Nicaraguan coffee beans

Just when the boutique coffee market was booming in the United States in the 1980-90's, the US government imposed an embargo on the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, so Nicaraguan coffee would not appear on the display shelves of American coffee shops. Because of this, the average American consumer is less familiar with Nicaraguan coffee, but even though the average consumer is very strange to Nicaraguan coffee. But buyers in the industry are no stranger to Nigeria's high-quality boutique beans (especially Bourbon and Typica, two old trees). Nicaraguan coffee usually grows in dense shade, 3500-5000 feet above sea level, around fertile volcanic zones.

Unfortunately, even regular buyers of Nicaraguan beans sometimes shake their heads at their ups and downs, which is caused by not only natural climate problems, but also political unrest and frequent civil strife. Nicaragua, for example, was hit by Hurricane Mitch, the worst cyclone in Central America, in the 1990s, which left the country's suburbs sad and forced tens of thousands of coffee farmers and farm workers to change jobs. Five years after the storm, Nigeria's coffee industry has not returned to its previous size.

But today, Nicaragua has finally returned to the boutique coffee market, and many roasters now gradually regard Nicaraguan beans as a unique coffee producing area. These buyers' impression of Nepalese coffee has changed greatly, from using it as a matching bean to using it as a high-quality single bean, which shows that the quality of Nepalese coffee has improved a lot. As a matter of fact, recently, many buyers from the United States, Europe and Japan have often visited the origin of Nicaragua, which can be said to be a Phoenix flying on the branches.

In February this year, I joined a delegation of Nicaraguan coffee buyers. Over the past nine years, I occasionally visited the coffee producing areas of Nicaragua, but this time, I felt the sinister impact that the Nicaraguan coffee industry was facing. The persistently depressed coffee prices have a serious impact on the Nepalese economy. But even with such obstacles, people in this place are still optimistic and innovating, and people in Nicaragua are constantly trying to introduce a new model of the coffee industry in an attempt to recover from the recession. Perhaps because Nicaragua has faced a variety of crises over the past few years, their attitude towards crisis management can help them turn the crisis into a turning point.

The crisis of the coffee industry

For Nicaragua, the overall coffee industry is depressed, which has a great impact on the country. In Nicaragua, the coffee industry provides 200000 of the country's jobs, and coffee beans are the country's most economically valuable crop, accounting for 20% of the country's total exports. The low price of coffee season has hit all the countries that produce washed Arabica beans, but the pain seems to be even more amplified in Nigeria, where many diversified coffee producers, such as Costa Rica, make up for the losses suffered by the coffee industry with revenues from other industries, such as self-help tourism or multinationals (such as Intel's presence in Costa Rica).

But Nepal is not so lucky. Apart from the coffee industry, they have no other industries to make up for the losses. The Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Nicaragua said: "the low price of coffee during this year's coffee season has reduced the overall revenue of coffee farmers in our country by US $1 million. This has a direct impact on the livelihood of about 30, 000 coffee farmers, especially the people in the growing areas. "

The economic and social chaos in Nepal has affected hundreds of thousands of people, whether it is unemployment, the decline in the number of immigrants, and national health problems. According to a study provided by the Santa Cruz division of the university of California, the rate of malnutrition among children in coffee-producing areas in Nicaragua is 21%, compared with 9% in the country as a whole. Mike Maxey, district director of Nicaragua at USAID, said: "when we say coffee farmers are in crisis, we don't necessarily mean that they may be in danger of breaking up their families. We mean that they may starve, and about 70% of the people living in Nicaraguan coffee-producing areas spend less than $2 a day. "

Chris Bacon, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, added: "the low price of coffee futures caused a very dramatic impact. The proceeds from selling coffee gave people in the producing areas the money to buy food, shoes, and notebooks for school children. This impact caused a very big crisis for temporary workers and regular farm employees. In the Matagalpa area alone, 20 of the existing 25 coffee farms were forced to close down." "

According to government statistics, the total number of workers on coffee farms is about 150000, but 80% of them are now unemployed. They have no land or income, and are eventually forced to move from the suburbs to downtown slums. Some even go to the United States to work for a living.

Over the next few years, the U.S. government and other regional development units plan to fund more plans to revive the coffee industry in Nicaragua. Bendanya, deputy minister of agriculture, and Maxey, regional director of Nicaragua, USAID, said in unison: "the solution to Nicaragua's economic problems must be long-term planning and target enterprise solutions." And existing boutique coffee facilities (such as cup testing laboratories, online bidding activities, cooperative-run water treatment plants, and other quality improvement organizations) and, more importantly, a rapid increase in the number of local coffee farmers involved in the project.

