Beyond Fair Trade Read online

  Mark Pendergrast

  BEYOND

  FAIR

  TRADE

  * * *

  How One Small Coffee

  Company Helped Transform

  a Hillside Village in Thailand

  Dedicated to Wicha Promyong, visionary humanitarian and lover of life in all its forms

  “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it. For I shall not pass this way again.”

  FAVORITE SAYING OF ELIZABETH DARCH (1909–2013), MOTHER OF JOHN M. DARCH

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 The Akha

  CHAPTER 2 Culture Clashes

  CHAPTER 3 Wicha Finds the Way

  CHAPTER 4 Doi Chaang Coffee

  CHAPTER 5 Khun John from Canada

  CHAPTER 6 The Creation of a Canadian Coffee Company

  CHAPTER 7 Learning Curves in Vancouver

  CHAPTER 8 An Outside Perspective

  CHAPTER 9 Carry On

  EPILOGUE Lessons from Two Continents

  Acknowledgments

  Note on Sources

  Photo Section

  INTRODUCTION

  ON THE MOST basic level, Beyond Fair Trade tells the extraordinary story of Doi Chaang Coffee, a coffee cooperative on a remote mountainside in Thailand, and the Vancouver coffee company, half-owned by that cooperative, that imports and roasts its beans, then sends half its profits back to the co-op farmers, most of whom belong to the Akha hill tribe. Wicha Promyong, a charismatic, shrewd Thai, provided essential leadership to the Akha in growing their coffee, roasting it, and creating a coffeehouse chain in Thailand to sell it. In Vancouver, Doi Chaang Coffee chairman John M. Darch emphasizes that he founded the company not as a charitable venture but as a sustainable, alternative form of capitalism that provides a new business model, a win-win approach that provides equitable profit for all.

  If that were all there were to the story, it would indeed make a fascinating case study in global partnerships. But Beyond Fair Trade is far more than that. It is part travelogue, part anthropology, part business/marketing, part drama, part social equity tale. And, as with any venture involving human beings, there are complications, misunderstandings, friction, challenges, and continual evolution. The partnership between the Canadians and their Thai suppliers has already been tested as coffee prices fluctuated during the perennial boom-bust coffee price cycle. Although the Canadian firm shares profits equally with the Akha, there are as yet few profits to share, and John M. Darch has invested a significant amount of his personal fortune in the venture.

  I was first attracted to the Doi Chaang story because it was so unusual. For one thing, I had never heard of excellent coffee coming from Thailand, and having written Uncommon Grounds, the history of coffee, I would have been an obvious person to know about it. But my ignorance wasn’t unusual. A few years ago, virtually no one in the specialty coffee industry was interested in beans from Thailand, where, as in Vietnam, most of the coffee that was grown was robusta, an inferior bean with a higher caffeine content and a more bitter taste than arabica, which generally brews a superior cup. So when I heard that Doi Chaang beans were arabica, organically grown and harvested, then meticulously processed and sorted, I tried brewing some. I quickly became a convert.

  In August 2012, I called John M. Darch for a phone interview, then wrote an article for my semi-regular coffee column in The Wine Spectator, focusing on the quality and characteristics of the coffee, which is what the magazine’s readers, people on the lookout for superior wines and other beverages, are interested in. But I found myself fascinated by the story of the Akha hill tribe, one of several tribes that migrated into the northern Thai mountains. The Akha had no written language and, until a few decades ago, they had little contact with the outside world. They lived in thatched-roof bamboo homes, practiced swidden (rotating) agriculture, and hunted for wild game in the jungle. They had an elaborate set of spiritual beliefs and phenomenal memories. They were a peaceful, egalitarian people who usually preferred to flee rather than fight.

