Interested in seeing how successful a program is? Ask your beneficiaries!

That’s what JMD did when it wanted to check in on its 1,000+ farmer coffee improvement project in central Aceh, which finished in 2011.

This is Takengon--mountains and valleys . . . and lots of Arabica coffee

Since JMD is local, it always keeps track of the projects that it’s initiated in Aceh.  Many international NGOs don’t have that opportunity; once a project is over, they leave the country, and over the past 10 years, the implementing partners they funded (but did not train to be autonomous) could no longer stay open.  This was not the case with JMD’s Direct Support to Coffee Farmers (DSF) project, which was a subcontract of IOM’s EDFF-funded coffee value chain improvement project. However, as we’ve discovered, sustainability means different things to different people, and neither EDFF nor World Bank required any type of follow-up. JMD checked with IOM to make sure; former DSF agriculture extensionists reported that IOM was doing a non-agriculture project in a different district but had not returned to Takengon to see how farmers were doing. 

 

So, since both JMD and I have been stressing the value of insuring that projects continue long after the implementer and the donor have gone, JMD decided to conduct a month-long M&E (monitoring and evaluation) visit in Takengon.  JMD’s new Field Officer starts tomorrow (November 1), and he’ll be interviewing local leaders, Co-op representatives, peer farmer educators, and the coffee farmers themselves to collect sample data on the effectiveness of the project, from actual harvest data to information on the usefulness of the trainings and materials provided. I will  keep you posted.

 

The coffee farms in Takengon were more established and far greater in scope than the cocoa farms in Simpang Jernih.

Most of the nearly 1,200 farms were quite profitable, and comprised the bulk of the respective farmers’ livelihoods.   

And all benefited significantly from cultivation, harvest and post-harvest trainings, and the “Pyramid scheme” model of JMD’s trainers training 50 farmers who in turn were each in charge of 20 farmers made it possible to reach the great majority of coffee farmers in that area.  

 Here, an AEW (Agriculture Extension Worker/Peer farmer educator) explains how to set seeds for a coffee nursery.

 

Of course, we had$750 to run the project, and it employed 56 people, provided extensive equipment and materials, and lasted three years.  So we'd really like to know if it is continuing to be helpful!

 

JMD's extension experts  conducted weekly trainings throughout the district on topics ranging from proper harvest techniques to nursery maintenance to IPM (integrated pest management).  On many farms, women and men shared equally in the responsibilities and decision making.

 

So stay tuned for reports on the progress of our coffee project evaluation.  I’m hoping for good things.  And if there are issues, this gives JMD a chance to help resolve them and keep Takengon producing some of the best coffee in the country.

Of cocoa pods, pests (of all kinds) and a look back at our coffee farmers

Everyone’s trundling back to work after the Eid holidays.  These days always fall during a really important time in the life of the cocoa pod—they’re getting big and prone to stealing by monkeys and squirrels, and also good targets for other bugs.  But the days are especially hot, and the farmers had been fasting, so it was a real chore to get out there in those fields and smack monkeys all day.    

Also, it’s time to plant more seedlings in the new nurseries.  One of the things that lots of large NGOs do not count on or plan for is how a project actually interacts with the daily routines and customs of the people who are going to have to implement it and live with it.  Sustainability is a bugger.

Speaking of which, we’re back on the sustainability trail this month, with a new project in the works to collect data and evaluate how the Direct Support to Farmers (DSF) coffee project is doing three years after the project ended.  We discovered that the lead agency, IOM, had not done any follow-up with the 1,200 coffee farmers involved in the project.  Since JMD was the agency responsible for training the farmers, and working with the 50 peer educator farmers who in turn trained 20 farmers each, we wanted to know if the tools and skills we’d given them were still being used.

The entire IM project was, of course, much larger.  God forbid the tsunami reconstruction money fund anything small and manageable.  So there was a marketing component and a value chain component and a coffee cupping competition component and a bunch of commodity-and-cooperative-related parts in which we were not involved.

