Whoever is thinking on coming into direct trade and to work through this type of doing business, most of the people that do this type of business aren't huge corporates with lots of cash flow or like exporters or importers who do not have a lot of money. So we all need to put parts of effort, let's say. And it means we have to sustain sometimes the operation for a long time. And that's what makes us have to have a lot of capital.
I don't know if that... That's exactly right. If we want, like only last year, we sold most of our coffee through direct trade and thank God it wasn't that much because we need to add a lot of capital because as producers, we need to sustain a lot of for months the operation. We need to produce it.
We need to process it. We need to dry the coffee, store the coffee, wait until you fulfill the contract. And sometimes you have to wait until they fulfill a whole container. And then if the contract was FOB, let's say, we have to wait until they have the papers like the BL...
Yeah, they have the papers of the... I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Yes, so we have to wait until the money comes in Colombia.
It's months of you waiting for you to get the payment. And it's also hard because we need to... We need oxygen at the same time. And it sounds like you're carrying a lot of the risk in that moment.
Do you get compensated for carrying the risk for all of that time? Because if your buyer ends up going out of business in that time, you're carrying all the risk, right? Do you get compensated in any way? No, no.
I have to say that I can't say all the buyers are the same. Like, I have to say there are some people that actually pay a head part of it. But it's a minority. Like, I work with different markets around the world and I understand because we're all small, small business owners.
Like, we're all independent. And when we work in specialty, it's normally... We're not talking about huge people with lots of money. So, but yeah, the risk, most of the risk is on this side of the venture indefinitely.
Do you think direct trade has a way to fix that if you're working with the right partners? Or is that... Is direct trade, the way you're defining it, is this amplifying the stress for you? I feel that right now it's amplifying my stress.
That's the reality. Like, the stress is still there and right now as I'm looking at my reality, I'm still carrying or supporting most of the risk. But at the same time, I feel like I am very lucky that I have created really good relationships and that I have been able to have open conversations with my clients at the end. And if I do, I feel like I have created friendships that in the future, we can work together to redistribute the risk.
I don't know if that... That makes a lot of sense. It's perfectly leading me into what my next question was because the volatility in the coffee industry is across the entire value chain. And we're all experiencing significant...
Even on podcast, we're experiencing a significant amount of volatility, let me tell you. But the risk that... Well, the volatility that you're experiencing at origin is different to the kinds of risks that they're experiencing, let's say, in a roastery in different parts of the world. There are some things that are impacting all of us.
For example, what's happening with the US dollar, it's impacting the entire value chain. The sea price volatility is impacting the entire value chain, but it is impacting people differently depending on where they are in the value chain. Are you finding that in your direct relationships, the more stress that happens on the roaster or the importer, are you having to carry more risk or are you having to be more sort of agile, more flexible in the way that you're doing business with them? Do you have to absorb the challenges that they're having or are they taking responsibility for it?
I think it has been going both ways. Like we're all trying to absorb a little bit of it, but it's nobody has to deal with climate change. Like for me, that's the biggest problem we have because we don't have... There's not a way that we can control it.
And it's the biggest... I don't know the word, but it's the biggest problem we have. Threat, threat. It's the biggest threat.
Exactly. Exactly. And that's... It's us who has to deal with it.
And it's our problem since, like, it's always our problem because that's just the way we are. Let's go there with that problem. Help people understand that what kind of approach you take to farming because people are going to be sitting there saying, yeah, but, you know, farmers have been dealing with these kind of stresses forever. Sometimes I want to punch those people in the face, but help people understand.
Yeah, definitely. We work on... We have been working on taking care of our planet. We are doing everything that we're supposed to, trying to do regenerative farming, trying to make steps, but we're trying to do so.
And we have never seen in a lot of years how crazy the climate is right now. Like, right, I'm going to say, like right now we are supposed to have a... Dry season, a lot of sun, and this is where our flowers come out for the second semester harvest, and we have some flowers, but we have been having rain every single day. And that only changed in 2024 at the beginning.
