COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / MEET FIDENCIO CHAMORRO

Fidencio Chamorro, coffee farmer, participant in Borderlands Coffee Project in the Narino region of Columbia.

GUEST BLOG—By Geoff Watts, VP Green Coffee Buyer.  Reposted from www.intelligenciacoffee.com--The Borderlands Project is one of the most exciting and innovative development programs being operated in coffee today.

Its mission is relatively specific: to help improve the livelihoods of thousands of smallholder farmers living in the border regions of Southern Colombia and Northern Ecuador.

Coffee was identified as the most appropriate vehicle to support this goal, as the area is blessed with advantageous climate conditions that create the potential for extraordinary coffee quality.

Coffees from Nariño have long been recognized by the industry as special, yet few of them make it to the marketplace in traceable condition and growers there have rarely been able to reap much benefit from their work.

This is largely a result of the ongoing conflict in the region that has made access to the farmlands difficult and discouraged investment in coffee development in the area.

Over the past couple decades Colombia has made some

tremendous forward progress with coffee quality in many of its remote highland growing regions; departments like Huila and

Cauca have had much success in the last ten years penetrating the specialty market and connecting growers with premiums

for added quality.

By comparison, Nariño has remained largely untapped: fewer than 4% of the growers in the region have access to markets

that pay for cup quality, and over 98% of the coffees produced there are bulked and sold as untraceable, undifferentiated lots into the mass market for a marginal premium.

Borderlands uses a very creative approach to helping farmers overcome some of the obstacles that have stood in the way of success, and its accomplishments thus far are powerful

testaments to the value of collaboration and patience in the effort to solve complex problems.

The first year (“year zero”) was spent studying the landscape and engaging with leading minds in the specialty coffee industry

to brainstorm ideas. Rather than rushing in headfirst, Michael Sheridan and his Borderlands team took the slow road to developing an action plan and wound up with something that is impressively comprehensive in scope and effective thus

far in practice.

Their program in Nariño attempts to enable lasting sustainability by fomenting the conditions in which growers can

improve qualities, buyers can access traceable, consistent coffees and communities can work together to realize economies of scale.

Fidencio Chamarro picked his beans in Colombia in July 2014. Were ordered from
Intelligencia Coffee, Los Angeles that roasted them on March 6 and
this batch from Fidencio's Borderlands Project coffee arrived in the editorial offices
of Pillar to Post blog on March 10.  "Creative.  Flavorful and
deeply delicious," say Pillar to Post first tasters

The plan includes systematic separation of coffee lots, technical support for community based farmer organizations, construction of centralized wet mills for better post-harvest

processing, and engagement with exporters and specialty coffee roasters to workshop ideas and facilitate farmer-buyer partnerships.

For example, one limited edition lot comes from Fidencio

Chamorro, one of the participants in the Borderlands program whose coffee finished at the top of local  rankings for two consecutive years. His farm “La Loma” is located in the

Linares, a small municipality in central Nariño that is the site of one of the washing station projects slated for 2015.

The local community has been especially active in assisting the

project; the mayor donated municipal land for construction of the washing station, and the local public school has partnered with Borderlands to incorporate coffee seedling production into the existing applied agriculture curriculum.

Fidencio himself is a young farmer—only 27—who represents the future of coffee in Nariño and is leading by example in

Linares; his farm is meticulously managed and his enthusiasm for quality control has inspired others in his association to step up their game as well

THE BORDERLANDS PROJECT (2011-2016)

Catholic Relief Services is working with more than 35,000 smallholder coffee farmers in 12 countries in Central and South America, the Caribbean, East Africa and Southeast Asia.  CRS projects help farmers increase coffee productivity, quality and income.  We also work to help coffee-farming families expand non-coffee livelihoods alternatives and reduce their vulnerability to hunger.  And adapt to climate change.  One such

Program is the Borderlands Project in Colombia and Ecuador.

The Borderlands Coffee Project will help 3,200 smallholder farmers in conflict-affected communities along the Colombia-Ecuador border to expand high-value market opportunities and reduce their vulnerability to hunger and environmental degradation. 

CRS and its local partners will be working with 1,600 smallholder farmers in the highlands of Nariño in Colombia, and 1,600 family farmers in the Amazon provinces of Orellana and Sucumbíos in Ecuador.  For Borderlands, CRS is partnering for learning with CIAT (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture) and for information management with Cropster, a web-based service that won the SCAA’s 2012 Best New Product award in the “Equipment for Origin” category.