Java Trekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee
In each cup of coffee we drink the major issues of the twenty-first century-globalization, immigration, women's rights, pollution, indigenous rights, and self-determination-are played out in villages and remote areas around the world. In Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee, a unique hybrid of Fair Trade business, adventure travel, and cultural anthropology, author Dean Cycon brings readers face-to-face with the real people who make our morning coffee ritual...
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Behind a single coffee bean lie the stories of countless lives and cultures, of success, opportunity, struggle, and tradition amid a complex global landscape of economics and desire. Founder and owner of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, Dean Cycon is truly one of the few people on Earth who can be described as a professor of coffee. In Javatrekker, Cycon explores the untold origins of coffee through his travels to ten different producing countries. Drawing upon his wide range of experience and study as a coffee roasting entrepreneur, lawyer, activist, and development worker, he shares the unique qualities of the coffee, insight into the lands and culture, and a greater understanding of the economic and personal challenges of bringing each bean to your grinder.What is Fair Trade Coffee?Coffee prices paid to the farmer are based on the international commodity price for coffee (the C price) and the quality premium each farmer negotiates. Fair Trade provides an internationally determined minimum floor price when the C plus premium sinks below $1.26 per pound for conventional and $1.41 for organics (that's us!). As important as price, Fair Trade works with small farmers to create democratic cooperatives that insure fair dealing, accountability and transparency in trade transactions. In an industry where the farmer is traditionally ripped off by a host of middlemen, this is tremendously important.Cooperatives are examined by the Fairtrade Labeling Organization (FLO), or the International Fair Trade Association (IFAT), European NGOs, for democratic process and transparency. Those that pass are listed on the FLO Registry or become IFAT members. Cooperatives provide important resources and organization to small farmers in the form of technical assistance for crop and harvest improvement, efficiencies in processing and shipping, strength in negotiation and an array of needed social services, such as health care and credit. Fair Trade also requires pre-financing of up to sixty percent of the value of the contract, if the farmers ask for it. Several groups, such as Ecologic and Green Development Fund have created funds for pre-finance lending. Publishers Weekly This surprisingly gripping travelogue is filled with tales from the "coffeelands," barely-on-the-map locales in Africa, the Americas and Asia where coffee farmers struggle to survive. Written with knowledge and good cheer by the founder and owner of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, the book reads more like a trippy adventure than a business trip, though the issues Cycon raises are vital, prescient and little known ("99 percent of the people involved in coffee... have never been to a coffee village"). While learning firsthand about the hardships involved in growing and selling coffee beans-the world's second most valuable commodity, after oil-the author finds himself in Guatemala, praying to an effigy wearing a Mickey Mouse tie and cowboy boots; eating armadillo leg in Colombia; working to heal landmine victims in Nicaragua and war widows in Sumatra; and meeting with all manner of farmers, bureaucrats and dignitaries. His dispatches are highly enlightening, demonstrating how few national governments provide coffee growers with water, education, health care or even protection from harmful pesticides; further, coffee growers' income is subject to the whims of financial speculators half a world away. After reading this eye-opening book, it's impossible not to reconsider-and feel grateful for-the myriad people behind your morning cup. (Oct.)Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Acknowledgments and DedicationPrologue: The Inner Worlds of Coffee Evolution of a JavatrekkerPart I AfricaChapter 1. Miriam's Well, the Emperor's Bed and Kaldi's Goats (Ethiopia 2002)Chapter 2. Fermenting Change, But Don't Cross the Big Man (Kenya 2005)Part II South AmericaChapter 3. Bridging the Gap (Peru 2003)Chapter 4. Global Warning: Climate Change, Conflict and Culture (Colombia 2007)Part II Central AmericaChapter 5. Lighting a Candle for Freedom (Guatemala 1993)Chapter 6. Tracking the Death Train (Mexico/El Salvador 2005)Chapter 7. Coffee, Landmines, and Hope (Nicaragua 2001)Part IV AsiaChapter 8. Good Friends, Cold Beer. . . and a Water Buffalo (Sumatra 2003)Chapter 9. The 300-Man March (Papua-New Guinea 2004)Epilogue
\ Publishers WeeklyThis surprisingly gripping travelogue is filled with tales from the "coffeelands," barely-on-the-map locales in Africa, the Americas and Asia where coffee farmers struggle to survive. Written with knowledge and good cheer by the founder and owner of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, the book reads more like a trippy adventure than a business trip, though the issues Cycon raises are vital, prescient and little known ("99 percent of the people involved in coffee... have never been to a coffee village"). While learning firsthand about the hardships involved in growing and selling coffee beans-the world's second most valuable commodity, after oil-the author finds himself in Guatemala, praying to an effigy wearing a Mickey Mouse tie and cowboy boots; eating armadillo leg in Colombia; working to heal landmine victims in Nicaragua and war widows in Sumatra; and meeting with all manner of farmers, bureaucrats and dignitaries. His dispatches are highly enlightening, demonstrating how few national governments provide coffee growers with water, education, health care or even protection from harmful pesticides; further, coffee growers' income is subject to the whims of financial speculators half a world away. After reading this eye-opening book, it's impossible not to reconsider-and feel grateful for-the myriad people behind your morning cup. (Oct.)\ Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information\ \