We had 20 days of sun, and that gave us a really nice harvest at the end of the year. But I've been seven years working on like having an Australian farm, and in seven years, the last five years, we have had only like rain, constant rains every single time. Like that has brought out our... It's very hard to have yields when you don't have the amount of flowers, and the flowers only come after the water stress.
Like when the trees do not have enough water, that's when the trees flourish. And it's just unpredictable. Right now, we have, it's very difficult to predict the climate, especially here in Colombia. Climate has changed dramatically the last years.
When you can't predict the weather in one year, if it's a, you know, if everything's in harmony and you have an odd year one year, you could absorb that shock. Of course, yes. But when it's five years in a row, what we're starting to to see now is that the unpredictability of it is leading to so much debt for farmers and so much stress for farmers because it's year after year after year after year. How much faith is one person's, is a person's supposed to have, you know, my family are farmers and they're my family.
You know, farming communities are very religious and they had this deep belief all the time that, you know, it's okay. The weather's going to do, God will provide. My family are in Syria at the moment, you know, our farms, my family's farms are in Syria. Now they're going on two years of drought.
And it's really difficult to have this kind of faith and I don't know how they do it, but they keep this faith that everything's going to be fine. But year after year after year after year of drought or of La Nina or of constant changing frost and then, and then drought and then cold weather and in the summer and hot weather in the winter and everything turning around, the planning becomes difficult and expensive, which is another way that the cost of production gets higher and the high prices in inverted commas are what gets eaten up in all of that. Yes, yes, that's what makes it difficult. It's not one year.
It's one after another, after another year. So, yeah. And your direct, your clients who are direct trade, are they looking to incorporate your story as a farmer with regards to regenerative and the way that you do your farming practices? Is this one of the reasons that they want to do business with you or is it just the cup quality?
What's the, what brings people to you as a coffee producer who does direct trade? I feel like it's, it's, we have to be integral. Is that a word in English? Integral.
Yes. And just as I told you before, when we're creating these type of relationships is like when you buy with the same values. And I feel like most of the relationships that I have is because we all buy with, like, we're all caring about the same things. So, of course, quality has to be there.
Like that's, that's, that's non-negotiable. Not negotiable. Yeah. Not negotiable.
Thank you. But you guys are vibe buying, right? No, in the sense that it's not just quality, but if the vibe isn't right and you don't connect and the values aren't there, if the vibe isn't there, that's not going to happen. Yes.
We all care about time, about uh like trying to do a sustainable type of farming. We all care about people and community. And like not only here, but there, like on the roastery, how they treat their people, how I see it, like, it's at the end, it's all all the people working for the same values. And I feel like it's, it's not only this way.
Like they're looking at me as Anna and my story. Like we now, I feel like we're coming into a new moment as producers are starting to get to know the other side of the, of the coffee value chain and, and see how they are working. And are they, are they, do we really share the same values? How, how are they trying or treating their people?
How are they affecting the community where they are? And I feel like this has to go and flow both ways now. I feel like we're entering a moment where the coffee producer is starting to take back some of the power that they had. And they're realizing, and I said this during the Augusto Amaya series as well.
I feel like the producer has realized that we gave these people enough time to get their shit together and realize that they don't have an industry without us. Now we have to step things up and start doing business with the people who we think are paying attention. Yes, 100%. Plus, it's a reality that there's not enough coffee.
Like, it's a reality. And as producers, it doesn't matter if you are in direct trade or not. Like if you're in direct trade, you already have some relationships and your coffee is committed to some people, like, right? But if, if it doesn't matter if you're still on the other side of, on doing traditional coffee, like you can feel that there's not enough coffee.
Like it's not easy to find coffee now. Like not even for cooperatives, not even for the traditional um um commodity uh way of doing uh like there's not enough coffee and we can all feel it. And that's why whoever has coffee and have the ability to store it and grab it, they're starting to do so. So, yeah.
We're going to talk about pricing next and um how Anna and, and what her understanding of other coffee producers, how they're experiencing these high prices. We're going to dig deeper into that. So join us for the third episode of this series, folks. Peace, love and peanut butter.
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