Today we sit on a terrace of a beautiful white house under
construction. It’s hot and humid stimulating the cicadas to sing. Soon, a
breeze will pick up, a thought on everyone’s mind as we wait in anticipation
for the first coffee conference sponsored by Haiti Coffee.
21 participants representing 8 cooperatives in Northern Haiti
have arrived, eaten a nice traditional breakfast and eager to share information
about the problems they are facing in their coffee production. By the end of
tomorrow, we hope to have all shared our concerns and hopes for the future of
Haitian coffee as we find ways to work together to rebuild this once famous
industry.
We have two primary goals in this conference. First to identify the problems facing the
coffee producers, cooperatives and other members of the Haitian coffee value
chain as they themselves see them. Nine priorities will be identified, 3
focused on production, 3 focused on post-harvest issues and 3 focused on marketing.
Secondly, we are beginning the process of introducing and setting quality
assurance standards in order to better define the product, the expectations of
the marketplace and improve communications throughout the value chain.
The morning presentations where done by Benito Jasmin of
Makouti Agro Entreprise and Jean Augustin Tsafack-Djiague, an MBA, agricultural
engineer, coffee specialist from Cameroon. We discussed the importance of
identifying key problems and developing progressive strategies to overcome
these problems. We all accept that “problems” will never go away completely
until we rest in a cemetery, but practicing strategies today that will result
in improvements tomorrow will bear fruit, or beans in our case, for generations
to come.
Another key note that was made, brought up the importance of
bringing education to the little family farmers directly. These are the farmers who hold the machete
that chops down the tree and turns it to charcoal for a short term gain when he
is tired of selling his coffee for less than it costs him to grow it. Most
efforts to rebuild Haiti’s coffee industry are focusing on cooperatives, and equipment. The small farmers are feeling discouraged,
powerless and making the smallest profit of the entire value chain.
For the first day and a half, participants keep asking what quantity of coffee could be exported. By the end of the second day they understood that the current issue is not about quantity, but quality. The focus needs to be on developing a common language to assure that when communicating throughout the value chain, we are all talking about the same product and that quality is standardized and assured. To reach this goal, we introduced the SCAA specialty coffee standard and the classification of coffee defects. This was followed by information on crop management, relating the specific defects to farming practices. The farmers in the group really appreciated that the standardized language could translate into specific practices that they can implement in their efforts to improve quality and quantity of production. We are off to a great start and all eager for the next gathering.
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