  In Thailand, however, they ran out of room. They were running out of land as more hill tribes immigrated, more children were born, and Thai loggers destroyed the forests; they had nowhere left to go. They resorted to growing poppies as a cash crop— scraping opium from the scored seedpods—an activity that brought them into increased contact with Thai authorities. Eventually, in the mid-1980s, the Thai military, under pressure from the United States, destroyed the poppy crop and terrorized the hill tribes. Although there were many well-meaning efforts to promote substitute cash crops, none were very successful, and some were even disastrous, leading to further deforestation, the use of dangerous pesticides, and crushing debt.

  Their fortunes began to turn only in 2001, when Adel, the young former headman of the village of Doi Chang, approached Wicha Promyong, an old friend of Adel’s father, Piko. With Wicha’s help, they began to grow, harvest, and roast their own coffee, establishing the Doi Chaang brand. In 2006, John Darch met Wicha and was impressed with his and the others’ efforts to take control of their lives. He founded his coffee company in Vancouver, British Columbia, the following year, precipitating a new approach to business and a new way of life for the Akha.

  Some of this might sound too good to be true. A bona fide Canadian business that seeks profit but shares it with those who provide the raw material, halfway around the world? I can attest to the accuracy of this claim. I traveled to Vancouver, Canada, and Doi Chang, Thailand, to meet the people behind the “Beyond Fair Trade” logo, and I saw for myself what the company is doing and how it is doing it. My personal perspective, recounted in chapters 8 and 9, offers an unbiased, outsider’s view of Doi Chaang Coffee’s operations.

  The Doi Chaang partnership between a Western company and its non-Western suppliers is unique, as far as I know, but I don’t want to give the impression that the Vancouver company is alone in its concern for the welfare of those who grow the beans they roast. That is the entire basis for the Fair Trade certification, and the organic stamp also makes sure that coffee laborers do not breathe pesticides during their workday. In addition, some coffee companies are directly involved in communities at origin, helping to build schools and health clinics and encouraging more sustainable agricultural methods.

  Starbucks has an admirable certification system of its own, called Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices. Community Agroecology Network (CAN) promotes sustainable coffee growth, research, and trade innovations in Latin America. CoffeeCSA.org is a consortium of organic coffee cooperatives from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Its beans are roasted in Sacramento, California, but most of the profits go directly to the farmers. Food 4 Farmers is a Vermont-based organization that is working with communities in Latin America to build long-term solutions to chronic hunger in coffee-growing regions. Grounds for Health, which is supported by various coffee companies, is a charity that helps test for, prevent, and treat cervical cancer in coffee-growing regions, which have unusually high levels of that form of cancer. There are many other organizations and coffee importers and roasters that work directly with coffee farmers.

  The Doi Chaang story illustrates the importance of all such efforts and offers a different model for a kind of compassionate capitalism that directly links growers and roasters. The two main protagonists in this story, Wicha Promyong and John M. Darch, are in some ways mirror images of one another from different continents: daring entrepreneurs, visionary workaholics who inspire and lead, but who can drive their colleagues crazy. These unusual men became positive change agents across two continents. The story of Doi Chaan
g Coffee is also their story.

  The narrative also features a multi-layered saga involving the history and culture of the hill tribes of Thailand, of Thailand itself, and of the opium trade, from ancient Sumeria to its apotheosis in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia (aided and abetted by the British, the French, and the CIA), as well as the history and cultivation of coffee, from its origin in Ethiopia to tropical mountainsides around the world. Readers will also learn about stevia, the plant from which natural low-calorie sweeteners are made; potash, one of the three principle ingredients in fertilizer; and cordyceps, a fungal alternative medicine. In addition, the saga introduces a cast of fascinating characters, without whom coffee would not be transforming lives. It also explores the impacts, both positive and negative, of sudden wealth on a previously marginalized tribal village. These are issues many people will face as the global village becomes ever smaller.

