Author Rylie Richardson (second from right) and friend Abby Lawes (second from left) prepare to harvest coffee beans from Angela Henao’s (center) generational farm in Colombia. Also pictured are Juan and Jaime, residents of the region.
Crimson-speckled, green-leafed coffee plants stretch to the horizon. A lush valley bounces by. Another Willys jeep passes ours, loaded high with canvas bags of coffee beans. Harvesters rest their tired bodies atop the uneven surface, and they bounce slightly with each divot in the gravel road. The colorful buildings of one-horse towns pass by, vibrant against the sky. Barefooted toddlers stumble through the dirt. Chickens gab in their pens. An unending number of black cow eyes blink at me.
Angela Henao’s coffee farm, Aguas Claras, has been passed down through generations. It rests in the Cordillera Occidental Mountain Range in Colombia’s Cauca coffee region. From the top of the hill where Aguas Claras lies I am able to make out the red-roofed structures of the towns resting in the valley below.
Wearing a bucket belted around my waist, I begin harvesting. Jaime, Henao’s left-hand man, shows me how to pick the fruits from the coffee plant. Coffee grows on a tiny 6-foot tree with shiny green leaves. The fruit resembles an oval berry and is often referred to as a “coffee cherry.” Angling his body so the bucket rests just under a branch, Jaime uses his thumb and forefinger to knock the row of bright red fruits off of the plant and they fall into the bucket.
Back in the separating room, after three hours weaving up and down a steep hillside in the heat, I dump the fruits into a bucket of water. The fruits that float have a higher density and contain better beans. Half of mine sink to the bottom. I skim the floating beans with a colander and dump them into a canvas bag. Jaime hoists this bag onto the scale. It reads just short of 10 kilos, which is worth about 2,000 pesos or $2. Juan, Henao’s and my mutual friend from the region, teases me. “No creo que seas una buena trabajadora.” I don’t think you’re a good worker. Many harvesters weigh in around 40–60 kilos per shift, which brings roughly $24 a day.
The beans are dumped into the washer, a hand-levered machine that separates the bean from the fruit using water. Jaime stands in the concrete basin below and hand-picks the beans unsuccessfully extracted from the fruits. The beans that do not float are considered commodity grade and are thrown into a separate bucket where they will be processed and sold separately.
Beans are laid out on the roof and dried by the sun. Once they’re completely dry, the team uses rubber tubes to remove silver skin from each bean. They look for a light green, almost white color to signify quality. Coffee is scored by green coffee professionals on what is called the Q grading system, a standardized evaluation method that categorizes green coffee based on the cupping score where Q-graders review coffee and analyze its sensory characteristics. The numerical scale for this test is 0-111. A score between 60 and 80 labels the coffee as commodity grade, while a coffee that scores above 80 is considered specialty grade.
To keep her farm afloat, Henao sells large batches of beans to corporations that roast and distribute them to grocery stores and cafés. Her specialty coffee is sold to families in the area, with a small percentage shipped to a café in Canada. Right now, Henao doesn’t have the resources to expand her specialty-coffee business. She continues to produce small amounts of specialty lots (those beans that score above 80) as a passion project, but she wonders how she’d eventually be able to make her specialty-grade coffee the main component of her business.
Bozeman Roasters Boost Growers
It turns out coffee shop owners and distributors can make a difference. I sat down with two business owners in Bozeman and asked them about their experience purchasing beans from South American growers. They have unique approaches, but they aim to have mutually beneficial relationships with those who grow the beans that they roast and sell stateside.
Natalie Van Dusen, owner of Treeline Coffee Roasters, began her journey in Colombia 11 years ago. Van Dusen’s passion was ignited on a motorcycle trip through South America where she met a local farmer in Colombia who taught her how to roast on his kitchen stove.
Van Dusen makes decisions that aren’t solely self-beneficial. She admits that her approach is complicated, working with various importers and sprinkling in direct purchases. For her, these challenges, which include managing relationships with many stakeholders, seeking out sustainable farms, and coordinating logistics, are worth the benefits: variety, transparency, and human connection.
“I like getting to know the people I buy from and to see the impact that these connections have for both parties,” she says. “It feels good to me.”
