Coffee with a conscience

It also portrays where the company hopes to be a decade from now and the driving force that has the company, its customer base, and other coffee groupies still revved up with a mission-focused intensity.

The Spanish translation for “Café Campesino” is “coffee from a small farmer,” aptly paying homage to the individuals who cultivate the coffee crops.

Those producer-farmers include a group from El Salvador’s La Concordia cooperative, a tiny, struggling 22-member collective. The collective has just completed its first successful exportation of Fair Trade organic coffee, bringing El Salvador onto the menu of available countries of origin at Café Campesino.

But beyond that, it puts these “underdogs” of the coffee industry into the spotlight, eliminating anonymity and making their input more viable and noteworthy.

All other coffee producers also have entrée in the day-to-day aspects of Caf{‘e} Campesino. These producers are in places like Peru, Sumatra, East Timor, Ethiopia and Guatemala, as well as others. Though the producers may be hundreds or thousands of miles away from the Americus company, they are still on an equal footing.

“Rather than just a milestone for Café Campesino, it’s really a testament to how much our identity as ethical Fair Traders has enabled us to connect with thousands of small-scale coffee farmers who typically live on an average of 1.5 acres in rural, impoverished areas,” Café Campesino co-owner and manager Tripp Pomeroy said.

“The unbiased system entailed by Fair Trade practices gives the farmers more stability in their lives, more empowerment, and the means to invest in their own communities such that the usual multi-generational poverty can be erased.”

The Fair Trade concept was just a rarely heard phrase back in 1997 when Bill Harris Jr. came upon it while touring a newly formed coffee-farming cooperative in Guatemala thanks to serendipitous introductions.

“At that time, the system in place for most small-scale coffee farmers was severely flawed because the prices of their coffee harvest, like any other commodity, were determined by the New York Stock Exchange. But there were no ties whatsoever to the efforts of the producer-farmers or the quality of their crop,” explained Harris, founder and co-owner of Café Campesino.

“So their hard work would never be sufficiently compensated, and their lives would always focus on survival rather than abundant living,” he said. “But a small minority of coffee farmers was operating under a completely different system and had banded together in cooperatives that had been able to gain appropriate prices for their coffee. Referred to as Fair Trade, the system was sprouting up in some areas, such as a coffee-growing region of Chajul (in Guatemala).”

Harris’ ripple in the pond began later the next year when, after securing contracts from various coffee-growing cooperatives, he imported the first 40,000-pound container of unroasted, green Guatemalan coffee beans with the intention of selling them to specialty coffee roasters in the United States. The higher-than-market prices, or Fair Trade prices, were passed on to the producers as profits, and Café Campesino’s enterprise had begun.

Over a period of time, Café Campesino evolved into a specialty coffee roaster and retailer, roasting 95,000 pounds of coffee in 2007 alone. But, possibly more importantly, an essential spinoff of the firm was Cooperative Coffees, a Fair Trade, organic green-bean purchasing group also based in Americus. The cooperative imported 75 40,000-pound containers of coffee in the 2007-08 fiscal year.

Through Cooperative Coffees, Café Campesino and 22 other like-minded Fair Trade roasters throughout the United States and Canada not only are united with importing their own coffee but work directly with the farmers. They make visits to one another’s places of business and attend workshops, training seminars and even national conventions. The focus of these functions is to make sure their partnerships are rooted in trust, transparency and beneficial pricing.

“Thus the product that we have to offer becomes coffee crafted under ethical and sound business practices, rather than a random commodity gained by strong-arming someone,” says Pomeroy.

Aspects like these are impressive to longtime customers such as Albany’s Michael Murray, who, along with his wife, Judy, purposely sought out a locally owned Fair Trade coffee firm several years ago. The couple went to Americus to meet the Café Campesino staff in person.

“For us, we get satisfaction knowing that the growers get a fair price and aren’t exploited, and that there aren’t chemicals and pesticides put onto or into the coffee plants,” explains Murray.

The Murrays’ favorite selections, which are ordered weekly through the Internet, currently include the Café Campesino Peru Full City Roast, the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, the Decaf Dark Roast House Blend and the Easy-going Espresso.

And Michael Murray says he is thrilled about another pending Café Campesino event: the opening of its first coffee shop slated for mid-June.

Although the shop was not part of their original business plans, Pomeroy said that it grew out of popular demand in Americus and is a natural opportunity to expand Café Campesino’s ability to expose more people to Fair Trade coffee.

“The coffee shop is being built right into the existing space that contains our offices and roaster, so customers will have walk-over access to view the roasting process,” Pomeroy said.

“Of course, people will still be able to pick up coffee by the pound to make at home, but they’ll also be able to get hot coffee, smoothies and other locally baked goods. And the décor will be bohemian-meets-retro, with lots of older, comfortable furniture, rather than trendy pieces and slick steel.”

The Fair Trade emphasis will be apparent, with featured books and other literature available that address the topic.

“We aren’t concerned with becoming some large conglomerate, but rather in keeping a small, grassroots approach,” explained Pomeroy.

For more about Café Campesino, visit www.cafecampesino.com on the Web.

Amy Leigh Tyson is a freelance writer based in Americus.

CAFE CAMPESINO MILESTONES

1997 — Feasibility trip to Guatemala

1998 — Café Campesino begins business by procuring first container (40,000 pounds) of unroasted, green coffee beans

2000 — Founding of Cooperative Coffees, the purchasing group of like-minded roasters, which serves as importing sector

2002 — Café Campesino moves into renovated World War II-era Quonset hut to begin larger roasting and shipping activities

2005 — All three primary partners of Café Campesino visit the Santa Anita Coffee Cooperative in Guatemala

2006 — Coffee producers from Peru and Columbia make their first visit to Café Campesino and Americus, further cementing habits of transparency, mutual dialogue, and inclusion

2008 — Café Campesino opens first coffee shop, located adjacent to roaster facility in Americus (slated for mid-June 2008)

— Amy Leigh Tyson