Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 Spotlight: Asprotimana
With Fairtrade Fortnight into its second week, we are continuing with our Spotlight series. Today, we are looking at the Asprotimana cooperative.
This brilliant association of farmers has overcome a lot since their foundation in 2001, including battling the drugs trade, a fluctuating economy, but have emerged the other side a stronger organisation.
Based in the Huila region of Colombia, Asprotimana provides the beans that go into our best-selling Fairtrade Colombian Filter Coffee sachets.
A Land of War
Located in Colombia’s south-west, Huila is one of the most important regions in Colombia.
The province’s tricolour is equal parts white, green and yellow. The yellow represents work, green the fertility of land and white the snow that caps the Colombian Andes that form the backbone of the state. In many ways, it encapsulates the region perfectly.
Agriculture is big business in this part of the world. As well as being famed for its coffee plantations, Huila is also home to numerous banana farms and corn fields.
However, this arable land – coupled with the state’s advantageous location – has drawn opposing nations and factions into conflict with each other. Whether it was local tribes vying for supremacy or the invading Spanish conquistadors, it seemed for a time that everybody wanted to gain control of Huila’s natural resources and assets.
Come the twenty-first century, the region and its major towns of Timana, La Plata and Neiva, saw the horrors of the cocaine trade – and its fallout – first-hand.
However, Huila and its neighbourhoods have recovered and rebuilt. Traditional crops once again populate the fields and whilst the area is by no means a nirvana, it is much improved.
Time has certainly helped heal old wounds, but so too has the Asprotimana cooperative. In a region that has known bloodshed, coffee offers hope.
Asprotimana
In 2001, Robinson Figueroa, a prominent agriculturalist with links to the Colombian Coffee Federation, reached out to a number of other coffee farmers based in Timana.
After a productive meeting and a number of further discussions emerged the Association of Agricultural Producers of Timana – or Asprotimana for short.
Founded on the principles of social and economic sustainability in a historically fractured part of Colombia, the cooperative received expert training as part of the USAID Speciality Coffee Program.
However, after a few successful years the region was once again plunged into chaos as a massive economic downturn brought rioting and violence to the streets of Timana’s towns once again.
Asprotimana remained steadfast. Thanks to their links with a number of ethical organisations, including Fairtrade, they stayed and flourished. Their success has not gone unnoticed: Two years ago, a US Congressional report singled out the cooperative for their (frankly remarkable) success in the face of continued adversity.
Today, the association is comprised of 110 producers from 85 different families, all of whom are based in the beautiful mountain ranges that surround Huila and its neighbouring villages.
Benefits of Fairtrade
As well as being able to command a higher price for their work and thereby provide their members with a stable stream of income, Asprotimana’s members have benefitted from their association with the Fairtrade Foundation.
The group has used their Fairtrade Premium to improve both the region’s agricultural and social infrastructure. Aside from investigating in training seminars and modern equipment, Asprotimana has donated funds to pay for schools, warehouses and a hospital.
Fairtrade Colombian Filter Sachets
Asprotimana produces the beans that we use in our Fairtrade Colombian Filter Coffee Sachets.
Medium roasted, the result is a wonderfully smooth coffee that has been tailored to suit large filter and bulk brew machines.
Grown at high altitude, predominantly under a mixture of natural and manmade canopies, the coffee has a nutty flavour profile that evolves to display butterscotch and toffee sweetness when used with milk.
