Equal Exchange: Fairly Traded Gourmet Coffee, Tea & Chocolate
Equal Exchange: Fairly Traded Gourmet Coffee, Tea & Chocolate
Equal Exchange: Fairly Traded Gourmet Coffee, Tea & Chocolate
Home arrow Our Co-op arrow e-Newsletter arrow Article Archive arrow The Exchange: April/May 2010 arrow Interview Series, Part 2: A Decade of Partnership and Change
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Interview Series, Part 2: A Decade of Partnership and Change
By Tom Wilde, West Sales Manager

Arnaldo Neira Camizán, known as "Sergio," is a veteran coffee farmer and co-founder of Central Piurana de Cafetaleros (CEPICAFE), one of Equal Exchange's coffee co-operative partners in Peru. Sergio returned to the United States in November to train workers at Catholic Healthcare West Hospitals, which serve Equal Exchange coffee.

During the trip he was interviewed by Corey Mason on KECG Radio, 88.1 FM in El Cerrito, California. Courtney Whidden, a student at White Salmon High School in Washington, contributed to the transcription and translation of this second installment of the interview. Read part one here

Corey: We know that the members of CEPICAFE don't just grow coffee but almost all the household foods as well. What personal consumption products do they grow? Did the types of products change during this last decade?

Sergio: Well, we don’t only cultivate coffee, right? We also grow other products; we make bread for ourselves more than anything, and with our organized work we are trying to find the food security for the main family orchards and school orchards. This allows the diet for our children to be more balanced, and rich in vitamins. And well, we also have, apart from the growth of coffee, we also have fruit, and all mostly for self consumption - a lot of cultivation of bananas, yucca, and some beans.

Corey: Mmmm, I'm hungry already. So all is harmonized with nature to cultivate for production and to export to the family and school orchards?

Sergio: Yes like that, and some self consumption products, because product consumption is low, mainly products like oranges, or like sugar cane, we have added value to both fruits, and at this point we are also exporting these products to overseas markets in Europe and North America, organic sugar or brown sugar and jam from the fruit juices from our region.

Corey: What size, on average, are the producers’ farms? It is very difficult to imagine a little farm in this area. You played soccer – if a farm was the same as a soccer field, how many coffee, banana, orange, and shade trees would there be?

Sergio: Well, if we make a comparison to a soccer stadium, which is almost a hectare, a hectare of crops, which we make in our region, we would be talking about an average of 2,500 coffee plants, 100 banana plants, 10 orange plants, and about 30 shade trees, because the cultivation that we do in this case is associated and like the shade trees we have a really benevolent plant for the land which is a legume that we call "guabo," which is pasteurized. The pasteurized land and another 20 or 30 more of the forest trees are above this type of area.

Corey: So in this size of area there are 600 to 700 trees and plants?

Sergio: No, in this size between coffee, bananas, oranges and shade trees, we are talking of more or less 3,000 plants.

Corey: Wow! Today, CEPICAFE processes and exports other items for its members. Can you explain how CEPICAFE got involved in sugar, cocoa and marmalade?

Sergio: We noted that coffee was an affiliated crop and that throughout many regions on land that wasn't growing coffee there would be a half acre or maybe one acre of sugarcane being grown. And on the coffee farms intercropped with the coffee there are orange trees, a local orange variety that has a really nice flavor, enjoyably sweet. We also took note that the sugarcane was creating a social problem because the farmer that had his small sugarcane plot was crushing the cane for juice, fermenting the juice, and making moonshine. All of this was done in an unsanitary, unhealthy process and we took note that not only was the toxic process poisoning the farmer but that then everyone was being poisoned from drinking it. And it really had become a social problem, because when one went to visit a friend, the first thing he did was offer you a glass of this moonshine, what we call cañazo, a 40-proof alcohol, and that’s really what was happening. And as the farmer didn’t really have any costs in making and storing it, it started to become the custom that everyone would drink it every day ... and any hour of the day.

We, along with the professionals that were accompanying us on the proposal to build CEPICAFE and develop the community, thought, "Here's an idea - instead of making moonshine from the sugarcane juice, let's make organic raw sugar." And that was a good idea, so now the sugarcane is created into a value-added product by turning the juice into granulated organic sugar, and that has really been a dynamic economic force in the area, together with the coffee. And now there isn't moonshine, so here we've combated a social problem. The farmers, the same folks who were making it, are content that their efforts are producing something worthy, and when we talk about this project being a dynamic economic activity it's because now there are more jobs. Our sons and daughters now aren't thinking about going to the city to be one more unemployed youngster, or worse becoming one more juvenile delinquent. No, they're staying on the farming working side-by-side with their dad because there's successful work to be done there. That becomes a way of educating about how to live in a cohesive community. From the family up, one is constructing an organization that is every day a bit stronger, and really the best inheritance one could leave for one's kids is a farmers' organization that is well put together.

Now of the orange juice, also many times the fruit was left to just fall on the ground on the farms, because a farmer couldn't get $1 for 100 oranges, so it was better to just let them fall on the ground. We also said well, if we look at making marmalade from the oranges, as well as the papayas and passion fruit that grow in the area, and now we are. We're producing jams and jellies and sending them to France, to Germany, to Canada, and now we're here to take over the market! [Laugh] Well, we're here to learn about what the U.S. consumer wants and, maybe through Equal Exchange, get our organic marmalades and organic sugar into the market.

Stay tuned for part three!

Read part one here.
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