Cooperative Coffees' 7th Annual General Meeting Matagalpa, Nicaragua
by Keith Tomlinson and Lee Wallace

Keith Tomlinson and Lee Wallace, (Peace Coffee's Head Roaster and Director, respectively) traveled to Nicaragua for the Annual General Meeting of Cooperative Coffees. Peace Coffee is a founding member of this cooperatively-run green bean importing business. Co-op Coffees allows small Fair Trade coffee companies to work collectively to pool resources, see results and build relationships that would not be available if we were to simply function alone. Keith currently serves as the Chair of the Green Committee, which works on sourcing coffees and quality issues for the Co-op and Lee is the Secretary of the Board of Directors. This is their report on what went down at the AGM.

In late September, we traveled to Matagalpa to participate in a lively ten days visiting coffee farms and processing plants and attending meetings where we exchanged ideas and opinions with representatives from both producer cooperatives and other coffee roasters. This year's Cooperative Coffees Annual General meeting brought together 32 farmers and leaders from 18 cooperatives in Latin America, 36 roaster representatives from the US and Canada, along with numerous allies who support our work in the areas of development, finance and certification.

Cooperative Coffees has grown from the seven founding members that came together in 1999 to 23 companies. Sales of Coop members are rapidly growing, and as result of growth in the Fair Trade market nearly every farmer cooperative that we work with is exporting more coffee every year. Our coop will soon import its 10 millionth pound of Fair Trade, organic coffee.

The AGM was divided into two sections. September 23rd-26th was designated as the exchange and workshop with producers while September 27th – 29th was set aside for the actual meeting. The theme throughout the week was information exchange. We traveled to a Cecocafen (our Nicaraguan trading partner) member's farm, Keith co-taught a class with Peter Allen from Larry's Beans on the basics of roasting coffee, Mane Alvarez of Vermont Artisan Coffee gave a workshop on coffee cupping and quality defects, and Lee participated on a panel about marketing and logistical challenges associated with growing a domestic roasted coffee market.

As Fair Traders, we value the direct connections we make to the farmers who grow the coffee we roast. Our customers are also interested in understanding the origin of their coffee. Peace Coffee travels throughout the year to make these connections and to bring back information and stories. However, we want to make it easier for our customers to make that connection all the way back to the farm. In that vein, Cooperative Coffees and Peace Coffee will launch a transparency project in the spring that will allow roasted coffee to be traced directly from our bags to the farmer's cooperative, and ultimately to the farm. We are also building several internal communication systems within Cooperative Coffees that will establish advisory and governance roles for producers within our organization. These measures not only are pushing the concept of Fair Trade forward but they will also allow consumers of our coffee to be more informed about their purchasing practices.

In addition to the connections we are strengthening with our producer partners, the other important connections that took place were between farmers from different countries and cooperatives. It is a rare occurrence outside of Cooperative Coffees that these meetings take place. The AGM was designed to allow space and to encourage farmer cooperatives to share their best practices with one another. For example, a cooperative in Peru is working on a plan to provide consulting work and build a farmer exchange program with a cooperative in Guatemala through assistance from a nonprofit that attended the meeting. During the closing evening of the AGM as it rained in Matagalpa, time and time again farming cooperative members stood and said that although the entirety of the meeting was valuable, but having the opportunity to compare notes with one another was the most beneficial.

This is not to say that problems were not raised. In fact one of the great benefits of having farmers at our meeting is that problems can be discussed. Bringing them up is the only way address them and to move forward with our work building a Fair Trade market. Every farmer says that they need to earn more money, all of our expanding organizations (roasters, farming co-ops) need cash flow, the value of the US dollar is weakening, organic farming practices require an intense amount of labor and organic inputs, and as the market continues to grow roasters are beginning to experience supply issues. Strategizing as a group about these issues will help us form a successful model of Fair Trade. Amazingly, Fair Trade consists of only 2% of the overall coffee market in the United States. We came back really motivated to continue increasing this number. We learned a lot from our peers in the Fair Trade coffee industry in the U.S. and as much, if not more, from the farmers we buy coffee from about how to continue building a true Fair Trade economy.

(Back to Headlines)