  This is a story of inspiration and hope. When cultures meet, they sometimes collide, but they can also reinforce, teach, and help one another.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Akha

  LAZY, STUPID, IGNORANT, dirty, illiterate, immoral, criminal, opium-addled. That’s the way many Thai citizens once regarded the hill tribes who lived precarious lives in the remote mountains of northern Thailand, eking out a living through subsistence agriculture, selling a few crafts such as weaving, producing illegal opium in recent times, and, in the remote village of Doi Chang, cultivating coffee.

  Most of the farming families in Doi Chang are Akha, a culture that may have originated in Mongolia and that can be traced through at least seventy generations, back 1,500 years, according to the Akha Heritage Foundation. “Civil unrest has led them to migrate practically throughout their existence, although they eventually settled in Yunnan province of southwestern China for a significant period of time,” foundation literature states. “Tibetan and Chinese influence helped shape their culture. Wars of recent centuries once again led them to travel south.”

  Despite their marginalized status and uncertain existence, they proudly maintained their traditions and way of life; they regarded themselves as a kind of chosen people. They did not try to protect themselves through military prowess. Rather, they sought peaceful accommodation. Mostly, they just wanted to be left alone. The center of their universe was the village, wherever it might be. The resourceful Akha would cultivate a small area on a mountainside that no one else wanted. In general, they rotated fields around an established village for years, practicing what anthropologists call swidden agriculture, which has commonly been termed “slash-and-burn,” a more pejorative term that implies environmental destruction, whereas the Akha had a profound respect for the mountainsides where they lived.

  The Akha would cut trees to make a clearing, then burn the fallen trees and underbrush, clearing only sufficient space to grow their mountain rice, corn, squash, and other crops. They also foraged, hunted, fished, and kept domestic animals. They rotated their crops, often leaving fields fallow for ten years or more as part of the rotation, allowing nutrients to be replenished before the field was burned again in preparation for replanting. They were not nomads, since they were not constantly on the move. They would, however, move their village periodically. Their homes, made of bamboo, wood, and thatch, were sturdy but relatively easy to construct.

  Some tribes wandered into Burma, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia; after World War II, many moved to the Golden Triangle area of Thailand, the notorious source of much of the world’s opium and its derivatives, morphine and heroin. (The Golden Triangle area includes parts of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, with Burma comprising the largest portion and Thailand the smallest.)

  For reasons long forgotten, the Akha were considered the lowest of the low, even among the other hill tribes such as the Lisu, Lahu, Karen, Hmong, Mien, Dara-ang, Kachin, and Lua, as well as the Shan and Chinese Haw. By the mid-1990s the Akha constituted a majority of the people who lived in the remote, inaccessible village of Doi Chang in Chiang Rai Province, yet they lived below—literally and figuratively—the Lisu who lived in the village before the Akha arrived.

  Despite how they were viewed, the Akha have a rich culture and heritage, though with increased contact with the more “civilized” world of mainstream Thailand and television representation of other lifestyles, their cultural heritage is being eroded and diluted. “The Akha have always been a peaceful people,” according to the Akha Heritage Foundation, “interested only in living quietly in the forest as their ancestors taught them. Until recently, they have succeeded, but migration is no longer an option and their survival now rests on the benevolence of strangers.” The story of the Akha in Doi Chang, however, challenges the accuracy of that statement. The saga does indeed involve benevolent strangers, but the tribal community proved itself capable and resourceful on its own.

  In the Beginning

  THE AKHA WERE largely egalitarian, without a formal class structure, though they did have a hierarchy in place. The village council of elders, composed of the head of every household, made most decisions. The village priest (dzoema), also called “the father of the village,” was the most important figure. Well versed in the Akha Way, he ensured that rituals were conducted properly, and he was treated with great respect and deference. The village headman (buseh) took care of dealing with lowlanders, regulations, and disputes. In addition, there were two spirit specialists. The spirit priest (pima), who was always male, repeated incantations to call back wandering souls or recited ritual texts during important occasions such as funerals. The shaman (nyipa), either male or female, could go into a trance, riding a horse into the underworld where spirits and ancestors dwelled. Finally, the blacksmith (baji), another extremely prestigious villager, forged the sacred knife used by the spirit priest. The men of Doi Chang were expected to memorize their patrilineal descent back over fifty generations to an Akha named Sm Mi O, reputedly the first human (à la Adam in the Judaic tradition), who came from Jadae in Yunnan Province in China, a kind of Mecca for the Akha.

