Meet the Coffee Farmers We Buy from in Sumatra
- Hannah Lewis

The Gayo people of the northern Sumatran region of Aceh, Indonesia, are a lively, musical, peace-loving people. But they live in the thick of a struggle for Acehnese independence, driven since colonial times by the Acehnese ethnic group (www.hrw.org/reports/2001/aceh). The separatist movement in this oil rich land is not taken lightly by the Indonesian government, which has attempted to squelch resistance by imposing a heavy and brutal military presence upon the region and in recent years, a curfew. But despite a degree of interethnic hostility spawned by the harsh political climate, Aceh's three major ethnic groups, Gayo, Acehnese, and Javanese have beat the odds by cooperating through Gayo Organic Coffee Growers Association, or Persatuan Petani Kopi Gayo Organic (PPKGO), whose 1,250 farmers claim heritage from all three backgrounds (Gayo being the predominant background as the name suggests).

The cooperative was founded in 1999 with the assistance of ForesTrade, a Vermont based company whose mission is to support sustainable agriculture, natural resource conservation, and socio-economic development through promoting the production and distribution of fair trade and organic certified products (www.forestrade.com). ForesTrade first visited Aceh in search of a good source for organic arabica coffee in 1997. The company found that many of the farmers there, although not certified organic, were already practicing organic farming techniques on their 2-3 acre plots, such as promoting ecological diversity through intercropping. ForesTrade hired its first field staff person, whose own shade-grown coffee plot was intercropped with mango, avocado, guava, banana and papaya, to train others in organic agriculture to help them become certified organic. Soon after the first several dozen growers passed an organic inspection, the incipient organization turned its energy onto forming the cooperative. The PPKGO cooperative then became certified fair trade in 2000 by Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO), and is currently certified organic by Skal from Holland and also by National Australian Sustainable Agriculture Association.

ForesTrade continues to be integral to the PPKGO's operation, providing critical financing, marketing internationally to buyers such as Peace coffee, training coop staff, and hiring locals to run operations such as processing, quality control and export. The company has also been instrumental in enhancing farmers' organic potential, including hiring staff to maintain growers' adherence to organic standards and providing farmers with compost at no cost, made from coffee pulp and manure. ForesTrade, which has also written grants for the coop to acquire office space and equipment and processing equipment, sees its partnership PPKGO as essential to the coop's long-term success. Also involved in the project is a third partner, a local family-owned coffee processor called Trimaju, currently processing the bulk of PPKGO's coffee. As volume continues to increase, the coop has slated a portion of its fair trade funds for building eight new satellite processing plants in eight member villages. The three partners split coffee sale proceeds, with the majority (67-70%) going to PPKGO farmers and the coop fund.

The coop community, largely literate and educated before the coop was founded, has seen its standard of living improve dramatically as a result of PPKGO's success. An important mark for the devout Muslim community of their financial success is the increased number of people who have been able to afford to make a pilgrimage to Mecca in the Middle East. Another indicator of success is that some parents have been able to send their children to college. The coop has spent the community's collective funds in a number of ways. Members' first priority was to renovate several village mosques. The coop then rehabilitated members' coffee plots by replacing old and unproductive plants with a total of 35,000 seedlings of a native coffee variety. It has also developed a credit savings program for members to safely deposit portions of their earnings. In an inspiring act of solidarity between the coop's different ethnic groups, PPKGO recently elected to invest in building more than 100 houses for Javanese refugees to resettle safely within more peaceful villages than their own had become. The decision to spend coop funds on directly reducing conflict in the lives a handful of members represents the coop's commitment to peace and cooperation. They have set a course for stability in an unstable and dangerous land.

In spite political strife in the Takengon region where PPKGO farmers live, peace is a deep breath of the cool mountain air. Peace is playing percussion instruments, playing soccer and badminton, fishing, hunting, and prayer at a mosque. Peace is a visit to the lovely Laut Tawar Lake, flanked by soaring bluffs and deep caves. Peace is the region's nearness to the wildest national park in Indonesia, Gunung Leuser Park, which is a sanctuary for orangutans, elephants, rhinos, tigers, over 380 species of birds, and the biggest flower in the world, the Rafflesia. Peace is a 6-8 month long coffee harvest, bountiful from the organically nurtured rich volcanic soils where the plants grow. Peace is an interethnic community whose members stand in solidarity with each other. Peace is being able to support your family with the work you do.


Hannah Lewis is a freelance writer and fair trade organizer in Minneapolis. She has apprenticed on small farms from Minnesota to England to Cuba, and managed the produce department at a Twin Cities natural foods cooperative. She can be reached by email at lewis_hannah@hotmail.com and by phone at 612-385-7706