Ben Weyer of Yellowstone Coffee Roasters is the eldest son of Tim and Liz Weyer, who started their coffee journey in the 1980s. After a stint in Seattle, Tim and Liz bought a remodeled school bus and began traveling across the Rocky Mountain West before opening an espresso cart in Bozeman.
To ensure consistent quality, they began roasting their own beans. Twenty-six years later, Yellowstone Coffee Roasters rests on a quaint homestead between Bozeman and Livingston. Yellowstone focuses on roasting and distributing beans to grocery stores, Airbnbs, national parks, and coffee shops. The Weyers work primarily with an importer called Cafe Imports, a global company collaborating with coffee cooperatives around the world.
They source the majority of their beans from smallholder farmers who sell their coffees to local cooperatives in the Americas, East Africa, and Indonesia.
Van Dusen and Weyer note the complexities of the coffee market. Language barriers, global crises, and regional weather patterns play a part in the chain. Beans pass through many hands before they reach the roasters. Here’s how it usually goes: The farmer picks the cherries, then someone processes them (sometimes it’s the farmers, but oftentimes it occurs at an off-site wet mill). Then the beans are sent to a dry mill. Next they go to the exporting facility in the country of origin, then a coffee warehouse at the place of export. Beans are then shipped via boat or plane to a warehouse in the U.S., then they arrive at the roaster before finally landing in a coffee shop.
Sometimes farmers oversee the entire process and are able to cut out the middleman. One such farmer is Mauricio Osorio, one of Treeline’s suppliers, who harvests Samaria coffee in Colombia. He purchases and sells coffee beans from neighboring farms, has a wet mill on his property, runs a dry mill at another facility, and imports his beans to Portland, Oregon.
Co-ops provide consistent quality while positively benefitting producers. For example, the Weyers consistently source beans grown by women producers. They use women-produced coffees, like those from the CESMACH and GARMINDO cooperatives in Mexico and Sumatra, respectively, in their blends and single-origin offerings. Ben Weyer has heard first-hand accounts of how women’s farm ownership has created positive local change, including decreased domestic violence and economic growth.
Treeline also works with co-ops in South America. Liliana Lozano from the Federacion Campesina de Cauca (FCC) in Colombia has been a wonderful partner to Van Dusen. The FCC’s initiatives include supporting women-owned farms, education for young farmers, and information about alternative crops and organic fertilizer.
Due to the complex nature of the coffee supply chain, it can be hard to determine where the money is going and how it’s being used, but direct relationships help Van Dusen determine this. She uses an online platform called Algrano, which was built to connect roasters with farmers. Through this website, she is able to purchase directly from the Corrales Family Farm in Nicaragua and receives regular updates from them, allowing her to see what positive changes are occurring. Byron and Sara Corrales provide coffee education to neighboring farms and young people and have excellent living facilities for their workers.
Weyer also seeks a direct relationship with suppliers and has visited the farms he sources from through Cafe Imports. Cafe Imports works with farms directly and compensates producers based on the quality score of their coffee. Cafe Imports places a high priority on education and has a team of agronomists who work with producers to increase cup quality and plant yield to inevitably create farms that are more resilient and profitable.
In a market that caters to trend seekers and comfort drinkers while navigating a global supply chain, it’s difficult to maintain transparency, but there are ways to engage in compassionate trade relationships like Van Dusen and Weyer. There are new platforms arising that encourage direct relationships in coffee, such as Algrano, which helps small-batch coffee producers like Henao connect with global buyers and sell beans through a streamlined logistics system.
With her specialty lot scoring above 85 on the Q-grade, it wouldn’t be difficult for Henao to find a market for her top-grade beans. But to focus her effort on the specialty beans, Henao would need to increase productivity. The answer could be found working with a co-op or emerging platform like Algrano. In a place as ripe with coffee as the Cauca region of Colombia, direct relationships could be the answer for many farmers.
I asked Van Dusen and Weyer the same question: What is the most important aspect of creating a more ethical coffee system? Weyer says, “It’s important we don’t step out of our lane. Those farmers have been farming that land for generations. They have a better idea of how to utilize and respect that place better than we ever will.”
Van Dusen adds, “Talking to people and building relationships humanizes the process.” When we form relationships with those we do business with, there is more incentive for each stakeholder to reap the benefits and continue to work together.
