I’m Only Skimming the Surface
By Bob Fish
From our chance meeting with Miriam and Hector in Boston we agreed to meet them in Managua, Nicaragua in July where they would take us up to the El Recreo Coffee farm in the rainforest near the Honduran border. Trust but verify is a motto of ours. BIGGBY COFFEE had been buying millions of pounds of coffee a year but never really building relationships with the farmer. We have agreed that Farm-Direct would be the way we will go now for at least 50% of our coffee. The idea is to know how we are impacting the lives and cultures of the people that are supplying us with the product we serve, and to make sure that we do no damage. Now Michelle and I had the chance to meet Miriam’s parents Carlos and Leana, and her brother Jorge. The idea was to see for ourselves the school for the children of the workers, the technical school for the farmers, and the clinic. We also had an interest to see the farms permanent workers and their living conditions, and finally the agricultural practices. Well it was all real just as Hector and Miriam had said. I give a recap of the day in the video below.
