Conscious Choice: Javatrekker

November 2007 | Art & Soul

Javatrekker

Dispatches from the world of Fair Trade coffee

By Dean Cycon

In 2003, northern Sumatra was just starting to recover from hostilities between separatists and the Indonesian military, a twenty-year struggle that had deeply affected the ethnic Gayo coffee farmers. Moved by the farmers’ difficulties, Dean Cycon sponsored a project to test the effectiveness of water buffalos in providing fertilizer — something the Gayo farmers had never done before. Six months later, he found himself in Indonesia…

Finally, we reached the village of Wonosari, where Paman (Uncle) Dean the buffalo roams. By this point, the farmers and soldiers in the entourage had built up enormous excitement at seeing the famous water buffalo eco-management project that we had been talking about the whole trip. We met Paman Dean’s guardian, Mr. Sawadi, at his small house deep within the coffee forest. He was a burly man with a sweet disposition and a blade of grass sticking out of his mouth — the karmic twin of Paman Dean. He greeted me like a relative, with a joyful “Selamat dating!” (Welcome!) and a big hug. The fifteen of us squeezed into Mr. Sawadi’s living room — an eight-foot by ten-foot space. It felt like a Manhattan subway car during rush hour, except no one here was picking my pocket or asking for contributions for dubious charities. Mrs. Sawadi brought in the coffee. I asked if it had been fertilized by Paman Dean.

“Of course!” bellowed Mr. Sawadi, “and that’s why it tastes so good!”

Iswandi reminded the group that I was here to inspect Paman Dean’s progress, to determine if the project was a success.

“Or if we get to eat Paman Dean!” interrupted one of the farmers with obvious, well, relish. There was a lot of laughter and talking. I couldn’t tell which side the majority was on.

We walked out into the forest. The small wooden hut of Paman Dean waited about a football field away. The young water buffalo was tethered inside, chewing some grass and looking fairly content. He was brown and grey, with big liquid brown eyes. For a water buffalo, he was pretty cute. I walked into his shed, passing under a wooden, hand-written sign that read: PAMAN DEAN, ECO-MANAGEMENT PROJECT — THANK YOU DEAN’S BEANS.

The benefits of corporate sponsorship, I mused as I stroked his head gently. I talked with Paman Dean awhile, asking all of the obvious questions: was he treated well; did he like it here; was he lonely? The farmers cracked up, not because I was talking to the animal (which they also did), but because I clearly expected an answer and they knew I didn’t speak Gayo. Fortunately, Mr. Sawadi knew the answers and filled me in.

We walked through the coffee forest to see how Paman Dean’s handiwork was being managed. Mr. Sawadi showed me how he and his helpers had collected Paman Dean’s Frisbee-sized offerings and dug them in around coffee plants in a specific area. They took out their clipboards to demonstrate the record keeping (weight, frequency, date) and showed me the yields from those plants versus others sans Dean’s contributions. Six months was a little early to tell, said Salim the agronomist, but there did seem to be an increase in yield. In any event, the Paman-powered-plants were lusher and apparently healthier. There were larger leaves and they appeared a deeper green. Further, these plants had less weeds competing for plant nutrients, as Paman Dean had, in fact, nibbled the weeds away. The crowd followed closer than paparazzi in Paris, waiting for any hint of the final outcome — project or prime rib?

We returned to the packed living room for another cuppa. The farmers sat still, craning their necks to hear the final pronouncement. I told Salim that I was satisfied that Paman Dean was doing his job. His idea was a good one, and I thought that the project was a success. A broad smile graced Salim’s weathered face. He turned the room and said proudly, “Proyek Paman Dean berjalan suksess! Suksess!”

Excerpted from Dean Cycon’s Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007), currently available in bookstores. For more information about Dean Cycon, or to buy a copy of the book, visit chelseagreen.com.

Review: Javatrekker

To bring us our daily cup of coffee, nearly 30 million farmers in more than 50 countries toil in conditions unimaginable for most drinkers. “All of the major issues of the twenty-first century — globalization, immigration, women’s rights, pollution, indigenous rights and self-determination — are being played out through this cup of coffee in villages and remote areas around the world,” writes Dean Cycon in the prologue to his new book, Javatrekker.

Cycon is well-placed to show readers what it means to use global trade to consciously create a better world: he’s a founder of Coffee Kids, a nonprofit that uses donations from coffee companies to improve the lives of children in coffee-growing regions. And Dean’s Beans, his Massachusetts-based Fair Trade coffee company, is the epitome of a successful and proactive progressive business.

There are plenty of books about coffee, but Cycon’s memoir is the first to tell the human story of what it’s taken to build Fair Trade. Behind Fair Trade are relationships, often made in the most trying of circumstances, that extend from one world to another; it’s really about being friends with people who live in different worlds on the same planet.

Whether he’s in Papua New Guinea, helping farmers devise a better way to get their beans to market (instead of carrying them on their backs for two weeks down jungle paths), monitoring elections in Guatemala, helping Ethiopian cooperatives develop a self-sustaining well-building program, confronting corrupt government ministers in Kenya, witnessing the tragic “Death Train” of desperate migrants in Mexico, or visiting Colombia’s mystic Mamo (big brothers) responsible for keeping order in the universe, Cycon’s energy is infectious. His enthusiasm for doing the right thing has changed lives all over the globe. As a one-man international aid agency (all the royalties from the book are going to farmer projects) it’s only fitting that at least one baby and one water buffalo in coffee farming communities have been named after him.

Cycon, the original Javatrekker, shares these adventures with us in chapter after chapter of ripping yarns that will forever change the way you see your morning cup of coffee.

Reviewer Gregory Dicum is the author of The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (The New Press, 2006; thecoffeebook.com).

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