This week Monday worked on trying to get the grinder done, found i needed to get a bigger belt. Tuesday ran up to guabo to talk to a professor about a book project we are working on, and then headed to david. wednesday headed up to a friends site, Thursday helped out on a coffee pruning seminar with a volunteer friend and a farmer friend from the comarca. Then up to another friends town about three hours away to talk to a group of farmers about how to go from selling in cherry to the national coffee company to sell quality green coffee to better farmers. Quick trip to talk to a farmer from Finca Hartmann, high quality bird friendly coffee, and now on the way to Panama City.

Birds

http://www.panamaaudubon.org/

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Dear Friends

The past couple of weeks have been busy. I got the chance to work to do some seminars with rural coffee farmers. First I will list my recommendations for teaching farmers business skills, and then if you are still interested I will shared the details of the work of the last couple of weeks.

1.Start a seminar by having the farmers draw their dreams with colored pencils. The objective of the seminars that I have dealt with has been teaching farmers how to make more money from their coffee harvests. I find it helpful to have farmers express why it is that they want to increase their income. Also, psychologically, I think people have a fear of impotence, and that the frustration of being in a learning environment when you do not have much formal education is being in an environment where you are not able to produce or communicate what you want. By giving people colored pencils and having them draw their dreams, they have a sense of expression, of being able to express their dreams in their goals in a not literate way.
2.Try to incorporate short skits and group work as much as possible. For example, if you are teaching a skill with various steps, have actors act out each step of the process. At the end of each skit, stop, have the farmers get together in small groups with a facilitator, and work through the problem, trying to decide what the actor should do next, or what the actor has to do. This forces as many people as possible to take the time to think through the process. For example, for accounting, you might have a farmer sell coffee to a buyer, then stop and have people discuss in groups where that should go on their accounting sheet, then continue and have him buy some fertilizer, and then stop and have them decide where that goes on their accounting sheet, and continue in this manner.

Ran a seminar in Hato Chami on business of coffee. About six friends helped to run the seminar. We spent most of the time going through the process of analyzing a market.
Then traveled to a town called Soloy where I worked with coffee farmers on coffee and business. Worked with three other business volunteers and a member of the Panamanian Agriculture department. About 25 farmers attended the meeting.
After that I had meetings with different specialty coffee producers where in Panama. It was good to sit with them and hear their advice for small scale farmers. Three things I learned: There is always a market for clean coffee – that is to say undamaged coffee, that this year it might be more profitable for farmers to sell to the internal panama market than the international market, and that people who work in coffee processing plants can tell with good accuracy if coffee is sufficiently dry.

Now my question is, how can we teach farmers this skill of testing the bean? If we had beans to give them that were dry enough, could they use it to get their coffee dryer?

After meeting with the coffee business owners I got the chance to visit my host family that is now working on a commercial farm. Their workers camp was about an hour hike from the small town where the closest public transportation comes.

check out pictures here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eddieo/

More Nano roastering

Here is a picture of my friend Victorino with his new logo for his coffee:

A good article

I spent my Christmas at home, and my folks get the New York Times. While there I read a great article about Mexico using a program to fight poverty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/magazine/21cash-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Panama is doing a similar project called red de opportunidades.

The program basically pays mothers to keep their kids in school and going to the health clinic for vaccinations and check ups.

The end of the article talks about the limitations of such a program, basically that the program was making a significant difference in the average education of poor Mexicans, however as long as there were not jobs for those Mexicans to work the effects of the program would be limited in terms of increasing income.

Panama seems to be doing ok in this sense, that when someone is qualified they can generally find some kinda of job, even if they are underemployed. This helps increase the potential for a similar program to work, as an increase in education will probably result in a great ability to get a job.

Making dots and coffee

Hello Amigos

Recently western Panama received about a foot of rain in less than week. The land slides were pretty bad in bocas. A lot of relief effort was going on in David so I ended up hanging there to help out.

I got to spend some time with a friend and volunteer from Bocas del Toro. He told me about study had been done on his community found that the only areas still forested were those planted with cacoa. I always wonder in the back of my mind if coffee is really the right answer for our farmers, this seems to suggust that it is in terms of soil conservation and for climate change, it is. The forrest has to be profitable to be conserved. But how can we make this happen? How can coffee and cacoa, and other agro forest products, compete in terms of dollars per year per acre and per hour of the farmer’s work ? It seems that sometimes growing beans, or even corn or renting land out for cattle grazing makes better economic sense.

Saturday reminded me of a quotation from a Steve Job’s speech, that I recommend reading:

you can’t connect the dots looking forward

The day before yesterday I traveled to a city to see a friend, who ended up flaking on me. However on the bus ride over i bumped into the president of a large coffee group traveling to the same city. Lesson : get out and make the dots.

Also I met a teacher for the agency in charge of adult education here in Panama, and then met his boss the principle of the school. I had met the teacher when I stopped in at my local bar to pick up some beers before heading to my house.

So now we are hoping to get some classes going there at there center on agbiz and coffee reforesting, combining our efforts. Thats getting a beer and going to see a friend who ended up flaking on me will end up in doing more work with agencies.

Below are some pictures, I had written about nano picker roasters, small producers who both pick their own coffee and sell it roasted. Below are attached some pictures of a man named Ernesto. Two friends work with him and one helpped him with his label.

thats what i´ve been thinking about lately

until next time

Ed

Nano Picker Roaster

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post how do different people respond to different incentives ? How do you create incentives to protect eco systems? can coffee compete agenst cattle ?

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