Crisis or turning point

Researcher Bacon found that the current crisis in the coffee industry in Nicaragua has mostly caused coffee farmers to reflect on the shortcomings of the original mode of production. "sometimes the crisis can divide people, but sometimes it can also unite people," he said. Many Nicaraguan coffee farmers find that they can survive if they join cooperatives, organic certification schemes, or fair trade associations. "

In a survey of 240small coffee farms in the Matagalpa-Jinotega district, Bacon and other researchers found that coffee farmers who joined organic certification programs or fair trade associations earned about 2-3 times higher than those in the country. Bacon further pointed out: "these farmers show a higher level of self-confidence than other farmers and believe that they do not have to worry about bank deductions. "

Bacon said that the impact has caused great damage to large farms, and in this limited small market, the small farm model seems to reflect the trend of future farms. Large farms usually have a high debt-offset ratio for banks, which is a high-income-high-expenditure business model, which is difficult to achieve in modern times. because the trend of modern coffee farms is high planting costs and high labor costs, capital recovery is not easy. "

As a result, small farms have more room for survival because they only use the original limited manpower and grow them organically. In addition, they also grow crops for daily needs. Small cooperative farms feel that their business model is recognized by more buyers. More importantly, small coffee farms find that their lives are changing, not only with higher incomes. They also agree with the benefits brought to them by participating in a large group, and the power of this large group is amazing.

Centralized water treatment plant

Regardless of the size of the farm, most Nicaraguan coffee farmers have a perception that only those who work on quality and innovation will be able to survive this crisis. Private farms on a larger scale are also learning to work with other institutions or organizations to create a new situation. For example, I visited several large farms in the Jinotega district, and they combined to form an alliance system centered around a centralized water treatment plant, which they called Pueblo Nuevo, funded by USAID and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Agriculture, and run by TechnoServe, a non-profit consulting firm.

Tom Kilroy, founder of McKinsey Consulting, said: "when it comes to price competition, Nicaraguan coffee can never be compared with mobile Brazilian coffee." However, the Pueblo Nuevo plan is not to improve the situation in Nicaragua with a low price strategy, but to improve the overall quality of coffee. In the past, these Nicaraguan coffee farmers went their own way and handled their own coffee fruits. They can often be seen using dirty water to deal with these coffee fruits, and the quality is nothing to look forward to. "

Coffee farmers participating in the Pueblo Nuevo program are eager to sell their beans at a higher price, but before that, the most important thing is to find a buyer who is willing to help them improve the quality of their processing. This person is the purchasing director of Pete Rogers,JBR/San Francisco Bay Coffee of San Leandro, California. "I was really shocked when I first saw what they did with coffee beans three years ago," he said. They asked me what I could do to push their coffee beans to the boutique coffee market, so I got involved in the operation of this centralized water treatment plant. "

For Rogers, the key to this plan is whether roasters are willing to stand up. If roasters are willing to fund quality improvement programs like this, not only will coffee farmers have a better fixed income, coffee farmers will also be more willing to produce higher quality coffee beans for us.

Cup Of Excellence auction activity

Nicaragua has recently been actively involved in various boutique market activities and has successfully opened its profile, such as the Cup of Excellence auction. Susie Splinder, founder of Cup of Excellence, said: "people are slowly noticing that Nicaraguan coffee has some very special and pleasant flavors. In the past, since most of the coffee beans in this area were fair trade or organically certified beans, roasters generally did not particularly pick coffee beans from certain farms or cooperatives, so some particularly top beans did not have a chance to stand out. "

Cup of Excellence auctions are held in many coffee-producing countries to find the best beans for each country. This activity is from hundreds of coffee beans handed over, selected by internationally renowned cup testers for the best coffee beans, auctioned out in the mode of online bidding, with auction quantities ranging from 10 to 100 bags, sold to bidders around the world, generally speaking, the final bid price is much higher than the world coffee futures price, and has another added value, this activity for buyers to find many previously unknown good estates. Susie Splinder said: "the Cup of Excellence auction gives coffee farmers in Nicaragua the opportunity to examine whether the overall quality improvement program is working well, to let them know the extent to which the quality has been improved, and to rehabilitate some of the top coffee beans sold cheaply in the past. "

A cup testing laboratory set up in the suburbs

Perhaps the most helpful to coffee farmers is the cup testing laboratories set up in the suburbs, which gives coffee farmers the opportunity to learn how to distinguish between the pros and cons of coffee beans. most of these new cup testing laboratories were set up by Paul Katzeff of Thanksgiving Coffee a few years ago. Paul Katzeff partnered with the American Federation of Cooperatives (CLUSA) and received funding from USAID to set up nine cup testing laboratories in coffee-growing areas of Nicaragua.

In these cup testing laboratories, coffee farmers can use boutique coffee cup tests to find out the best beans in their harvest that year. I visited one of the cup testing laboratories set up by the SOPPEXCCA cooperative in the Jinotega district, which farmers claimed to be the first cup testing laboratory in the Jinotega district, while Jinotega was called the coffee capital of Nicaragua.

