Café Mam supports EEFF, environmental justice

DJ Suss D: The Eugene Environmental Film Festival believes in creating space and a platform to address and bring light to critical issues facing our planet. They support the work being done at local and global levels and share a deep connection and responsibility to protect the environment and work in solidarity with others in the struggle for environmental justice.

[00:00:22] They do this through creating a 10-day event with meaningful and inspiring films, discussion, speakers, workshops, and special events in downtown Eugene and surrounding areas. They screen all films in person and offer online viewing with closed captions for accessibility. They also strive to provide opportunities to connect participants with outlets to take action on environmental and social justice issues.

[00:00:49] In addition, they carve out space for young filmmakers 18 years old and younger. The purpose is to highlight youth involvement in concern for and protection of the environment. Eugene is the birthplace of Our Children’s Trust, which is an organization to empower the voice of youth to protect the environment. If your film is chosen for the film festival, they aim to provide complimentary lodging at a homestay, film festival passes, and access to special events.

[00:01:17] In addition, filmmakers have an opportunity to discuss their film at screenings and special events. This is a great opportunity for filmmakers to promote their work, inspire change, and network with others. I spoke with Café Mam team member, Brad / Partner.

Right. So Café Mam is a local Eugene organization?  (It is, yes.) You want to talk about that a little bit?

[00:01:39] Brad (Café Mam, partner): Yeah, we’ve been in business almost 35 years. Been working directly with co-ops this whole time. We import directly from Chiapas, Mexico, only work with co-ops. So we’re 100% organic, 100% fair trade. Longstanding relationships with all of our growers, they’re our partners, they’re our friends.

[00:02:08] DJ Suss D: Well, so they call it a co-op and I’m going to ask, I should ask her this too, but the co-op is everybody gets a vote. Does Café Mam get to participate in the voting and decision-making a little bit?

[00:02:20] Brad (Café Mam, partner): Not of the individual co-ops. That’s, they are autonomous to themselves. There are five co-ops that we buy from. No, they all do their own thing, including who they sell to and we’re fortunate to have cultivated these relationships with them.

[00:02:39] DJ Suss D: I noticed they’re not in Fred Meyer. How do we get them in Fred Meyer? I don’t think we want them in Walmart do we?

[00:02:41] Brad (Café Mam, partner): It’s man, that’s a challenge, as a small company, us, working with the large entities is that’s a real challenge. We’re in six locations of Albertson’s/Safeways, and so even that has been a challenge, but at least we’re able to get in your local stores that are in both Eugene and Portland and Corvallis, so just support local small businesses, right down through their coffee shop level and look at what people are serving. Yeah, just be conscious consumers you vote with your dollars.

DJ Suss D: You know they said that the producers have to they’re they need money immediately so sometimes they’ll take a deal from the international producers like Nestle and them right is there any way (the coyotes) yeah the coyotes is there any way Cafe Mam would we create a microbank could you guys create some

Brad (Café Mam, partner): What we do what we do currently is as soon as we sign contracts in the fall, which is before the harvest starts, we do like 60% prefinanced so that the money is already in Chiapas to be able to, for the co-ops to be able to put pre-financing out there to the growers before the coffee’s even harvested. All right, so we are currently doing that to the best of our ability it’s not it’s not always it’s not always possible honestly, but we moved the last several years we’ve had yeah we’ve been meeting that 60% mark of refinancing.

DJ Suss D: Right, it takes support from us consumers is how that where that money comes from.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Absolutely yeah, absolutely it’s set up as a cooperative.

DJ Suss D: But I mean the reason, there was a book by E.F. Schumacher called “Small is Beautiful” about how capitalism as if people mattered and what it was, and that’s why they kept small, no one over 500 people in the organization, so that, I mean, that’s why they have these small entities is that everyone has a vote in the community, it supports the whole community decides what’s going on.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Totally, yeah and it’s, you know, the size of the farms is limited, that it is all a cooperative of small farmers.

DJ Suss D: So that it can be controlled by the people that it serves?

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Correct, yeah. I mean it’s the structure is that the co -ops, all the delegates elect leadership that then makes decisions, but it’s all also done. There are meetings in each municipality very regularly to send the delegates to meet at the central meetings that that make the decision. So it is a form of I mean not every member is present at every meeting I mean certainly at the annual meetings, but it is a representative forum where people get together and make decisions.

DJ Suss D: I mean that’s why it benefits the community so much and why it affects the health and welfare of the people of the community and they grow other crops and I assume that he didn’t mention they probably do medical it pins a pain

Brad (Café Mam, partner): There’s all right there’s all sorts of things that are community-based projects that are done to help the local communities: building schools, building meeting places, communal coffee drying patios and doing the wet milling processing up in the mountains. That’s all, those are all examples of infrastructure per se that the co -op does together to share with each other.

DJ Suss D: But it’s a bottom-up decision-making process for all of us.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Yes, including how they spend the proceeds and the decisions are made about those projects together. It is all done collectively.

[00:06:49] DJ Suss D: Yes. I notice they’re talking about Africa and The Caribbean and all that are involved in the small producers correct. Yeah, so in in the WTO in Cancun, a Korean guy committed suicide because of the our farm subsidies, right? So does Nestle, do corporations advocate for farm subsidies that affects the price?

[00:07:15] Brad (Café Mam, partner): There’s a lot of manipulation that goes on to affect the price. In coffee specifically, there’s basically eight large family conglomerates that control 90% of the trade. So they actually have the ability to, and this has happened in previous years, buy up all the crop from one country, essentially, or buy up as much as they possibly can, get it all exported, get it on ships, and drive the price up artificially before it hits the ports. Because they basically are like, well, we’ve got to pay what you’re going to pay for us to and even land this coffee because we’re rich enough basically that we can hold on to it and dump it if we don’t get the price that we need.

DJ Suss D: So they corner the market and then keep the profits. The profits don’t go to the growers or the producers.(Oh, no, not at all. Not at all.) It’s the middleman that ends up with that.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Well, it’s the large entities. I mean, it’s not, yeah, the large corporations that end up with it. No, the coyotes are pawns in that in that larger play. And it’s all about buying green coffee at the early stage to then manipulate the price down the road a little bit, if that makes sense.

DJ Suss D: Yeah, some day though, do you suppose they would be independent and not dependent on exports? I mean that wouldn’t work for Cafe Mam I know but I mean.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Well, there’s always going to be exports of, I mean, I would say coffee because, I mean, the, just the game of where the consumption is done versus where it’s all grown. I mean it really is in a belt right around the equator and there is a lot you, there’s going to have to be some some sort of exportation because of all the folks in the global north that are consuming it.

DJ Suss D: Well, the flavor comes from the area that it’s grown in, but it also comes from the way they’re saying where they don’t have a monocrop, that adds to the flavor. (Absolutely.) I mean those other fruit trees and stuff.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Absolutely, and it’s part of what has made Chiapas specifically such an incredible source. It’s within Mexico, it’s the best coffee growing region. It really is, and it’s funny because I’ll just say it: Some people look down their nose on Mexican coffee and say it’s inferior, but it’s the climate in Chiapas.

[00:09:52] DJ Suss D: It’s a tropical paradise.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Exactly, it’s perfect for growing great coffee.

DJ Suss D: So you’re getting the flavor from a tropical paradise.

Brad (Café Mam, partner): Correct, yeah.

DJ Suss D: For more information on the Eugene Environmental Film Festival, go to EugeneEnvironmentalFilmFestival.org. For KEPW News, I’m DJ Suss D.