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos. Speakers included four presidents and vice presidents of Latin American countries as well as former American president Bill Clinton of the Clinton Foundation. All the panels and speakers addressed issues of sustainability, with Presi- dent Santos deftly putting the growers' plight into a larger worldwide per- spective, observing that "The best wall you can build is to pay better prices to coffee producers." And, he noted, paying more will guarantee the supply crucial to the whole coffee chain. Colombia is well placed to talk sustainabil- ity, having launched its 17 goals for sustainability in 2010. Sharing the stage with him, Bill Clinton called coffee "an anchor crop... It can be the foundation of sustainable farming, social stability, and economic growth," because coffee supports hundreds of thousands of smallholder's families and is biodiversity-friendly – it can grow amongst other crops and indigenous plants, echoing looming concerns about the environment and cli- mate change. "We've got to build on that. Don't put it all on coffee. Ride coffee into the future." The future though, is not looking great. Climate change will continue to hit the industry hard, with high temperatures and reduced water supply. Yields are declining and so are prices. In case any- one needs reminding, the staggering drop in prices over the past 50 years has led once viable farms into debt and families into poverty: In 1970, a fam- ily lived well on four sacks of coffee beans. Today, they need to produce 34 sacks to live. Add declin- ing yield, and the challenge is daunting. This con- ference aimed to help producers fight back – and get involved in the bigger cause, by being a voice against climate change. The logic was to save the industry at the source, where coffee comes from. Producers were there in fighting mode, decry- ing their pitiable share of coffee profits. Various studies were whipped out to show growers taking between 3 and 5 cents on a $3.50 cup at Starbucks or in a European café. The battle cry of "5 cents more per cup" has been largely a call for consum- ers to pay a bit more to double the growers' take. The idea has been picked up by many growers' as- sociations and NGO's, but it hasn't produced re- sults. STiR asked sustainability economist Jeffrey Sachs why. "Consumers would be willing to pay," he said. "The problem is putting the mechanisms into place." Creating mechanisms for equitable pricing has been the Rubik's cube of the industry for decades. And growers have more recently looked around and concluded that it's not just the consumer who needs to pay more. Silas Brasileiro, chairman of Brazil's National Coffee Council called for sharing the burden over the whole of the coffee chain. But how to achieve this? Growers know how hard it is to get their hands on that 5 cents more a cup. Take the sustainability seal, they said, practically in unison. It hikes the price for the end user, but compliance imposes a lot of costs on the growers. Wholesalers and com- modity traders reap the benefits, they claim. "We don't see any of it." As a counter measure, Alfredo Moisés, of the Mexican specialty coffee grower, Café Montegrande, suggested that smallholders work directly with small roasters as he does, to their mutual benefit. "Producers can and should sell higher up in the value chain." So, it's all about collaboration. Britta Wyss of UTZ Certified built on the sharing and network- ing concept. Since farmers are required to log a lot of data for sustainability compliance, she urged them to "collect it, bank it and use it" to produce and share algorithms. Big commercial players in the industry are also helping producers get a better deal. Fernando Serpa, v.p. of global sourcing for Latin America Walmart said the world's biggest retailer now sources 20 products for its private-label brand including coffee only from sustainable suppliers. The company is using its power of persuasion to get others like Unilever and Nestlé to do the same. Chris von Zastrow, director of coffee sustainabil-

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