March 2019

March 2019: Our Fifth feature.

Awaroa Coffee raised the bar, offering our subscribers a side of New Zealand grown Cascara; However it was the coffee and its story that set the tone.

We really felt that we had come full circle. With this release we felt we could fully articulate and encapsulate why we began and what we hoped to achieve. Our stories and information linked back to previous releases, like puzzle pieces, to provide insight into one of the varietals that had been sourced for Awaroa Coffee by Raw Material.

With great excitement and admiration, we shine a spotlight on our inspiration and the fantastic work they do within the coffee industry, Ladies and Gentlemen, Raw Material!

The Challanges:

-Lack of key infrastructure

-Unstable prices

-The gap in understanding of how coffee quality is
measured and communicated at the farm and
that of the roasters at the other end of the value chain.

Without certainty of income, farmers find themselves
unable to commit to measures to improve the quality of
their coffee.
Once coffee prices fall to unsustainable levels, as they
have in recent years for the producers in Santuario,
Risaralda, face a cross roads. They have to find
an alternative income outside of coffee or a more
sustainable and stable market.

Two producer groups, representing nearly 300
families who met with Raw Material in 2017, collectively
farm 660Ha of coffee producing land with a production
of approx 1 million kilo of parchment coffee harvested
each year.

Red Associations:

Red in Spanish means network.
Red Associations is an initiative set up by Raw Material to
help coffee producers achieve stable and sustainable
prices for community coffee lots.
This is achieved through shared knowledge, improved
quality control and access to the specialty coffee market.
A network of coffee people working together with the
common goal of creating a sustainable value chain.

Through Red Associations, Raw Material have implemented
infrastructure which has enabled them to pay individual
farmers a fixed price of 1M COP/carga (1 carga = 125kg)
of dry parchment. Compared to the average income in the
regular coffee market over the past 5 years, this doubles a
producing households income.
Fixed price payments are paid directly to producers through
a transparent system.

A great example of how direct trade can provide outcomes
that benefit the entire value chain. With insight comes
understanding, with understanding comes change.
Put simply, better prices for producers, results in
better coffees for consumers. Everyone benefits.

Raw Material:

Raw Material, the definition of basic commodities bought
and sold on exchanges world wide; It is also the given name
of the social enterprise started by Wellingtons’ Flight Coffee.

The realm of Raw Material encompasses all aspects of
coffee from growing to exporting with involvement in all the
steps between, including the sharing of vital knowledge
throughout the value chain.
The social conscience that originally fueled Flight Coffee
to ensure that their coffee was having a positive
impact on lives at farm level, evolved into a larger, global
operation whose ethics and values are as alive and well
now as they were then; Operating community projects in
Colombia, working closely with partner producers in
Rwanda and since 2015, have been a small but dedicated
contributor to work carried out in Myanmar.
Their dedication and commitment to understanding the
the challenges and helping producers over come them by
connecting producers and roasters sees them reaching out
to other countries where small changes will yield big results.

Credit: Raw Material / Flight Coffee

For more info on Raw Material visit www.rawmaterial.coffee

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