Organic Certification Workshop

About six months ago another volunteer and I were approached by the Peace Corps office to spearhead a workshop to educate both coffee and cacao growers on the process and benefits organic certifications. The Peace Corps approached Brigitte and I because we were both working in communities that were very active in the cultivation of coffee. The other crop this workshop was to focus on was Cacao, which is the bean they use to make chocolate and comes primarily from the hot and humid coastal communities where we have many volunteers located as well.
So Brigitte and I started the long, hectic and often times annoying process of dealing with Ecuadorian hotels/convention halls, restaurants and organic certifiers to arrange the food, lodging and presenters of our workshop. First we had to contact all of these possible places to have them send us a cost breakdown, which can be very frustrating given the level of business we were both accustomed to in the US and how extremely different they do things here. Then we wrote what is called a PL480 grant to apply for funds established by the US Dept of Agriculture specifically for Peace Corps projects. (I am also in the process of writing another grant like this for a greenhouse and nursery project in my site). About 4 months later we finally got the money and were ready to set up the workshop.
Fortunately we found a great place located in Quevedo, Ecuador which is known as a distribution hub for Ecuador’s huge banana production. We had our workshop at the Instituto Nacional Autonomo De Investigaciones Agropecuarias, aka INIAP, which is an area of about 3000 acres set up by the Ecuadorian government as a farming research and training facility. It was a great location for us because we could eat, sleep and conduct the seminars without having to leave their campus.
The training started on May 4th and lasted for three days and was conducted by a group named Conservation and Desarollo who are auditors for the Rainforest Alliance certifications. They gave a great presentation on all the different types of certifications, the process of becoming certified and we even went on a little field trip to a farm to show the growers the auditory process that is conducted in a certification. After their presentation we were also lucky enough to have a Cacao distributor come in from Guayaquil to do a brief presentation on the commercialization and exportation of cacao.
Given the amount of participation of both the Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts I think the workshop was a great success. We had about 30 people attending with 7 of them being volunteers, thus it was a great learning experience for the Ecuadorian coffee and cacao producers and hopefully they are spreading that knowledge back in their communities.
Personally this workshop couldn’t have come at a better time for the coffee growers in Loja and in my community. I was able to bring representatives of 8 different coffee groups from my area, including Carlos Lapo from San Pedro de Vilcabamba (my site). Within these 8 groups, a number of them are starting the process of becoming certified. San Pedro’s coffee organization, named APECAEL, has only been together for about six months so they still have some more internal issues to address before they can pursue their certification, but with their formation they are fulfilling the first goal of becoming certified, coordinating the coffee growers. The goal of this workshop was to give groups like APECAEL an idea of what to expect on down the road when they do decide to pursue some type of organic certification and I am confident we achieved that. (Just to give you an idea, groups can earn about $75 more per sack of coffee if they were certified which is a substantial chunk of change here in Ecuador).
For now Carlos and I are planning on giving a small presentation to the local coffee growers on what we learned in order to pass it on to them. The entire certification process lasts about 3-5 years so unfortunately it won’t happen in my time but I hope that I have at least helped to lay the foundation for them to be certified in the future.