Fair Grounds Newsletter from Cafe Campesino

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Celebrating Fair Trade
Newsletter Special: 15% Off Orders of $50 or More
Digging Deeper by Bill Harris, Founder/Co-Owner, Café Campesino; President, Cooperative Coffees
Meeting Reflections From Maty Barrios
Community Caravan
Quote of the Month
Past Issues of Fair Grounds

As we head into this year's holiday season, it is clear to all of us here at Café Campesino that we have much to be grateful for... and celebrate! We are positively slammed with orders (thank you!) and opportunities for growth, and we have a renewed sense of pride in what we're doing on the heels of what was a most inspiring annual Coop Coffees meeting in Nicaragua. We are thankful to be part of a movement that serves as a vehicle for so many people to express their commitment to treating one another with respect and dignity.

In this month's issue of Fair Grounds we celebrate what we have accomplished as Fair Traders. We offer a follow-up by Bill Harris to his article in our last newsletter, our production guru Maty Barrios reflects on her experience at our annual meeting in Nicaragua, and we catch you up on the many Café Campesino goings-on… including our upcoming annual trek to Columbus, Georgia, to serve up Café Campesino at this year's SOA Watch. So brew up a pot of your favorite Cafe Campesino coffee and read on...

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Readers of this month's Fair Grounds: Take 15% off of orders of $50 or more. Get those gift orders in now to take advantage of this offer! If ordering online, please enter promotional code 15fifty upon checkout. If ordering by telephone, please be sure to mention the promo code to the person who takes your order. Please note that the newsletter special applies only to retail customers and cannot be combined with any other discount or promotional code.

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by Bill Harris, Founder/Co-Owner, Café Campesino; President, Cooperative Coffees

This month, Bill Harris (Café Campesino's founder and the president of Cooperative Coffees) follows up on his article from last month's edition of Fair Grounds, The State of Fair Trade: Where We Stand.

In last month's newsletter, I promised to write a "State of Fair Trade" piece for this month's edition. I made this promise as we were returning from a week of hard work and plenty of laughs in Nicaragua with representatives from most of our Latin American trading partners and fellow members of Cooperative Coffees. On several occasions during this past week I turned on the laptop, sat down in the "writing chair," and attempted to bang out this promised treatise. I began as I usually do, creating a brief mind-map of ideas and angles, starting with a plea against being "labeled." I followed with the common coffee labels - organic, Fair Trade Certified, Utz Certified, Rainforest Alliance, and such. Then came the snappy, "You can certify a product, but you can't certify a relationship." Then letters – TFUSA (TransfairUSA), FLO (Fair Trade Labeling Organization), IFAT (International Fair Trade Association), FTF (Fair Trade Federation), USFT (United Students for Fair Trade), FTRN (Fair Trade Resource Network) — some were circled, others scratched through, each representing a significant piece of the way we do business. But running this business demands so much more than an impressive collection of acronyms. Finally, the brain purge produced questions about the way our economy works and where Fair Trade fits in to that economy with companies like Sam's Club jumping into the Fair Trade movement.

More...

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Maty de Barrios is Café Campesino's production supervisor. Last month, Maty traveled down to Nicaragua to represent Café Campesino at our Cooperative Coffees' annual meeting. She spent the first part of the week attending producer workshops and visiting producer farms to see how their coffee is grown and produced. The following are Maty's reflections on the time she spent with our producer partners in Nicaragua.

I know that my life is comfortable and good. I know that I have few worries and much to be thankful for. But the trip to Nicaragua made me learn to appreciate even more the comforts and luxuries in my life. When I come in to work, I know that I have all the resources I need to do my job, and I have pleasant working conditions as well. When the producers go out in the field to harvest this coffee, they don't get to enjoy air conditioning. Some of them don't even have all the equipment necessary to harvest and process the coffee, making their jobs much more time-consuming and difficult. They work hard for long hours in the heat, and even with the Fair Trade prices they receive, most producers don't have any extra money to buy anything beyond covering their basic needs. But Fair Trade has benefited them tremendously, and I want to know that I had a part in that. I want to make the coffee the best I can — I want to sell as much as we can so that the farmers benefit more. I think it is the least I can do considering how much time and effort they put into the production.

