Small Farmers. Big Change.

Ever wondered what happens at a General Assembly of coffee producers? Well, I’m not saying that the following report is typical… but Miguel Paz, Export Manager of CECOVASA, one of Equal Exchange’s coffee co-operative partners located in the south of Peru, gives his version of this year’s meetings. His account was published October 14th, on the Progreso Network’s blog. I’ve translated it here from the orignal Spanish. For those of you who know Miguel, I think you’ll appreciate his sense of humor…

Author: Miguel Paz – Export Manager, CECOVASA

This week Cecovasa has its General Assemblies. Cecovasa is comprised of eight co-operatives and in each one of them, a team of us must inform the co-operative’s members; I’m the third or fourth to do so. Sometimes the members agree to wait until we have all presented before they ask their questions, sometimes they ask their questions after each report; we like this because the first to speak is the President and so everyone that likes to talk asks him all their questions. Then the others get tired and the rest of us get asked very few questions.  The language used is mostly Spanish, Quechua or Aymara. Some of the members joke with me because I don’t speak their language. I tell them we can fix that problem easily enough if they would just find a local girl to teach me; up until now I have only learned a few bad words.

The Assemblies are formal, some of them have up to 500 members participating, others only a hundred.

But no matter how many members attend, the reports last the same amount of time: between six and eight hours, during which time it’s easy to get a bit tired!  The majority of the producers chew coca leaves (note: chewing coca leaves in Peru is legal) so as not to fall asleep. Sometimes I also chew the leaves. If they are good, my tounge falls asleep but I stay awake. To kill time I take photos and listen to the members’ comments. At this point I decide that it’s very important for me to check the price of coffee on the global market, even though we have no more coffee left to sell or contracts to fix. I leave the room to go check the internet, to see how the coffee futures market is doing and whether I have any urgent e-mails. The service is bad; when Yahoo is functioning, Hotmail has problems.  At this point, I start to miss the Assemblies because they are far more entertaining than struggling with the Internet and I return. 

My report lasts about an hour. We make sure all the statistics about the past year’s sales are very clear, as well as the averages for each grade of coffee and the number of containers that still need fixed contracts.  We compare the prices of the seven previous harvests and we see how each year things get better and better. The members like it when we show them power-point presentations with photographs. We hand out a bulletin with a summary of all the information that we have presented. When the General Assembly is over, we go out to look for food which generally is rice and eggs, rice and cheese, rice and chicken… and more rice. 

For more information about CECOVASA, click here.

To read about an exciting visit to CECOVASA,  click here.