SEPTEMBER 10-13 2024

ARMENIA, COLOMBIA

What’s happening at “GROW: Coffee, Conversations, Stories” in Colombia this September? We’ll be gathering, talking, touring, cupping, visiting, connecting, thinking, presenting, discovering, listening, and experiencing. That’s just for starters.

An International Specialty Coffee Summit hosted by Covoya Specialty Coffee and ofi, “GROW: Coffee, Conversations, Stories” will bring together key farmers, roasters, origin teams and partners, thought leaders, and our coffee traders to fully engage fully engage with other coffee professionals throughout the supply chain about all things coffee. This three-day event will include farm and mill visits with a focus on innovation, a cupping competition across multiple origins, and presentations/conversations on key coffee impacts in Colombia. And you’re invited so save the dates.

$ 1 8 0 0

Flat rate for all attendees.

All food, lodging and in-country transportation included.

SCHEDULE

Tuesday, September 10

Guest arrival.

Welcome introduction by Managing Director of Covoya, Rob Stephen, and ofi origin leads.

Dinner, drinks, and entertainment at our welcome celebration!

Wednesday, September 11

Farm visits.

Cupping sessions and lunch at Jairo Arcila Farms.

Dinner at El Eden Restaurant.

Thursday, September 12

Presentation from ofi leadership including Jeremy Dufour and Siva Subramanian.

Cupping sessions.

Lunch at Mocawa.

Farewell Party featuring music, dancing, dinner, drinks, and entertainment.

Friday, September 13

Departures.

REGISTER NOW! SPACE IS LIMITED.

“It’s an entirely different learning experience when you are physically there. Little details like how they fill coffee bags and move them from the warehouse to a truck, how the mill was built to use gravity to help move the water and cherries around without using a lot of energy, the scale of coffee resting at the  mill, just all these things that aren’t necessarily mentioned when you’re learning about coffee production but are so interesting and help to paint the entire picture of what coffee producers and those working on the farms or at the mills are doing every day. Being there fills in the gaps to give you a complete understanding of what this part of the supply chain entails.”

-Ana Mallozzi, Covoya Jr. Trader

“I had studied all about processing methods, grades, frequently used terms, but first-hand experience really made the information stick and make sense. Visiting a cooperative in northern Peru to work with female producers to establish a brand for their coffee and raise money for cervical cancer screenings, drying beds/tents and much more is one of my favorite coffee memories. Peru is an origin that I hold near and dear to my heart.”

-Brit Amell, Covoya Sales Representative

“My first visit to a coffee farm was in Guatemala and it was amazing as we walked the farm with the farmer and his young daughter who was very excited to take over the farm.  He pointed to the hardwood trees up on the hill and said that was going to be her retirement. My customer was amazed as it was his first time out of the country.  I've been traveling to origin for almost 20 years and it is still my favorite thing about working in coffee, especially when I get to take a roasters on their first origin trip. One of my favorite memories is going to Timor with a roaster who had been stationed there as a Peacekeeper during the troubles in the 90s. We went to a village where he put a scale on a tree in the central space and then started buying parchment direct from farmers. That is direct trade on a scale I had never seen and haven’t seen since.”

-Charley Requadt, Covoya Trader and Director of Operations

“When I went on my first trip to a coffee growing region in 1990 it was still very rare for a coffee roaster to do that, but I understood from my background in viticulture that I needed to walk the fields and see the processing first-hand if I was going to truly understand coffee. My first trip was to the Santander, Santa Marta, and Huila regions of Colombia.” 

-Mark Inman, Covoya Director and Senior Trader

“I set foot on my first working coffee farm in 1999, Finca El Valle in Antigua, Guatemala. In those days the farm was almost all these tall heirloom Bourbon trees and they were heavy with cherries so that they were bowed and they reminded me for some reason of ballerinas in fourth position. I mentioned this to my trip host and any time we meet over the years she asks me, ‘Have you been to visit any ballerinas lately?’ And in my odd little brain that’s how I still think of visiting a coffee farm. You'll find a little magic, a little romance, a lot of choreography, and a lot of really really hard work.”

-Mike Ferguson, Covoya Chief Storyteller 

“The great thing about coffee is the relationships, meeting producers and then connecting roasters you know in the U.S. to them and then seeing how that relationship can take off. Seeing the roasters go on their own and telling me they just got back from visiting the supplier that I used to go with them and seeing that their relationship is stronger than the original relationship that I had with the buyer. It makes me happy when I can just step back and watch their relationship grow and my role becomes moving the coffee from point A to point B.”

-Ian Kluse, Covoya Senior Trader & Sourcing Director

A Little History on Visiting Origin (AKA the TLDR) by Mike Ferguson

If you sailed into the port of Mocha 300 years ago to buy green coffee, you could expect to pay the 2024 equivalent of $15.00 a pound. What you would not expect was to visit a coffee farm, unless you were Jean La Roque, who went to the Arabian Peninsula not only to buy coffee, but to explore. He was one of the first people to describe coffee farming and processing in writing, and he was an exception to the rule. For most of the last 300 years, traveling to a coffee growing region was decidedly a “buying trip” and traders didn’t meet with producers, they remained in the city and met with bankers and brokers.

Prior to WWI, the coffee roasters of San Francisco became another exception to the rule. They were tired of watching Central America send 70% of it’s harvest to Europe. Centrals that did arrive in the U.S. were low quality and went mostly to New York. So San Francisco roasters spent years sending collective delegations to Central America, not to meet with bankers and brokers, but to build relationships all the way to the farm gate. These deeper supply-chain relationships made it easy for exports to be redirected to San Francisco when war broke out.

And then there was Erna Knutsen, who was not so much a founder of the specialty coffee movement as she was it’s chief insurrectionist. Unlike most of her commercial coffee colleagues in the 1970’s, she traveled to origin to meet specifically with producers. She said she did this because when she did business with someone she wanted to look them in the eye. She also wanted to tell her “small trade” customers (we call them specialty coffee roasters today) that she had been to the farms and met the farmers. As specialty coffee emerged as a self-aware segment of the larger coffee industry, it was just assumed that anyone selling green coffee to specialty coffee roasters would be traveling to origin and visiting mills and farms and meeting producers. Still, in those early years it was rare for coffee roasters to visit origin.

In the 1990’s the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) organized and hosted many group trips to coffee growing countries. Although it may seem odd to us now, in those days these group trips seemed like the only feasible way to visit origin for most coffee roasters. The roasters/green buyers who traveled to origin on their own or even with their importer were viewed as “adventurous,” and maybe even “thrill-seekers.” But by the mid-2000’s, SCAA trips were almost non-existent and traveling to origin on your own or with your importer had become the norm.

For most coffee roasters these days it’s not a question of if but when they will visit origin. And for those who hold the position of “Green Buyer” or its equivalent, visiting origin becomes a full-on necessity as the balance begins to shift from learning and exploring toward purpose and function. Which is not to say that origin trips ever become business as usual even when they are a regular part of doing business. Collectively, the team at Covoya have logged hundreds of origin trips and even the most seasoned traveler still looks forward to visiting producers and farms. But why do we go? Green coffee traders can go for a somewhat surprisingly wide variety of reasons, but for traders and roasters the reasons all have relationships at their core. Fundamentally, buying coffee from its “original” owners and all the auxiliary activity that happens around those transactions requires a not insignificant amount of trust, and trust emerges within genuine relationships. And while there may be exceptions here and there, real relationships tend to require time spent together.