So JMD decided that with its own funds it would conduct a month-long evaluation of the coffee farmers, starting with the cooperatives they belonged to, to their (paid) peer trainers, to the materials they were supplied with, to their family farms.  JMD has developed a position description for what will have to be an amazingly talented individual, to traipse around the highlands of central Aceh/Takengon ingratiating himself with the farming community and asking them if they still use drying rack to dry their beans, and how’s that new paved access path working out? 

We want to do this because, well, we want to know, but also because we are about to create a document asserting that the majority of the post-tsunami Multi-Donor Fund went to projects that had no intention of ever being sustainable, and frankly did not care to be. “Emergency” was the battle cry.  The mouse-squeak “Future” was never heard above the roar of the international NGOs as they raced for the funds.

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In other news (and I only mention this because I am just holding my breath until October when Jokowi officially takes over and we can see the lay of the land in terms of Aceh’s environmental and social future):

As you know, wealthy sore loser Prabowo filed a suit in the Constitutional Court on July 25^th saying voting irregularities cost him the election. An interesting AP photo accompanied this announcement, showing “Prabowo supporters” protesting the election: 4 women dressed to the nines, pearls and silver jewelry, sunglasses and full makeup, and only one in a sort-of headscarf.  As Aretha Franklin would say, “Who’s zooming who?”

The court began deliberations on the 6^th—last Wednesday.

“We feel very, very hurt by irregular, dishonest and unjust practices that have been shown by the election organizers," Subianto told the court. [This is the same court that grew a conscience after Prabowo started threatening to use his leverage and lean on his cronies there to sway the decision his way.  Ouch!  That must have stung.]

“Follow the Coffee” Part II

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In my January 7 post I mentioned sending out a few emails to companies asking them about a bag of coffee my friend purchased at a store that said it was “organic” and came from Aceh.  I traced the “provenance” of this bag to two organizations: Project 7, and Topco, who is a distributor of “store brands” to large supermarket chains.  Full Circle, the company listed on the coffee bag, is one of their distributors.

This is the email I sent to Topco:

Dear Topco:

Building Bridges to the Future supports a local sustainable livelihoods agency in Aceh province, Indonesia, called Jembatan Masa Depan (JMD) that in part that helps farmers increase coffee production. We understand that your company distributes a brand of coffee called Full Circle Coffee, Organic Medium Roast Sumatra Aceh Ground.
To help JMD better serve coffee and cocoa farmers in Aceh, we are conducting a survey from "the other end of the value chain" to see if we can trace our farmers' coffee from the store back to its origins, and if importers and distributors have information regarding the provenance of their product.

Can you let us know how Topco verifies that its "Sumatra Aceh ground" coffee comes from Aceh?

Which is the entity that verifies certification and farm location?

There are several "certification" bodies and we'd like to know which one your company chooses when it is purchasing beans from the importer.

Thanks in advance for any and all information you can give us.

On January 24 I received this email back from Topco:

Subject: Full Circle Coffee

Thank you for your request, but our vendor and certifications of this product are company information and therefore propriety information. Please be assured that any claims on the package are correct and have been verified.

Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Ticket #269691

Sincerely,

Consumer Services Team

www.topco.com

I am not really great with languages, but I think this translates to “Buzz off.”  Thoughts?

I wonder if Project 7 will ever write back.

It reminds me: I saw some interesting Twitter feed the other day from an organization called Coffee_Aceh, and when I went to find out more about them, their website, which has been up since 2010, had no information on it --I mean, it was blank, except for some photos that said “our farmers” and the only thing their Facebook page said was

Promoting coffee in Aceh

Mission: To sell direct from the farmer to the consumer

Both this, and the text on the coffee bag and myriad websites are admirable sentiments, but they all lead to dead ends.  None of the people saying or writing these things knows, I am convinced, if what they are saying is true.  The coffee could have come from anywhere.  How can Aceh establish itself as a leader in specialty commodities like cocoa and coffee if we cannot verify the value chain?