Our Toca coffee is the first coffee from our project to promote regenerative coffee production in Veracruz, Mexico, which we are leading together with Ensambles as our implementation partner. In recent months, much has changed on the ground: producers have left the newly founded cooperative, there was a restart, new buyers appeared, and we ask ourselves: are roasteries actually active in development cooperation?
What is the Toca Project?
At the end of the last online update with the project group from Ensambles in Mexico, Miguel, who coordinates the Toca project, said:
Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Roughly translated from the original, attributed to Franz Kafka: Paths are created by walking them.
These were the closing words that would echo in my mind for a long time. They summarized the past months in which the local project team around Lorena, Miguel, and Gibran had to repeatedly find new paths, solutions, and new producers. The cooperative founded in 2022 has partially dissolved, new producers have joined, and old wounds have been reopened.
What happened?
In the summer of 2019, we held our first workshop with Ensambles and discussed the shared goal of developing a model approach to support coffee producers in their transition from conventional methods to regenerative practices.
In the fall of 2021, the project launched in Ixpaluca, a small community south of Córdoba, Veracruz. Lorena, who is in the field every day for Ensambles and the project, began visiting producers, advising them, and providing training as needed. She explained the project and quickly gained their trust.
The valley around Ixpaluca is fertile and characterized by coffee and corn production.
20 producers were interested in participating in this new approach. They brought their samples, Lorena and the team on site provided feedback and recommendations, and expectations were high on both sides.
Ensambles helped the interested producers establish a cooperative. After some initial difficulties and voting on who should lead the cooperative, the newly created Citlal Cafen cooperative was founded and now took on the role of coffee seller.
In the summer of 2022, the first 40 bags of green coffee arrived in Europe. Ensambles sent us the coffee and we conducted our first tests. Since late summer last year, the Toca has been available from us and is the standard espresso in our Café Frühling.
In October, we visited Ixpaluca. There was great nervousness in the village, as our visit had been announced well in advance and it was about much more than just getting to know each other. As a coffee roastery, we have committed to supporting and accompanying a newly created cooperative on its path toward regenerative agriculture and organic certification. Ensambles is our implementation partner on the ground and exports the coffee.
From left to right: Philipp, Patrizio (Balloon Coffee Roasters), Lorena, Gibran, Michel
During the ceremony, I was asked to present the project again and speak to the village community about our work. I'm used to such situations, and yet I felt more tension in the air than usual.
Expectations were high because new buyers kept appearing in the area around Ixpaluca, making big promises and offering hope for direct market access and better prices for the coffee sold. Most of them did not follow their words with action or were gone again after a year. Under these circumstances, our visit was more than just getting to know each other—it was also a way of gauging whether we were serious.
Year two begins
At the meeting itself, some producers asked me how much we would pay for the coffee. Prices are a sensitive topic and it would be uncomfortable for everyone involved to set the price in such a situation. Moreover, Ensambles, as our partner on the ground, buys the coffee, adds project costs, and sells it to us. So the price negotiations run between Ensambles and the cooperative.
The price paid by Ensambles in the first year was 20% above the local market. In the second year, Ensambles even offered 36% more than the local market, which resulted in the same kilogram price as the previous year: $5.72 USD/kg green coffee paid directly to the producers.
The cooperative itself did its own accounting during this time. Some representatives felt that Ensambles' price was too low and looked for alternative buyers. Just then, a new buyer appeared in the region offering a significantly higher price. Nearly ten of the twenty producers left the newly founded cooperative and wanted to work with the new buyer—which turned out to be a mistake.
On the farm of Don Adrian, who has always prioritized high soil quality.
When the season began, only seven of the originally 20 producers were still involved in the Toca project. Lorena, as always, was with the producers every day, conducting workshops and serving as our connection to the community.
Lorena and Miguel visited surrounding communities around Ixpaluca with Don Roque and Yazmani, two dedicated producers of the Toca project. They managed to find producers in nine additional communities and hamlets who could identify with the project and were willing to adjust their production methods.
In total, 100 bags of 69kg each of Toca coffee were collected. The producers were trained by the team on site on how to wash, pulp, and ferment the coffee on their own farms in small batches to achieve the desired quality.
Lorena describes the day when all old and new producers of the Toca project brought their coffee together to the dry mill in Zongolica, the small town where the laboratory is located, as a celebratory moment.
Lorena conducting one of her workshops with producers in the region around Ixpaluca.
Old wounds, new suffering
During our October visit, we were told how often producers in this region have been cheated.
Distrust became self-protection and high demands became the negotiating basis.
After the official meeting, we were led to the village gymnasium to discuss a price again. We found ourselves in the hot seat, flanked by Miguel, who moderated skillfully. It was not the right time to set prices. Every price was the wrong price at that moment.
Some producers left the meeting and noted that it might be worth waiting and giving the new buyers some trust. Others were torn, while still other cooperative representatives wanted to reach an agreement.
The meeting ended with a statement of intent that we as buyers, Ensambles as the advisor on the ground, and the cooperative itself had to agree on a price that hurt everyone a little but was actually good.
