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Interview Series, Part 3: A Decade of Partnership and Change |
Translated by Tom Wilde, West Sales Manager
Arnaldo Neira Camizán is a veteran coffee farmer, cultivating 10 acres of organic coffee, citrus, and banana trees on a beautiful parcel of land overlooking Hawk's Mountain in Coyona, Huancabamba, Piura, Peru. He has served as Vice-President of the Board of the Central Piurana de Cafetaleros (CEPICAFE), and as president and manager of his village level co-operative, José Gabriel Condorcanqui.
Sr. Neira, affectionally known as Don Sergio, visited coffee customers in the western United States during tours in 2000 and 2002. In 2003 and in 2007, he and fellow farmers hosted delegations of Equal Exchange customers visiting Peru. Following is the third and final part of his November 2009 interview by Corey Mason of KECG radio in El Cerrito, California. (Read part one. Read part two.)
Corey: How much of a family's cash income, on average, comes from the coffee, cocoa and sugar that members grow?
Sergio: Well, on a farm like we're talking about there would be a little over five acres. And if we're talking about average annual income by crop, then we'd say coffee would bring in more or less $1,000, cocoa around $700, and sugar about $500. So an average of between $2,000 and $2,500 for a family for the year.
Corey: Are there still areas in Peru where a family can homestead – basically farm and live on unclaimed land that they then claim as their own?
Sergio: Yes, today there are still areas in Peru, in the area we call the "eyebrow" of the jungle. And there are areas that a few years ago were populated and cultivated by people who arrived to grow coca and that have now left those areas. There are lots of lands, and through the Ministry of Agriculture there is a special program to provide a land title for land bought at a very reasonable price, plots ranging from 10 to 50 acres in rural areas. And that's one of the areas where we, as the co-operatives representing coffee farmers, have made a proposal to the government to make coffee and cocoa an alternative crop to the illicit cultivation of coca.
Corey: Okay, I understand. When Segundo Guerrero, the late Eliseo Tocto, yourself and others co-founded CEPICAFE you focused on coffee and especially coffee quality. Why was the focus on quality in those early days? What kind of investments were made?
Sergio: When we first got together we were joined by a group of agronomists living in the area, the majority of whom were agronomists who had recently graduated from the University [of Piura]. We had the wonderful idea of creating an association that would represent the small-scale coffee farmers of our region. It was in that work, done with a great deal of volunteer effort and done with love and caring to do something important, that two farmers accompanied us – one being Isidro Guerrero and the other being our deceased friend, Eliseo Tocto, who later also served as president of CEPICAFE for a time. So why did we start with coffee? Because coffee is a crop that we learned to grow from our grandparents, it was they who started farming coffee and gave us that inheritance. Plus, it was the only source of income any of us had, the little earnings that each coffee farming family had, so we dedicated ourselves to get organized in what you would call a grange centered on coffee. The first work we had, once we were organized, was to improve the quality of the coffee.
Prior to the year 1990, in the mountains of Piura everyone grew a strong-tasting coffee, what is called sun-dried or natural coffee. We did too, but well, the word we got from our team of young professionals was that, they would say, "look, you have to produce what the consumer likes, not what you like," and we heard that the North American and European markets demanded a smooth coffee, that is to say washed Arabica coffee. For those reasons, staring in 1991 we began working on building mills to make washed Arabica coffee, a smooth coffee.
Corey: That results in a coffee that has less acid, but is still flavorful?
Sergio: Yes strong, clearly. How we treated the coffee from the time of planting, the fertilizing, the pre-harvest work, how we harvest and up until the final preparation of the green bean for export, we are doing our best and dedicating ourselves to offer what is a coffee of exceptional quality. That dedication to quality has been part and parcel of our work from the beginning, and each year we're looking to improve and improve, and we're doing that not just for California, but also for everyone in all the states where Equal Exchange sells and helps us sell our crop. The North American consumer, in drinking a cup of our coffee, is doing her or his part to contribute to our development, and that contribution should get to be drinking a high-quality cup beverage.
Corey: How has building - and now operating - a coffee mill changed or improved quality?
Sergio: In truth, we have made a great effort through the 7,000 small-scale farmers that today [make up] CEPICAFE, and to have our own coffee mill has provided many benefits because it allows us to prepare just the type of quality coffee green beans that is being requested by each importer and the consumers. To have our own mill lets us control quality and provides the conditions so that we control quality all the way to market. We can process at the mill, get that coffee to port, and have it arrive to the port in New Jersey or elsewhere in the U.S. in just the condition we want it to be.
When we didn't have our own processing plant, it was a problem because at times the businesses that provided us the [milling] services didn't like that small farmers were getting organized, because that meant they lost their source of raw material, so from time to time they would give us something bad, or that poorly prepared the coffee so that it wasn't export grade, or to our organic or specialty standards. But now that we have organized, everything from the growing regions to processing, to embarkation, has let us improve our situation and make strides in the quality for our importers and the consumers in the countries we export to.
Corey: Shortly after your last visit, stores such Davis Food Co-op, Briarpatch Community Market, Ashland Food Co-op, and the Berkeley-based Natural Grocery Company raised money to cover the costs of the doors and windows for the new warehouse and offices at your village co-operative. How have your farmer neighbors utilized that center?
Sergio: Through our friends at this radio station, I want to repeat our eternal gratitude to those organizations here in California that supported us in finishing the construction of our co-operative center. The truth is that we built our co-op center, but didn't yet have any windows or doors. And the budget for building the center had already used up everything the members could give; all of us small farmers in José Gabriel Condorcanqui Co-operative had given all the labor and capital we could spare and it was difficult to find any new resources to finish the construction. But remembering that we had a friendship in the friends of Equal Exchange, I communicated with my friend Tom [Wilde] and through that we got projects going at those community stores.
In reality, they provided us with a donation that, at the time, was worth 26,500 Peruvian soles and that let us buy 30 total units of doors and windows. Finally we could close up and lock our local offices! Now that co-op center is the pride of every member of the co-operative. Many people who visit the village admire it and ask, "How could small farmers have been able to build that kind of building?" We tell them, "When one is perseverant, is dedicated, and wants to get ahead, and one has at one's side friends in organizations like Equal Exchange and the food co-operatives and supermarkets that supported us, one can get ahead."
Corey: In the U.S., agricultural extension services are funded by the government. However, when CEPICAFE started you dedicated the premiums from sales of organic coffee to pay staff agronomists to work with farmer members. Does CEPICAFE still have to fund that work itself, or have the local or national governments in your area started to provide agricultural extension services?
Sergio: We at CEPICAFE have - and will continue to - maintain a certification and productivity team that is made up mostly of agronomists. In reality, in our nation of Peru, the Ministry of Agriculture doesn't put the necessary interest into supporting coffee farming or any small farmer in Peru. We do that through our own organization, CEPICAFE, like I said, and we'll carry on in that proposition, we'll carry on with that interesting work because it's so valuable in improving productivity. Fortunately, we have a few mayors and city council members who had been board members of CEPICAFE or board members of the village-level organizations. They have been important in mobilizing resources in each town to support small farmers in each district. This is important and is also possibly one of the reasons that at times we wonder, "How can the co-op get political and participate in party politics to get into local and regional government?"
Corey: Some years ago you ran for mayor. Now CEPICAFE's general manager, who was a recent college graduate when you co-founded CEPICAFE and became one of CEPICAFE's first employees, is running for governor. Why are co-op members so politically active?
Sergio: This interest is coming from the experiences of our colleagues who are in city government as mayors or council members. And we have noted and are convinced that one of the best ways to re-direct state resources and hold government responsible is to have one or two farmers in government. At the moment, we're starting to get mayors who come from the coffee farming sector and they are contributing to the economic and social well-being of the families in each district. Then we also start thinking about state government. The regional government - a region in Peru is like a state in the U.S. - is, well, let's just say there is work that we are doing that isn't just for coffee farmers but benefits the entire farming sector of the region. So now we are working on a proposal to participate in regional elections in November 2011. One of the proposals is that a representative of the coffee farmers leads the movement to be governor of the region.
We began this work together with coffee farmers who were organized in the mountainous region of Piura, but we were also joined by producers from the coast, that is to say farmers from the coast, banana farmers, mango farmers, citrus growers, cotton farmers, corn growers, because we have many of the same challenges and many of the same needs. So these farmers also signed up to support CEPICAFE's efforts. It's a collaborative effort and one we started in hope of a good result, a good harvest so to speak. I'll tell you, my friend Corey, that right now we are gathering signatures to register the political party, which has to be registered at the Electoral Commission in Lima. To register the party at the state level, we had to get 8,500 signatures of prospective members. We had hoped to gather 15,000 signatures by Nov. 15 [2009] to go in with a greater amount than needed. Five days before I arrived here in the U.S. [on Nov. 3], we had 12,500 signatures already in place. That's quite an achievement, and I'm sure that by Nov. 15 we'll have everything and our representative will submit the signatures in Lima to register the party. We're calling it the Combined Civic Association Party, because it is farmers, producers, professionals, technicians, small businesses, and we even have some larger business in Piura that have joined because they recognize what we are building with this party. They have said, "OK, we are medium-sized businesses and our experiences are like CEPICAFE's, so we want to contribute," so they too are supporting the campaign.
Corey: Wow, what a vision of success! You are planting the seeds in the earth to grow your own government. You are creating concentric circles of influence, of information, and of co-operation at every level.
Sergio: And, we here see that the way to be part of the state government is to give examples of how to be, and we want to teach how to manage and how to run projects using public resources that belong to all citizens in Peru. In Peru, there's lots of corruption. Half of all funds for public works end up in the pockets of politicians or shadow groups, so only 40-50% ever goes into actually doing the project. So every public work is done poorly. Why? Because not all the resources are put toward the cost of the project. With the experience we have in doing things transparently, informing members, and doing good work, and with the work we do with the farmer members of CEPICAFE, we are constructing our own homeland in a small way. That is what we want to do in government.
Corey: It sounds perfectly organic. It has resonance, life, information, cooperation. It's like an exemplary garden.
Sergio: Yes, yes, we want a form of local government that is, in a way, one big farm where everyone grows together.
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