I’m wrapping up a fantastic in Chiapas, Mexico, where Ariel Chait and I participated in the annual meeting of CoopSol. Small scale coffee producers from around Latin America got together with the roasters and retailers of Cooperative Coffees to talk about the current state of Fair Trade, best practices in Fair Trade and organic coffee production, and where the future of specialty coffee is headed. Based in San Cristobal de las Casas, we held meetings at CEDECI, a training center for local indigenous people; in the mountains near Acteal, the home of Maya Vinic coffee; and around the picturesque city of San Cris. For Ariel and me, it was a great opportunity to meet a lot of good people and talk about Acopio Movil, the project we’ve been working on at Cal.
Check out the gallery below for some pictures from the week and a video featuring fellow participants.
Here at Cal I’m working on an exciting project called Acopio. Acopio, which means “harvest” in Spanish, is creating and deploying tools that employ leading information management practices to increase the profitability and influence of agricultural producers in the developing world. At the moment our team is working with several coffee cooperatives in Latin America to pilot test software designed to help cooperatives manage data collected during the harvest process. The software runs on PCs and mobile phones and we’ve designed a data workflow that does not rely on connectivity, as internet connectivity is often unreliable in the locations where cooperatives work.
We see a range of opportunities made possible by this technology, including the possibility of sharing producer data with consumers that buy the coffee at retailers elsewhere. We’re very interested in knowing what people think about their coffee, how much source information they’d like with their coffee, what specifically they would like to know more about, and so on. We’re also considering how we might create a mechanism (an online platform of some sort) to allow consumers to contribute more directly to the farmers that produce the coffee that they love.
In November we launched a small survey to begin to gauge opinion on these questions. We used e-mail mailing lists and social media to get the word out and offered no reward for completing it. More than 135 people responded to the survey and though the sample size is small, we believe some of the findings reaffirm our suspicions about people’s love for coffee and thirst (ba-dom-chh) for more information about it. Below we’re sharing some of the key findings.
First, though, a profile of our respondents:
The majority (80%) of respondents are between 26 and 35 years old.
The majority (83%) of respondents have some graduate level education.
The gender breakdown of respondents: 52% male – 48% female.
On a scale of 1-5, 87% of respondents said their coffee knowledge could be ranked between a 2 and a 4.
60% of respondents said they had between 6 and 15 coffees a week. 12% said they had more than 15 cups a week.
Respondents came from urban centers across the U.S.:
Selected findings on coffee generally:
Participants overwhelmingly (92% of respondents) selected flavor as the most important characteristic of coffee. Participants selected price as the second most important characteristic (63%). Fair Trade and organic designations were selected by 42% and 36% of participants, respectively.
Only 6% of participants require that the coffee shops they purchase from carry Fair Trade products, with 44% saying that it’s “Not that important”.
Participants expressed a slight bias towards paying extra for Fair Trade over organic. Twice as many people said they would not pay extra for organic as said they would not pay extra for Fair Trade.
Participants want more information. 79% indicated that they would like to know more about coffee production. Each option for the following question, which asked about specific kinds of information, was chosen by >50% of respondents.
On producer wages:
48% of participants said they did not think coffee farmers earn a livable wage while 47% said they weren’t sure.
61% of respondents who say they would pay extra for Fair Trade coffee don’t believe that coffee producers make a livable wage.
63% of respondents who say it is somewhat or very important for coffee shops to carry Fair Trade products don’t believe that coffee producers make a livable wage.
68% of respondents who indicated that they are somewhat or very familiar with coffee cooperatives don’t believe that most coffee producers make a livable wage.
On giving:
40% of respondents give less than $150 a year and 45% of respondents give between $150 and $500 a year.
Respondents overwhelmingly said that they give because “it’s the right thing to do” (73%). A distant second reason was giving after disasters (30%) and guilt was the third (24%).
Respondents suggested a number of other motivations for giving, many of which involved specific causes that they are passionate about or the activities of friends (e.g., giving to friends running for charity).
89% of participants said they give directly to the organizations that they support.
More than half of the participants had never used an online platform for giving.
20% of participants had given to Kiva or Kickstarter, and participants who had given to one had often given to the other.
Feel free to leave a comment if you’d like to know more about Acopio or the survey. In the coming months I and the team will be sharing more about out work – stay tuned!
