Update 18-05-2020 - Corona and the Colombian coffee farmer
For the past few weeks Colombia has been completely locked and quarantined. This means that you are only allowed to leave your home for the most essential things. For coffee farmers in Cauca and Antioquia, the lack of pickers for the harvest is very difficult. Pickers cannot reach them or are in quarantine with their own families. In a telephone survey of 379 farmers in Cauca and elsewhere, more than 50% said they expected to have 30% less harvest as a result.

At the end of February, I traveled to Colombia. I went to taste as a judge in the finals of winning local coffee farmers of the competitions "The Best Coffee of Antioquia" and "The Best Coffee of Cauca". These are annual competitions to which leading coffee roasters from all over the world are invited. The participating coffee farmers, most of whom have only 0.5 to 1.5 hectares of coffee, live and work in areas where (until recently) the Colombian cocaine mafia calls the shots. Locally, it plays a prominent, manipulative role in pressuring the farmers to grow coca plants.

The "Coffee for Peace" project provides proper training for these farmers to enable them to deliver quality coffee. Delivering quality coffee gives them the opportunity to compete for the final places of the best twenty coffees. If they reach the finals it means that their coffee can be sold at a very good price to the international buyers present, especially from Asia, Europe and North America.

Corona had been hitting Asia hard for a few weeks: all the invited Asians did not dare to make the trip to Colombia. Before my departure I too thought "shall I go?" and "isn't that a risk to be in one plane with so many travelers?". I hesitate but I have committed to Boot Koffie. But most of all, I think we should take this opportunity to support the small coffee farmers in the "Coffee for Peace" project and publicize their flavors and names. Last time, these coffees have been such a success in the Netherlands. And finally, I would love to organize with other parties from the Dutch coffee world a "Week of the Coffee Farmer" in the fall of 2020, where these "Coffee for Peace" coffees should play a prominent role!

I decide to go anyway. The trip is very easy. The plane is full and about 20 percent of the passengers wear a mouth mask. In Colombia itself, the customs personnel all wear mouth masks as well.

We are picked up in Medellín by the tour guide of the Colombian organization for coffee farmers, the FNC. When we arrive we are warmly welcomed by the organizers of the competition. After a brief refreshment and introduction, we are told the new anti-corona rules and procedure: everyone gets their own brew of personal tasting utensils, spoon and bowls with name on them that no one else uses or touches. This way you avoid infecting or being infected by someone else. The 1.5 meter rule is still totally unknown. It is unexplored territory.

This corona cupping procedure is a break from how we used to do it everywhere before. Before, everyone would stick their spoon in the same cup and slurp on that spoon and then rinse it in the same rinse water as the other tasters. Unthinkable nowadays because you can very easily transmit or take contamination. Now everyone gets their own individual rinsing bowl, in which you rinse the spoon with each new tasting cup. With the cleaned spoon you then scoop a little of the next coffee into your tasting cup, slurp and taste the new coffee and spit it out into your personal spit cup. A clean way to taste coffee with as little contact with others as possible.

We use the first round of tasting to calibrate the scores of all the tasters and to practice the "corona" procedure. It is droll and quite difficult to master such a new way. I look in amazement at some roasters who hold 3 bowls at a time in one hand ... I can't do that. I am deeply impressed by the special spoon that I now get in my hands: never seen before, creates very fine and has my name on it! (See the photo) Then, when I have slurped from my sample cup, I throw the remainder of the coffee contents into my spit cup and by coincidence I see the brand name of the service on the bottom of the sample cup: Corona!

The noticeable tension in the group breaks and the mood totally brightens. That's laughing together, what a coincidence!

The trip and the competitions were a great success. I tasted some truly wonderful coffees and purchased some outstanding coffees that will be introduced to the Dutch market later this year by Boot Koffie with the names of the local coffee farmers. The coffees, the meetings with the coffee farmers and the exciting auctions were great. How wonderful to know that the farmers received fantastic prices for their coffees in these auctions! This totally changes their lives. They are now able to invest in their future.

I'm so glad I attended this "Coffee for Peace" competition. Fortunately, no one got sick, also thanks to the serious corona cupping methodology. These competitions took place just in time. Three days after the last auction in Cauca, Colombia went "on lockdown" and into full quarantine.

And now, now corona prevails everywhere, in Colombia, in Asia and also in Europe. The winning coffees from the winning coffee farmers in the "Coffee for Peace" competition are on their way to international buyers. As a sneak peek, I'll be sampling some of these coffees in the coming weeks!

 


Also read the Coffee for Peace Newsletter (PDF) which appeared recently:



This newsletter is made possible thanks to the generous support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Its contents are the responsibility of the Producers to Markets Alliance Program and the National Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC), and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of USAID or the Government of the United States.

View the Coffee for Peace Newsletter (PDF)