Miguel, who directs Ensambles' projects throughout Mexico.
In early 2023, Lorena reached out with the message that more than half of the cooperative had decided to go with the new buyer in the region. That they would exit the Toca project and leave the cooperative. Hope now rested with the new buyer, who could offer a higher price than us.
In June 2023, I received the message that the buyer did not buy the coffee after all, and the thirteen former cooperative members had to sell their coffee on the local market.
This news made me sad. The miserable fate of buyers not keeping their promises, which now caused some producers to become harder and more distrustful, had befallen them again.
Our role as coffee roasters. Are we "development workers?"
As a coffee roastery, we are the link between diverse smallholder agriculture in the southern hemisphere and an equally diverse customer base in the DACH region. More on this balancing act in the next section. The work of sourcing green coffee goes into a depth where we can bring about change if we engage intensively with the people and the place where the coffee comes from.
To initiate change with the Toca project, these are the concrete points:
- Provide access to markets with differentials = higher prices
- Assist producers in adapting coffee production to climate change
- Payment for green coffee immediately when producers bring their coffee
- In the future, part of it should be pre-financed
- Work toward autonomous fertilizer production as much as possible to become independent of the global nitrogen price, which drives up fertilizer costs
How deeply are we involved in "development cooperation"?
This project goes far beyond simply purchasing green coffee. We are making commitments and exposing ourselves in the process.
The region around Ixpaluca is what Mexican government language calls a "rural development region." Most people produce corn, some grains, perhaps coffee, keep animals, and live from subsistence farming and: subsidies.
Support payments are popular tools in Mexico too for bringing about positive change with relatively little effort. However, the effects do not materialize as desired; the region remains poor. In Ixpaluca itself, there is no pharmacy; the nearest doctor is several hours away.
As coffee buyers, we often find ourselves in situations where we visit impoverished areas, spend hours or a few days there, and then leave.
We come for the coffee and leave with memories and images in our heads showing daily life—one that is different from ours and one that we try to understand.
The farms in the Sierra de Zongolica are small and most producers cannot make a living from coffee production.
As soon as we become active as buyers in this region, we are inevitably connected with the people. To bring about positive and progressive change, the coffee price serves primarily, and it should be attractive enough that we can help provide a financial foundation, so that producers can freely decide where and how to grow and invest.
In other cases, such as on our own farm in Nicaragua, we are building a kitchen and a house for the family living on the farm. As owners of the farm in Nicaragua, we see ourselves as obligated to ensure decent living and life on the farm. In the case of the Toca project, we are neither owners nor direct buyers, but rather end-buyers who offer a project as an invitation to introduce a different agricultural approach and the associated certification, which should open up new markets for the producers.
As buyers who do not live on site, it is not our role to interfere in local decisions and processes. But we can extend invitations for alternative paths, which can be accepted or rejected.
The most important factor in advancing such a project is consistency and proximity. The consistency that Ensambles is present as the implementation partner on the ground. The consistency that we buy coffee every year with the idea of increasing this volume. And the proximity provided by Lorena as a village resident.
The coffee balancing act
Coffee roasteries inherently perform a great balancing act. With one leg, they are involved in smallholder agriculture in the southern hemisphere. With the other leg, they stand in the direct, increasingly differentiated end consumer market, where short attention spans seem to increase pressure for ever snappier promises.
On one hand, we work in annual rhythms when we plan from harvest to harvest. On the other hand, we work in hourly rhythms when we post Instagram stories and engage in direct dialogue with consumers. This contrast is enormous and affects coffee as a product like few other products.
Smallholder agricultural realities from the southern hemisphere meet daily trends in the end consumer market.
Roasteries that are aware of this situation and want to actively work on their own supply chain quickly find themselves in a situation similar to what we face in the Sierra de Zongolica. We see the conditions as they are.
But we also understand that it is not our responsibility to want to solve structural problems. However, we understand that with coffee purchases we are engaging in a form of extraction economy: Ixpaluca produces, we buy. Understanding this complexity does not free us from responsibility, but it also does not make us liable if we do nothing.
But opportunities do arise that a coffee roastery can use here: it can connect with a place and its people.
It can build relationships, be a reliable partner, a translator for a market that is far away. It can open the window to a market and carry a brand outward, thereby bringing other potential buyers along—which we did this year with our colleagues from Black Hen and the Kaffeewerkstatt Kucha.
If we now make supply chains more human and meet each other as people in this chain—what speaks against loading the pure extraction of coffee beans with additional supporting measures that could make life a little better?
As long as interpretive authority and decision-making power are symmetrical, there is nothing standing in the way of a joint approach to improving the status quo.
And so we are in active exchange with our partners in Mexico. The updates delight us, they are sometimes concerning, then overwhelmingly joyful, then pragmatic, and again promising. Working from Central Europe with coffee producers is a long-distance relationship. It requires time, consistency, and a lot of trust, which only develops when we both fulfill our part and engage in honest exchange. And that is what gives us the energy for this work.
Vámonos!
Overview of the status quo and next steps
For the coffee:
