On the slopes of Mount La Jacoba, in southern Colombia, a small community of farmers and coffee producers are looking to change their own destinies.
In recent years the price of coffee in Colombia has fallen, and some producers complain that the intermediaries who buy their product impose set prices that do not cover the costs of production.
For this reason, it is very difficult for a small coffee producer to live off their work.
The Asprounión cooperative has challenged market inequities through independent marketing of their product.
In 2018, the group exported five containers of ready-to-roast coffee to Australia.
Source: La Jacoba
This operation generated a 46 per cent direct profit, a margin that Mauricio Velásquez, Asprounión’s business development manager for Asia and the Pacific, said would have been impossible in the traditional marketing system in Colombia.
Their method of selling bypasses intermediaries, wholesalers and distributors, and thus gives the producers a greater share of the profits.
“You have to think that Asprounión produces 1.2 million kilos of parchment coffee per year,” he shares. “If we manage to market our coffee directly, our farmers will have a much better standard of living.”
Source: La Jacoba
The beginnings of a commercial ‘rebellion’
Asprounión was born in 2001 when a group of families decided to partner together to independently market their coffee.
In order to establish itself, the group obtained financing from the Ford Foundation and the European Union, through its Peace Laboratory program in Colombia.
With this backing, the cooperative managed to build a headquarters in the country, with a laboratory and machines necessary for threshing and other parts of the coffee production process.
Today, the cooperative is made up of 273 families that produce coffee in the traditional way, growing chemical-free plants and drying the beans in the sun.
They ensure that the fertile volcanic lands they inhabit allow them to produce high-quality “parchment” coffee.
Source: La Jacoba
The Australian market and its difficulties
Mr Velásquez, who operates for Asprounión in Fremantle, Western Australia, acknowledges that when the cooperative sent its first container of coffee ready to roast from Colombia, they thought it would be easy to sell.
“Then you find that there are alliances with companies and brokers that have been operating here for more than a hundred years or that are part of a conglomerate of companies that sell coffee.
“They have a lot of capital and can sell very cheap coffee, and it also happens that the local consumer is not educated to differentiate a good coffee from a more ordinary one.”
To break these barriers, Mr Velásquez decided to explain to his potential clients - the coffee roasters - the philosophy behind the project.
“With a lot of effort and knocking on many doors it is about making the roaster understand that it is not simply the price, that on the other side there is that person who gets up at 5 in the morning to work and that he has a family that needs to have his three daily food dishes, vacations, education, that is the philosophy of the project.”
He explains that the cooperative has managed to entice seven customers from the state’s 130 roasters.
"If all these roasters were aware of the social benefit of which they could be part of buying our coffee, we would already be selling a third or a quarter of all our production.”
A hopeful future
In February, Mr Velásquez opened a cafe in Fremantle. The owner of an art gallery offered the cooperative a space to present their coffee brand La Jacoba, but where they also promote the coffee of their customers, the roasters.
“I would like to reach the catering companies that distribute to the mines, to large companies and also educate the consumer about what type of product is ours,” he explains.
He looks to the future with a hope that the model will lead to a coffee "revolution". Despite the difficulties they have had to face to get where they are, he is convinced that the model can change the lives of other coffee producers in Colombia.
“The experience has been very enriching, where I come from fighting every day to be able to get better and better and this simply keeps me alive, keeps me alert.
“What I most desire is to be able to prove that it is possible. Being able to tell other communities in Colombia at some point that it took us 20 years to get to where we are, but that we have all the knowledge and that we can help them to do so in five years.”
