Asociación de Pequeños Productores de Café ingruma (ASPROCAFE Ingruma)

Asociación de Pequeños Productores de Café ingruma (ASPROCAFE Ingruma) formed based on principles of solidarity and human dignity.

Don Luis is one of the 176 farmer members of this coop and had volunteered to take us on a tour of his farm. We met him at his home, and then set off, or should I more accurately say we set UP, as we walked more than one hour up switchback trails on the mountain to reach his farm. This was his normal commute.

 This was a slope of everything: coffee, tubers, traditional medicinal plants, oranges, bananas, plantains, sugarcane, flowers. The coffee coop believed farms should be filled with food too, not just with coffee trees. This ideology, and the Colombian climate, led to crops and food in bloom throughout the year for farmers and their family. 

 I was bearing witness to the complexity of the organic spectrum, rooted in complexity, thoughtfulness, and commitment to an ethos that was creatively using natural inputs and techniques to manage the farm as a comprehensive system.

—Lynsey Miller, Equal Exchange