It's difficult to know where to start when talking about cycles, where to begin telling you this story of love, effort, and collective perseverance that fades into the past, stretching back several generations, and seems to open a path into an uncertain future where you and I can be protagonists on the front line.
Therefore, I'll start the story from any point, for example, a cool dawn in the middle of the Chiapas tropical jungle, in a wooden house in the mountains. The sun hasn't risen yet, and the symphony of crickets, cicadas, and small nocturnal creatures is gradually giving way to the chirping and commotion of the birds in the prelude to dawn.
Few things fill me with as much joy as drinking the first coffee of the day, sitting on a simple terrace with spectacular views, while in the distance the dim bulbs of the hamlets are gradually turning off one by one as the light of dawn gently enters.
Still almost dark, we descend the steps that lead to the cellar at the foot of the farm, where a truck has just arrived loaded with the first sacks of coffee from the small farmers who have decided to trust us and participate in our shared value proposition.
We greet each other with a fist bump and then I remind them to please use the hand sanitizer we have available. The filter coffee machine is already on, and we offer them some cookies to go with the delicious coffee. They have traveled a long way to get here. It's 6 am and they left their homes in the community of La Soledad at 11 pm the night before.
Seven hours sounds quick: it takes them more than 2 hours to walk the narrow and steep mule trail, carrying on their backs a sack of over 50 kg while the animals carry 100 kg each. They don't have many animals like this, so this is an ant-like carrying job that started a week ago until they managed to accumulate enough sacks to fill the truck's load. They had to pay for "lodging" to leave their coffee in charge in the small town at the foot of the road while they went back for more sacks in La Soledad. Many don't have pack animals so they have to rent them, adding this expense to their costs.
So, the day before the delivery, they make the last carry in mules and on their backs and upon arriving at the inn they redistribute the coffee uniformly in the sacks, filling them as much as they can before sewing them up again (60-70 kg) because the driver charges them by the bag. Once the truck is loaded, some get in the cab and others get comfortable on the sacks of coffee, ready to continue their journey of more than 5 hours up and down the deep valleys of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas to the warehouse where Ethichub is currently receiving their coffee.
When they finish delivering their batches, in which each sack is meticulously evaluated and classified by weight, moisture, yield, and origin, linking this information to each of the farmers, they leave satisfied and calm with the accounts clear to cancel their debt with the platform lenders and receive the surplus, which will last them a few months to cover their basic needs.
They leave with the hope that our sales team will be able to place the fruits of their immense effort in favorable markets that will, in a few months, generate an additional income for them from the export margin. This will be of great help because it is very difficult to manage when all their income is concentrated in a single time of year.
When we visited them, they told us how proud they were to know that now their coffee and their names were recognized and appreciated by people from other countries, who had never even dreamed of seeing their names printed on a beautiful bag of coffee before. Before, they simply took the coffee to the next town, and that was the end of the story of their work, where all the coffee was mixed with tons and tons of other coffees of heterogeneous quality.
Kim Ossenblok christened it "Sensitive Coffee (Café Sensible in Spanish)" as a result of the careful effort that these producers put into their daily tasks, from getting up early to make corn tortillas on a wood fire for breakfast and lunch to be taken to the field, to the hard tasks they perform to maintain their noble crop in a sustainable way, in harmony with nature, under the shade of leafy trees that provide shelter for important biodiversity, while transmitting their peculiar sweetness to the coffee fruits.
The journey of these precious seeds from the spectacular jungle of Chiapas to our cups is quite a feat. Upon arriving on the Old Continent, our Master Roaster toasts them with the precision of an alchemist, to develop their full potential of aroma and full flavor and bring them to the final consumer, who will enjoy in every sip the lost paradise that they contribute to saving with their responsible consumption, knowing that their enjoyment means well-being for the hands that cultivated the coffee plantations and for the flora and fauna that shelter under their branches.
And that is how sustainability finds its true meaning, producing a coffee without bitterness.
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In her role as CSO and Co-founder of Ethichub, she leverages her past experience as an organic coffee producer and her work at the Chiapas State Secretariat of Economic Development in Mexico.
