"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
- Walt Whitman
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Café Juan Chacón is available from MOFGA's office and online country store. It comes in one pound bags, whole bean, medium roast. Cost is $10 per pound plus shipping and handling. Place your order now.
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Café Juan Chacón
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| Café Juan Chacón is available from MOFGA's office and our online country store. It comes in one pound bags, whole bean, medium roast. The cost is $10 per pound plus shipping and handling. Place your order now. |
Café Juan Chacón is hand-picked and processed along the cool pine-shaded slopes of the Chalatenango province of El Salvador, near the Honduras border. It arrives in your cup through a special collaboration among MOFGA, the Madison, Wisconsin-based Just Coffee, and the farming families of the Ereguán Coffee Collective.
The producers of Café Chacón have organized a cooperative of coffee growers and processors who are building community based on an economic model of mutual solidarity. When you drink Café Chacón you join with them in building this solidarity. Café Chacón is carefully grown without the use of pesticides on family-sized plots 1000 meters above sea level. These conditions assure premium taste, an equitable economy for coffee growers, and ecological sustainability.
The northern region of Chalatenango was the center of heavy conflict during El Salvador´s 12-year civil war (1980-1992). The people of the region were forced to flee to the mountains to avoid death squad patrols—all but abandoning their villages during the war. Many saw their homes and crops destroyed by the army.
The armed conflict ended in 1992, when Peace Accords were signed. Since then, communities have been faced with rebuilding their homes and readjusting to civilian life. In the years following the war, many people returned to what was familiar to them: cultivating and harvesting coffee.
But these growers have come a long way since the days of toasting coffee alongside their daily tortillas. Their cooperative buys coffee from local growers, dries the beans using solar technology, roasts them to perfection, and sells the finished product throughout El Salvador.
Café Chacón is an export quality micro-roast that brings the best of this growers co-op direct to you, through solidarity relationships among MOFGA, U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities, and Just Coffee.
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MOFGA Selling Coffee?
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Don Raúl hosts MOFGA's El Salvador Sistering Delegation at his coffee nursery in Valle de Jesús. January 2007.
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Many people know MOFGA’s annual Common Ground Country Fair as “the event where you can’t get coffee.” “To serve or not to serve?” has been the perennial question for our Fair Steering Committee. And for roughly 30 years, the Fair has disallowed the sale of coffee for various reasons. Fair organizers decided not to serve coffee because there was no organic, fairly traded coffee available. Now, while delicious, organic, shade-grown, fairly traded coffee is in abundant supply, you still can’t purchase it at Common Ground. Why? For the simple reason that coffee doesn’t grow in Maine.
In addition to requiring vendors to serve 100% organic food, the Fair’s food guidelines require at least 50% by weight of all items served to be comprised of Maine-grown ingredients – not including water. Fair organizers aren’t trying to be difficult. Rather, they’re supporting Maine farmers whose produce goes into other hot drinks like herbal teas and cider, while educating fairgoers about locally produced alternatives.
While the Common Ground Country Fair is about possibilities for living within our local, agricultural confines, MOFGA recognizes that there are many agricultural items not grown in Maine that we rely on and that enrich our lives. Our sistering relationship with farmers and processors in El Salvador illustrates this important truth, and, outside of the Maine-focused Fair, helps us reflect on the possibilities of creating a community-based, global economy, rather than a corporate one.
MOFGA encourages folks in Maine to make connections with the people who grow their foods. We know that very few coffee drinkers in Maine have the opportunity to meet the farmers and processors who grow and roast their beans. We are proud of our El Salvador Sistering Committee members who serve as direct links to this coffee producing community.
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