I admire these producers for having the strength to work for eight hours a day, harvesting and cleaning coffee in the heat. They wait for organic certification, even though the process is long and expensive; they harvest and process the coffee largely by hand because the quality is so much better; they exchange ideas with one another about how to improve the coffee. The environment we have created by building these Fair Trade relationships is challenging, but each of us understands that is a collective challenge, and that the way to get through it is by tackling the issues together. Aside from the obvious benefits of this way of doing business, like the safer environment for children on the farms because of the lack of pesticides and other chemicals, the higher premiums they receive for their product, and the higher quality of the coffee they sell, other benefits are created - this relationship with other producers that provides a sounding-board for ideas, a place to turn for support, and a knowledge that they are making a difference in the world. I am impressed at their courage and resolution to do the job as well as they do.

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During the weekend of October 21-22 Tripp and Geoffrey had a blast visiting our friends Earl Drennen, Frances Self Drennen, and crew from Manna Grocery and Deli at the Kentuck Festival in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Outstanding Manna food, cup after cup of Café Campesino coffee, acres of artwork, great bands and wonderful people… no wonder we plan on being there again next year!

On October 29th Bill and Tripp journeyed to Sevananda in Atlanta to join our friends there in celebrating Co-op Month and participate in their coop roundtable luncheon, which was co-sponsored by the good folks of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. Thank you Steve and everyone at Sevananda for your leadership and gracious hospitality.

On November 3, Café Campesino served up piping hot coffee to chilly attendees of the fourth annual Pecan Festival in Americus. The festival was hosted by the Americus-Sumter County Chamber of Commerce and featured a 5K Race, a One-Mile Walk, a parade through downtown Americus, and local musical entertainment at Rylander Park.

On November 10, Tripp traveled to Macon, Georgia with Sam Hunter, Vice President of Sumter Bank & Trust and friend of Café Campesino, to attend a OneGeorgia Authority board meeting. Café Campesino was one of many companies acknowledged for its contribution to Georgia’s economy, in part thanks to the OneGeorgia loan guarantee that enables us to build our new roasting facility and equip it with our 30k big yella Ambex drum roaster. Café Campesino thanks Gov. Sonny Perdue, the OneGeorgia Authority, and Sumter Bank & Trust for their support.

During the weekend of November 16-18, Geoffrey will travel to Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA, to join thousands of students, people of faith and human rights activists in attending the annual vigil at the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) is a grassroots movement that works to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change what many believe is the oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the SOA represents. This will be the ninth year that Café Campesino serves coffee from Fair Trade farmers in countries that are directly affected by those trained at the school in order to raise funds for SOA Watch. Proceeds from the event will be donated to SOAW. To learn more about SOA Watch visit www.soaw.org.

Café Campesino will be closed on Thursday, November 22 for Thanksgiving. Be sure to get those orders in early to avoid running out of coffee over the weekend! We will reopen on Friday the 23rd.

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"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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Fair Grounds is produced by:

Café Campesino
725 Spring Street
Americus, GA 31709

Contact Information:

Orders and General Information
Phone - 888.532.4728, 229.924.2468
Fax - 229.389.4814
http://www.cafecampesino.com
www.cafecampesino.com/store/index.php
info@cafecampesino.com

Staff:
Lee Harris
Tripp Pomeroy
Bill Harris
Chelsea Carter
Maty de Barrios
Marco de la Paz
Geoffrey Hennies
Lily Royster
Rebecca Young

Fair Grounds is designed and delivered by:

Starstruck Design
335 West Gill Road
Gill, MA 01354

Contact Information:
Don Kruger
Lynn Nichols
Phone - 413.863.7752
Fax - 413.863.7752
http://www.starstruckdesign.com

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