“The privilege of travelling to understand different realities”

Roberto Ricci, owner of Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè, is constantly travelling to know the places where is grown the coffee that he buys. For him, this is “the privilege of travelling to understand different realities”.
Underneath, you can find the notes taken during his journeys.

April 2008 – Guatemala - Slow Food International Presidia
Highlands of Huehuetenango

“In the Chuchumantanes mountain range, in the municipalities of San Pedro Necta, la Libertad, Cuilco, la Democrazia and Totos Santos Chuchumantes, Slow Food and three Italian associations are realizing a project with the Guatemalan coffee, with the objective to sell it in Italy and elsewhere. This is an area dedicated to high quality coffee, even if its high acidity is not exactly suited to our palates, which are little trained. I hope for the farmers that after the help and the economical support the project will continue independently.”

February and April 2008 – Guatemala - Fedecocagua

“It is a Consortium made out of many co-ops from all over the country, very important for fair trade because of its big sales. It helps the associates of the various co-ops to work the soil and sell the products; moreover the Consortium offers different trainings, such as the one on cooperativism. They are making a lot of efforts to eliminate intermediaries. There is a nice lounge  for the cupping of coffee, where you can savour the taste of Guatemalan coffee. It is a good instance of a great cooperativism. The Consortium should help more the few farmers that choose organic farming, a method less and less widespread.”

February and April 2008 -  Guatemala – Chajulense

“Associating is important. It helped a people partially exterminated, it preserved secular traditional methods for harvesting and processing coffee, it brought fair-trading. Father Rosolino is the person who joined together these people, he helped them and is still helping them. At the end of the Civil War, the Association received a lot of money from other countries to realize programs for the community. But the handling of the funds was not very careful and the Associations ran the risk of being closed.

Now the Association is helped by financial advisors that have the task to rationalize the activity and pay off debts, which amount to a million dollars. I strongly hope that they will have economic tranquillity soon and will not need advisors anymore, in order to concentrate just on the production of coffee and on some programs for the sake of the community. The coffee is excellent.”