Why Does Coffee Really Matter

   A small holder coffee farmer wakes up at 5am. The year has been filled with endless cutting of grass by hand, he can’t afford to buy weed eater. His family all puts time in except his eldest son. He is the one they decided to keep in school, he only helps on the weekends. The man went into debt this year to the local chemical companies, they promised it would double his yield and kill the weeds. His daughter ran onto the field after being freshly sprayed and she has an infection in her foot. They are already in debt, and can’t afford a hospital.

 

  The rains ended, the fruit starts blooming red. He gathers his relatives to pass through his hectare of land, picking anything pink, throwing in some yellow too perhaps. The trucks that will come pick it up doesn’t care. They work late into the afternoon, sweating, hands covered in cuts. They bag up what they have, and wait for the truck to come get it. It pulls up loaded with coffee already; they weigh the kilos in each bag. The man in the truck gives his price. It’s lower then last year. The farmer thinks quickly. Nobody may come again, and if they do it probably is the same price. If he waits his coffee will rot and it will lose all value. He takes the cheap price. He will never see the coffee again. He won’t know where it goes, or what it tastes like. He scratches his head, not knowing how he will make it through the year. The money immediately goes to his debtors. His son talks about dropping out of school to work at a foreign construction company, for cash to buy food and medicine. They have no other choice.

The next year, it is always the same, monotonous work. No goal. No profit, only survival.

 I want this post to be informative. The story above is based off of so many stories in our village. This is a reality. Their reality.

I wanted you to hear it to understand WHY we are doing coffee, why it’s important. I talk a lot about poverty and one of my goals is to educate people on how to effectively help them. We don’t want this harsh reality for our farmers anymore. We don't want them to be excluded from the market that takes advantage of them over and over. But we want THEM to be the ones to pull themselves up. This idea of Great White Hope needs to be put in the grave, handouts need to be given up as well. We can look back and see that it hasn't created freedom and brought people out of poverty, but rather kept them there. 

The way to get them out is this; Treating them with dignity and equipping them to help themselves.

Coffee is the second most traded commodity behind oil. Yet coffee producing countries are amongst the poorest in our world. Most farmers here know very little to nothing about coffee. They strip cherries. Hand it off to Nestle or other big companies. Truly they don’t know where it goes or what happens after they hand it off to whoever drives down their street.

The way most coffee is processed pollutes water, takes advantage of farmers, and takes coffee with bugs, insect damage, rotten, or under-ripe mixing it together. Most companies have little to no contact with the farmers producing. They hire the poorest to do their labor for a small wage. As I learned more and more of this I didn’t feel despair, but excitement. What an opportunity to go in and change the way things are done. From exploitation to justice.

There are a few things that must happen to create justice. Give the farmer:

11.   Purpose and pride in their work (laboring manually mindlessly day after day…kills the spirit sometimes. Especially when you know nothing about your crop or have no goal to improve it.

2

   2. Ownership and power- The farmers need to feel like they aren’t excluded from the market, but understand and participate in it. They feel freedom to choose who they sell too.

   

   3. Trust and Responsibility- They need to be trained and then trusted to do a good job. Foreigners with knowledge have their place, but they eventually need to take a backseat and let the locals lead their own country, and projects.

   4. Creating Unity- This product can’t be excellent without the group working together to make it.

We are starting a cooperative, and letting the Khmu people lead it. Our roles will be training, equipping, final processing and connecting them to the market. The further along, the less involved we get to be. We are training in specialty exportable coffee that is excellent (because why should we do things average?) and will create profiles that give Laos a good name. It’s also expensive coffee, so the export is worth it and the farmers get paid well. It also allows passion and goals for the farmers, each year is another opportunity to experiment with fermentation, flavor and farming practices to get a better score. 

This is what we have chosen to do because it’s job creation, and empowerment. Instead of my Farmer and I forever giving fish, we will create fisherman. Sustainability. We don’t want people to support our farmers forever, we want them to support themselves. Coffee professionals. If people spend their life farming coffee, they should know everything there is to know about it. 

Now the beauty of coffee is you can do a lot with it. We want to change the way it’s done, down to the soil. Part of our job right now is also teaching organic practices and helping the farmers transition into that. Most farmers are in constant debt to chemical companies because they have plants addicted to chemicals, and each year more and more is required. This past harvest my Farmer’s family didn’t make any profit, they owed so much to chemical fertilizer companies. It gets them into a vicious cycle. There are many other reasons to go organic (soil depletion, health of the farmer, taste of the fruit etc.).

We also want to teach and promote no waste. We have some super gifted friends that show so many ways to utilize every part of coffee. A huge way is to raise animals with it. Coffee cherries provides free feed, and the animal provides free fertilizer. This is one example of ideas we have for the future.

But for now, we are at the beginning, and planning our first harvest. We have friends who are already producing a lot of good coffee here, so instead of stressing on filling a huge order to export, we will get to do a small amount and piggy back it to the states. We are meeting with several trusted local leaders, to form this cooperative. To decide how we want to pay people, how we want to organize, where we will get the money to pay people, how/where to process etc.

Our life is filled with a lot of meetings, and there is a whole lot to get done. Planning this company but not having a place to put my clothes, has been really difficult for me. Or talking about paying farmers, but not having enough to finish our home, it’s hard. But I’m learning (slowly) to walk in courage and faith, not in fear and worry.

I’m learning to trust the poor, that they are filled with gifts and don’t need me to hold their hand. They need me to advocate for them to pull themselves out of poverty. They need me to love them, and to accept their love too.

As Kingdom people, we are compelled to walk in justice, excellence, love and unity.

Think of us as we begin this company. It is a daunting and difficult task my Father has set before us. It will never, ever be easy.  Swallowing that pill has been hard. But when you drink our coffee one-day with it’s unique Lao notes, and our farmers can look at each other and say “We did that”, what a day that’ll be. And we can all sit back in wonder. Beautiful wonder at what justice can bring.

Click to learn more buy visiting Auxano Coffee

Support the starting of this business buy clicking here