Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/90134
0 ('(//,1 &2/20%,$—Pergamino would not be out of place in Portland. From its exposed wood beams and brick walls to its shelf of single-cup brew methods and baristas clad in dapper threads, the café embodies a similar cool to what is emanating from Northwest specialty coffee culture. The individu- als currently jammed within Pergamino's four walls—and even protruding outdoors via the 20-person-deep line—hail from doz- ens of different countries and several coffee categories, as roasters from Seattle mix with Honduran farmers. But this diverse group of coffee professionals isn't patronizing Pergamino by chance; rather, they've been brought here during a field trip on the final afternoon of Let's Talk Coffee, a four-day conference organized by Portland-based Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers. The crowd packed into the café is a fitting microcosm of Let's Talk Coffee's audience: repre- sentatives from every link of coffee's supply chain—café owners, financiers, importers and many more—who join together for a long weekend to discuss vital industry issues. Sustainable Harvest launched Let's Talk Coffee in 2002 with a participant count in the low double digits; this Colombian weekend marks the 10th anniversary, and more than 450 coffee folks from 28 countries have made the trip. Each fall, Sustainable Harvest has brought the event to a producing coun- try, and every year Let's Talk Coffee has grown. One of the key reasons for the year-to-year expansion is the cur- riculum of high-end content, centered around Sustainable's Relationship Coffee model that gathers all members of the supply chain with the aim of doing business in a more integrated, efficient and sustainable manner. Among the topics covered this year were the degree to which certifications matter to customers; the global efforts being made to turn robusta into a viable Arabica alternative; and the future of one of Colombia's chief coffee- producing regions, Antioquia. Huila, a department to the south that is much smaller (spanning about 7,700 square miles). Though Antioquia produces vast volumes of coffee, the region isn't known for high-quality beans. David Piza, a Medellin native who works for Sustainable Harvest and coordinated this year's Let's Talk Coffee, has served as a coffee-focused economic advisor to Antioquia's governor, Sergio Fajardo. Piza describes the challenge thusly: "Coffee in Antioquia has always been viewed by specialty buyers as a commodity," he says. "There are outstanding quality producers at the moment, but they're not being brought to the market properly." Specifically, Antioquia has lacked the exporting discipline, Piza says, to separate out its high-quality beans, result- ing in them being mixed with inferior-quality coffee. 6867$,1$%/( +$59(67 )281'(5 '$9,' *5,6:2/' 63($.6 :,7+ $17,248,$ *29(5125 6(5*,2 )$-$5'2 5,*+7 But the Colombian government is working on breathing new $ %2267 )25 &2/20%,$1 &2))(( Antioquia (pronounced ante-o-kia) was the setting for this year's Let's Talk Coffee, at a rustic hotel about an hour's drive southeast of Medellin, in the foothills of the Andes. Antioquia is one of Colombia's 32 departments, and Medellin is its capital city. Of Antioquia's 125 municipalities in its roughly 24,500 square miles, 94 of them grow coffee—it's a fertile region historically known as Colombia's highest-producing department, though in 2011 its streak at the top came to an end when it was edged out by life into Antioquia as a growing region. The National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC) has made an initial invest- ment of $600,000 toward improving Antioquia's coffee quality. Luis Fernando Samper, FNC's chief communications and mar- keting officer, says that sum will target quality-improvement in six provinces, and the FNC is working on a separate $11 million project that will advance Antioquia's quality further. Fajardo, the governor, was on hand the second morning of Let's Talk Coffee to announce the region's resurrection plans. In a speech, he said one of the main challenges Antioquia faces is changing the mindset of its youth demographic, which doesn't see a future in coffee farming. "If we forget about coffee, we lose all that we have built for generations," he said. "We have to understand how the coffee world is going today, jump into the 21st industry and transform ourselves." continued on page 38 freshcup.com November 2012 37 ELLIOTT SCHOFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY