Cultivating Change to Take Back the Land

By Marla Dickerson

Dec. 12, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia —

Bolivia is one of the smallest coffee producers in the world. Until recently, that was a blessing.

Quality for years was so lousy that Bolivian beans rate an automatic discount on commodity exchanges. Cheeky traders nicknamed it “surprise coffee” because they never knew what was coming.

But the real shocker occurred recently in a swanky hotel ballroom here in Bolivia’s largest city, when an indigenous farmer named Mery Maldonado accepted one of the coffee industry’s most coveted awards: the Cup of Excellence. Her farming cooperative had dazzled a panel of international judges with beans so superior that a 154-pound bag fetched more than the typical Bolivian earns in a year.

“I thank God,” said Maldonado, dressed in the layered skirt and braids of an Aymara Indian woman. “We have been suffering.”

Pummeled by a global glut of beans that had depressed prices for commercial-grade coffee, farmers like Maldonado have been moving upscale to survive. Growers worldwide are trying to differentiate what traditionally has been a commodity product to win better prices for their harvests. Some are scrambling to prove that their beans are organic, shade-grown or harvested without child labor to appeal to socially conscious consumers. Others are focusing on quality to win over gourmands.

Bolivia’s efforts to revamp its bargain-basement image rival anything seen on the ABC television series “Extreme Makeover” -- thanks largely to American taxpayers. Concerned that struggling farmers are shifting to coca, the plant whose leaves are refined to make cocaine, the U.S. government is pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to help Bolivian coffee growers cultivate premium beans.

This mugs-not-drugs strategy has yet to transform Bolivian coffee into the next Jamaica Blue Mountain, one of the most sought-after types. But some farms are turning out world-class joe. Interest is percolating among coffee aficionados, some of whom have paid more than 10 times the current commodity price to get their hands on a few sacks of Bolivia’s prize-winning beans.

“I used to call it prison coffee,” said Bob Stephenson, a coffee roaster from Berkeley who was in Bolivia for the tasting competition. “Not anymore.”

Coffee is one of the most valuable export crops in the developing world, providing employment to 20 million families in more than 50 countries. But overproduction has sent wholesale prices tumbling in recent years. Adjusted for inflation, coffee hit a 100-year low in late 2001 of about 42 cents a pound, less than a third of what it was three years earlier.

Commodity prices are rising again, though misery still grips the global coffee belt. In Central America alone, an estimated 600,000 coffee workers have lost their jobs. Thousands have fled for the U.S.

Bolivia’s java woes likewise are being felt on U.S. streets. In the heart of the coffee-growing region northeast of La Paz known as the Yungas, coca production surged 18% last year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Much of that harvest ended up journeying north as cocaine.

Some coca farming in the Yungas is legal, as Bolivians have used the mild stimulant for centuries to ward off fatigue and hunger. Nationwide, cultivation is down sharply from the levels of a decade ago because of controversial, U.S.-backed eradication efforts.

Still, American officials are concerned enough that they have poured more than $500 million of developmental aid into Bolivia over the last four years, said Peter Natiello, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Coca production is “ticking back up in the Yungas,” Natiello said. “Part of the policy response ... is to help farmers find alternatives.”

One of the most aggressive efforts has focused on coffee, which employs about 20,000 families on tiny farms, or fincas, averaging less than 7 1/2 acres. On paper, Bolivia is uniquely suited to producing premium beans. The semitropical Yungas boasts rich soil, a nurturing climate, abundant shade and ideal elevation. Most of the coffee plants are the prized arabica variety.

In late October, Lorenzo Choque was harvesting the last of the bright red coffee berries, known as cherries, from the bushes on his rambling Yungas finca. Wild blossoms of hydrangea, hibiscus and impatiens, translated here as “hard-working woman,” ran riot over the steep terrain. Parrots chattered in the shade trees overhead, a sign of an ecosystem bursting with vitality.

“There is plenty of rain,” said Choque, wearing a weathered harvest sack over his shoulder and a battered Philadelphia 76er cap on his head. “Everything grows.”

Yet Bolivia for years has been turning out low-grade coffee, largely for want of infrastructure. Coffee cherries must be processed within hours after they are picked to preserve the valuable beans tucked inside. That involves removing the husks and sticky goop surrounding the beans, which are then washed and dried. Lacking coffee mills in the middle of the jungle, Bolivian growers had performed the first crucial stages on their own farms. The result was thousands of batches of damp, moldy beans that yielded foul-tasting joe.

USAID has helped finance centralized facilities in the Yungas, where growers can now bring their cherries to be processed in uniform batches. Those and other changes have helped participating farmers boost their coffee incomes by an average of 46%, according to USAID figures. But winning their trust has been tougher.

With per capita income of $890 a year, Bolivia is South America’s poorest country. Angry over the failure of free-market reforms to improve living standards, Indian peasants took to the streets last year in a revolt that ousted President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a wealthy pro-American businessman.

Resentment over U.S.-financed coca eradication in the region runs deep as well, with many Bolivians believing that Uncle Sam should target U.S. drug users, not impoverished coca farmers. A number of Yungas coffee growers are former miners who lost their jobs after the privatization of Bolivia’s tin industry in the 1980s. They have replicated their tightknit cooperatives in the countryside and harbor a deep resentment of globalization and neo-liberal economic reforms.