The cup testing laboratory is very well equipped and spacious, and can accommodate eight cup testers to carry out cup testing at the same time. The cup testing laboratory is equipped with multi-cylinder Brazilian cup testing roasters and several American-made bean grinders. Dozens of newly collected sample beans can be seen on the wall, in clearly marked containers, extending from one end of the wall to the other, inlaid with wood panels and white floor tiles. And plenty of light is an excellent place for buyers and sellers to talk about coffee.

When the staff in the cup testing laboratory were preparing the beans for the cup test, I was amazed at all this. I have never seen so many small farms testing their own coffee beans together in a cup test room. Victor Manuel Gonzales, vice president of SOPPEXCCA, said: "our advantage is that we have our own cup testing laboratory in the cooperative. Before there is no cup testing room, we have no way of knowing whether the quality of the coffee beans harvested by farmers has improved after a year of hard farming. With the cup testing room, farmers can still" taste "their own coffee.

Enable locals to have their own training units and trainers

Jose Adan Lopez Zelaya, director of the Mancotal Agricultural Cooperative Union, a coffee cooperative company in the Jinotega Mountains, said: "another solution to the current coffee crisis is to allow coffee farmers to receive more training courses on post-processing, which is one of the most urgently needed assistance for coffee farmers in Nicaragua. Farmers in small-scale coffee farms also need someone to teach them how to produce high-quality coffee beans, but because the overall coffee futures price is too low, we cannot afford to hire high-paid foreign trainers. "

Having our own training units and personnel is of great significance to the long-term development of various coffee-related programs, but this factor is often overlooked when drawing up a development plan. On the other hand, there are many development units or organizations that have little or no concept of expertise in the coffee industry. As a result, they usually spend a lot of money to hire outside experts to give their development plans a framework, and the advice given by these outside experts usually conflicts with the maintenance of local culture and style. On the contrary, the cup testing laboratory set up by a local cooperative like SOPPEXCCA is a very successful example of combining with the local culture. The general manager of the co-operative, Mr Patima Ismael, said: "We must set up local training units and train local trainers. We have to stop relying on external expert technicians or trainers who usually come when money is available and wait until the planned budget is exhausted, regardless of whether the entire training module is completed or not. These people will leave immediately. "

SOPPEXCCA cooperatives focus on training local professionals, including cup testers, marketers, and managers. In this way, professional cup surveyors in cooperatives can directly publish the cup test results and analysis to member farmers, eliminating the need to outsource fees to get these data, and directly benefit members. In addition, since the cooperative's cup testing laboratory is the only cup testing laboratory in the Jinotega area, additional income can be earned from manor cups run for other non-member farms or other groups.

One of the most exciting scenes is the success story of Marbely Garcia Lopez, the quality control manager of SOPPEXCCA, who is only 23 years old, but because of her talent in cup testing, she has achieved so much. Lopez grew up working as a bean picker on a large farm with her parents, and then the family moved to the mountain town of Esteli, hoping to find a new job, when she joined a training program on environmental protection and English in Nicaragua. When USAID's plan to set up a cup testing laboratory began, Lopez was determined to learn how to cup test. after two years of hard training and personal efforts, the SOPPEXCCA cooperative hired her as the company's chief cup tester. She was the first person to be hired after the establishment of the cup testing laboratory. She was even selected as a Cup of Excellence reviewer, perfect training and natural cup testing talent, so that she is now very far away from home.

Cup testing with customers

From a business point of view, hiring a full-time cup tester inside the cooperative can bring obvious advantages to the business, because at this time, the cooperative can provide buyers and sellers with some more objective reference information on coffee flavor and taste. Companies like Peet's Coffee & Tea and Doug Welsh have recently been to SOPPEXCCA's cupping lab to buy raw beans. Peet's bought a bean called "Hermanas", which was processed by SOPPEXCCA. Doug Welsh, along with two other SOPPEXCCA cuppers, picked out some of the beans at nearby PRODECOOP and added them to the annual shopping list.

After pouring hot water into the cup of coffee powder, the cuppers quietly sipped and spat out the cup test procedure. Welsh said: "We tested 10 beans at the same time, and one of the 10 beans really stood out." It has a high acidity, elegant texture, wet aroma is sweet floral, cup testers will have unforgettable memories of drinking such coffee, sometimes other cup testers at the table will also resonate with you, I look at Marbely eyes, I am sure that this is indeed one of those coffee beans, at least in this table is the most prominent one. When we looked at the comparison table at the same time and looked for what we thought was the best bean, we found that it was the same bean we had purchased last year and it did the same this year. It was very commendable. I am really proud of them. I think we will still have this bean this year."

Experiences like this illuminate the future of Nicaragua's coffee industry. It proves that Nicaraguan coffee farmers are actively innovating in growing and processing technology to face the crisis and challenges of today's coffee industry. Perhaps "fine coffee" is the way out for Nicaragua coffee!