The Coffee Connection

Many of our sister parishioners are coffee farmers. The climate along the mountainsides of some parts of the parish is ideally suited for coffee growing. These farmers are remarkable in all they have overcome to succeed at growing coffee. Coffee is a major agribusiness commodity, yet these farmers have little or no machinery to aid their efforts. They plant, cultivate and harvest by hand. They carry bags of coffee beans from field to home on their backs over mountain footpaths.
Although a machine helps them remove the bean from the fruit, in many households the machine is cranked by hand. They lay the beans on their rooftops to dry.  They walk the dried beans on their backs - in bags that weigh as much as 70 pounds - to a warehouse where they are collected and trucked to market.
It is also remarkable that these farmers have overcome deeply imbedded prejudices against indigenous people, as well as market structures that give enormous advantages to their established competitors, the Folgers and the Hills Brothers of the world. They did so by banding together in a farming collective known as Kulaktik (after the Tzeltal word for the ropes that bind the bags of coffee together for shipping), which markets the coffee and negotiates contracts for its members.

Through their collective efforts they were able to market their product beyond the middlemen, who troll the mountains buying cheaply from farmers and selling to wholesalers (and who are known as "coyotes"), directly to coffee roasters, particularly in Europe.

Mary Pat Clasen helped Kulaktik make a similar connection to our local Milwaukee roaster, Alterra Coffee Roasters. She brought a sample of Kulaktik coffee to Alterra and introduced Alterra to Kulaktik. As a result of her efforts, Alterra currently purchases about 20% of the coffee produced by Kulaktik. Alterra buys on terms that generate legitimate profits for both, securing both a solid source of supply of fine organic coffee for Alterra, and a firm, fair trade price for Kulaktik. Their partnership has really enriched both communities.

SSPP has supported this coffee connection. Kulaktik coffee is sold at parish functions, such as the Apostles Café and the Block Party. SSPP contributed generously to a fund organized by Alterra to help Kulaktik buy a truck to help its members get their beans to the warehouse.