“People don’t trust the [free] market,” said Pedro Patana, president of a Yungas cooperative known by its initials CENAPROC.

Thus the U.S. government this year decided to up the ante with that most powerful of capitalist incentives: a competition with a potentially lucrative payout.

“The only weapon we have is money,” Bruce Brower, a consultant who heads the USAID-funded Market Access and Poverty Alleviation, or MAPA, project, which is pushing specialty coffee in the Yungas. “People will believe when they have more of it in their pockets.”

To that end, the U.S. government this year spent $150,000 to bring the Cup of Excellence to Bolivia. Started in Brazil in 1999, the tasting competition has quickly become one of the most-watched events in the specialty coffee industry. Run by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence Inc., a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, the contest provides a rare opportunity for tiny coffee growers to get on the radar screen of prospective buyers.

Individual farmers submit samples of their coffees to a three-stage, blind taste-off judged by coffee experts. The payoff is an Internet auction for any coffees that meet the panel’s exacting standards. Winners have received prices topping $14 a pound from gourmet coffee buyers. Some have gone on to cut deals with companies such as Starbucks Corp.

Hundreds of growers in other coffee nations typically leap at the chance to compete. But the Bolivian contest received only 138 entries, and that was only after bending the rules to allow more team entries.

Part of the reason for the low turnout was cultural, said agronomist Marcos Moreno, MAPA’s coffee expert in the Yungas. He said the group bond was so strong that many farmers thought of themselves as co-op members first rather than independent businesspeople. Going it alone is to risk ridicule or ostracism.

He said others were fearful of retribution from coca interests, which view the U.S.-funded coffee project as a danger to their livelihood. Moreno said he and other MAPA personnel had received threats, as had growers perceived to be cooperating with them.

“We had one farmer drop off his sample in the middle of the night,” Moreno said. “There is a lot of fear here.”

In the end, 60 farmers endured a harrowing 30-hour bus ride over treacherous mountain roads to arrive at Santa Cruz for the contest finals. They crowded around the widescreen television in their hotel lobby, watching dancers shimmy on music videos. Most lack electricity and running water in their jungle homes. For many, it was their first time sleeping in a hotel -- when they could sleep at all.

“My heart is pounding,” grower Rufino Poca said as the awards ceremony ticked closer.

Judges too felt the pressure.

Known as “cuppers,” the 20-person panel consisted of veteran roasters, retailers and importers from three continents. Wearing bright red or jet-black aprons, and armed with spoons, clipboards and Styrofoam spittoon cups, they spent five days cloistered in a hotel conference room sniffing, sipping and spitting identical-looking samples of fresh-brewed coffee.

Each sample was rated on a variety of factors, such as sweetness, acidity, body and aftertaste. On a scale of 100, only coffees that finish with a combined score of at least 84 can be deemed a Cup of Excellence coffee worthy of auction.

Heading into the final day, Norwegian cupper Synove Pedersen talked of the emotions tugging at the judges’ apron strings. All knew that a win could transform the lives of any of the assembled Bolivian farmers. Cup of Excellence winners from other nations have inked lucrative contracts, bailed their fincas out of debt and shed the anonymity that keeps millions of small growers at the mercy of middlemen and commodity traders. But letting an inferior coffee slip through out of pity could sabotage the effort to raise Bolivia’s standing among coffee aficionados.

“I try not to be sentimental,” Pedersen said. But “you know there is a family behind each cup.”

In all, 13 Bolivian coffees earned a Cup of Excellence designation. First prize, with a score of 90.44, went to the cooperative CENAPROC. Maldonado was given the honor of mounting the stage to accept a Lucite trophy that now sits in the cooperative’s headquarters. This month, a Norwegian importer paid $11.25 a pound, or nearly $33,000 for 19 bags of the top coffee, which judges had prized for its sweet berry flavor and creamy body.

Teams of CENAPROC members also snagged the second and third spots, bringing the group’s total winnings to nearly $75,000. After expenses, each of its 82 members will receive about $730 -- a small fortune by Bolivian standards. News of the contest results has spread rapidly through the Yungas, with more farmers vowing to participate next year. Still, it remains to be seen whether the increase in coca acreage will be halted and coffee catapulted into Bolivia’s best-known stimulant. At around $1.80 a pound, coca still pays double the current commodity price of coffee, and drug traffickers are pouring into the region, MAPA’s Brower said.

“It’s a race against time,” he said. “Economic independence of these small farmers is a tremendous threat to the [drug producers’] power base. They are not going to let it happen without a fight.”

But on her remote farm high in the Yungas, Maldonado is making her own plans.

Improved coffee earnings have helped her replace the thatched roof on her wooden home with corrugated metal. She has purchased new tools for the finca and plans to expand her coffee acreage next year.

“Coca doesn’t interest me,” the fourth-generation coffee farmer said.

“We want to improve the image of Bolivian coffee. We want to improve our lives.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Small player

Bolivia is 38th on the list of coffee-producing nations, behind the United States, which ranks 35th.

Top 10 coffee producers in the 2003-04 season, plus U.S. and Bolivia

(In millions of 60-kilogram bags)

Brazil: 32.0

Vietnam: 15.0

Colombia: 11.1

Indonesia: 6.0

India: 4.5