Just Coffee 2

Last fall I wrote a blog on the importance of coffee as an international comodity, and the idea of purchasing "fair trade" coffee as a way of making it more likely that small farmers could make an adequate living in their home country.

This series of photos illustrates how a very small, botique coffee producer works to make this all possible. The sign above is atop a very small shop and coffee producer located in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, not far south of Douglas, Arizona. This small producer receives shipments of coffee beans from much farther south in Mexico; from Chiapas, Mexico, where the beans are grown. The coffee growers in Chiapas have very small plots, usually located on the sides of mountains under the shade of trees that grow above the coffee plants. The growers also dry the beans in the sun near where they are grown, they sort and select beans by hand. So they are able to add some value before the beans even leave the location where they are produced.

Here a young man holds a bucket of the green coffee beans.

Such beans are roasted here at Agua Prieta. This next photo is of the beans being poured into the roaster. While on the one hand the roaster seems pretty impressive compared with home models, it is quite small by industry standards. The electrical apparatus on the wall controls the temperature and duration of the roasting process. The roasting is done in small batches. The more freshly the beans are roasted the more delicious the product.

Here someone in our group examines the beans. The tecnician is explaining some facet of the roasting process.

This is one of the coffee grinders. The grind can be adjusted for the sort of brewing that a person will use. This is an old grinding machine, it reminds me of the coffee grinders that I would see in some grocery stores when I was a boy. It has been modified a little.

And here is our group shopping, buying the finished product. While we carried the coffee home in our luggage such coffee can also be ordered on the internet. Some groups import the coffee from Mexico, Guatemala or other warm southern parts of the world to a location in the United States to do the roasting and packaging. What Agua Prieta and US locations have in common is that they are close to the consumers so the coffee can be freshly roasted and good.

Buying Fair Trade coffee from such botique suppliers provides both a superior product and a way to help small farmers make a living.