  This egalitarian society was also a patriarchal society. When a woman married, she left her family to become part of her husband’s clan. Women took on a disproportionate share of the work both in the fields and at home. Yet as she aged, she could become a “white-skirted woman” who was especially honored and who could conduct many important rituals on her own. Despite their lack of official power, Akha women were clearly strong-willed individuals, as illustrated by the story of the fate of the first Akha man to take a wife (described by anthropologist Cornelia Kammerer in her dissertation):

  Long ago, when the sky and earth first appeared and human beings were first born, Apoe Miyeh [the supreme Akha deity] asked an Akha man if he wished to marry… A spirit woman, sometimes described as half-tiger, half-spirit, emerged from the woods. She wore no clothes; her body was covered with thick matted fur. Her fangs long, her fingernails like sickles, and her toenails like hoes, the promised bride walked noisily onto the path… Together they returned to the village, where after their marriage the spirit wife killed and ate the first Akha husband.

  Then the spirit woman asked another man to marry her. “You eat people,” he observed. “I would not dare marry you!” But she promised not to eat him, allowing him to knock off her fangs and claws, and she suggested that he build an interior wall separating her living area from his. And that is why, the story explains, women and men live on separate sides of an Akha home, though they can visit one another when others are asleep.

  The Akha language, part of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic family, appears to the uninitiated to be simple, since it consists primarily of one-syllable words with an initial consonant followed by a vowel sound, but there are twenty-six possible consonants, including a kind of glottal stop, and thirteen vowels. Perhaps most important, there are five different tones: high, middle, low, and two varieties of “creaky” tones made by constricting the larynx. The tone of a vowel is extremely important, because the same consonant-vowel combination can ha
ve five different meanings, depending on the tone used; for instance, the word “Akha” can mean “the tribe,” “a crab,” “in between,” or “later.”

  There is no native written form of the language. The Akha have a rich oral tradition and a wealth of myths to explain their world. One Akha creation myth—and there are many—asserts that, in the beginning, an all-powerful God called Apoe Miyeh created the sky, where “owner-spirits” lived. God had nine sons, known as “children of the sky.” One of these sons, M G’ah, created the Earth—three pieces of clay and three white rocks, from which water flowed—then rain, moon, stars, clouds, grass, wild raspberries, and vines, followed by birds, termites, squirrels, fish, crabs, and other animals, and finally people. The Earth was at first very small, but it kept shaking and gradually grew larger. Initially, the sky was quite close to the ground, with twelve suns and twelve moons, but as people shot down eleven of each, the sky rose higher and the hot rocks cooled.

  At first there was no distinction between humans and spirits, who were born of the same parents and lived together. In heaven and on Earth, there was no serious sickness, and people grew over 10 feet tall. They lived a long time, perhaps for hundreds of years, and everything in the world could speak, including birds, trees, animals, grass, wind, water, and earth. After the first eleven generations, however, a father chopping a tree accidentally felled it on his son, whose shoulder was impaled by a branch. Although the father pulled out the branch and the wound healed, people never grew so tall again.

  In another story, a dragon caused a huge flood that lasted seven days and seven nights, and everyone drowned except a small boy and girl, who floated in a giant gourd, the Akha version of Noah’s Ark. Afterwards, God gave them a magic wand to bring the dead alive. “From that day to this,” the Akha told an ethnographer in the 1960s, “the people followed what they could of the religion God had taught them, but since they had died and risen from the dead, they forgot many of the old customs.”