Green Power to the People
Alternative energy brings greater independence to coffee growers
by Julie Beals

In the highlands of Guatemala, in the community of Nueva Alianza, 40 families make up the Union of Independent Workers of Alianza Property (STIAP). The coffee cooperative splits all profits between the families and works to improve local infrastructure, education and health care, boasting a women's committee, an education committee and an administrative body that assures equal rights among workers and that the principles and goals of a collective are met. STIAP grows and processes shade-grown, organic coffee and organic macadamia nuts, and it currently is seeking fair-trade and organic certification.

All of these are common features of thriving coffee cooperatives. But STIAP's level of organization and success is striking, considering it all started fewer than five years ago, and with nontraditional, progressive means.

For five generations, a single owner employed the 40 families to work the land at Nueva Alianza. When coffee prices fell in the 1990s, workers weren't paid for nearly 18 months. The landowner went bankrupt before paying back wages, and the families banded together to peacefully occupy the plantation in May 2002, immediately going to work to improve the land and its crop output. The collective received legal title to the plantation in December 2004 and began crop diversification projects while also looking into alternative energy sources.

In many coffee-growing areas, access to electricity is intermittent at best. A single electric cable might serve an entire community, and any inclement weather can interrupt service for days. Given its remote location, Nueva Alianza is dependent on generators to power its homes and processing plants, and access to diesel fuel is what makes it happen. Poor road conditions during the rainy season can lead to short supplies of energy. But for STIAP, this was before partnering with a local university, a few coffee industry veterans and a recent college graduate from North Carolina.

There is a sweet spot in the lives of many 20-something Americans that can be defined as post-college, pre-career. It's a time defined by self-reflection, though not necessarily by leisurely months spent on the Eurorail or at creative writing camps. For Matthew Rudolf, that time came in 2004, when he went to Guatemala, as he says, "to figure out what to do with my life." He was considering medical school, so he found work in a clinic in the city of Quetzaltenango, near the Nueva Alianza community, assisting doctors and doing translation. But back home he had established a personal interest in alternative fuels, having converted his car to run on pure vegetable oil. When he met a group of Americans who were passing through Guatemala in a biofuel-powered vehicle, he coordinated local media coverage. Due to that effort, Rudolf was asked to write an article on the road trippers for Entremundos, a local English-language magazine. He broadened his research to interview local alternative-fuel experts and enthusiasts on the state of renewable energy in Guatemala. On his way, he met professor Erick Gonzalez of the University of San Carlos, who invited him to help the school build a biodiesel reactor (an alternative-fuel processing system), through which he heard about Nueva Alianza's pursuit of alternative energy projects.

Rudolf then led a team of university students who worked in exchange for room, board and valuable experience to supply Nueva Alianza with a biodiesel reactor. When Hurricane Stan hit in October 2005, the system immediately was put to the test.

"The reactor made 20 gallons at a time, one little generator for the community," says Rudolf. "This was the first time biodiesel was used to power this community."

Up to that point, Rudolf had been trying to find resources to continue the project. "I was writing grant proposals all over the place. We needed to get proper funding." Enter Adam Teitelbaum, sales director at Barefoot Coffee Roasters in Santa Clara, Calif. He, too, has a vested interest in biofuels; Barefoot Coffee operates on 100-percent alternative energy through the purchase of green energy credits. Teitelbaum was researching alternative fuels on the Internet when, he says, "I found an obscure post by Matthew about Teitelbaumhis experience at Nueva Alianza after Hurricane Stan and how he lit the place up using a diesel generator with yellow grease." contacted Rudolf in Guatemala and got him in touch with Coffee Kids, which supports coffee-community projects in several Central American countries and Mexico.

Rudolf was at home in North Carolina during the April 2006 SCAA Conference & Exhibition when he met Coffee Kids Executive Director Carolyn Fairman and Nora Newman of Sweetwater Organic Coffee. Fairman was impressed by the scope of the Nueva Alianza project. "This is the first one Coffee Kids has worked on that has a direct environmental impact," she says. "It relates well to sustainability and also relates to alternative income, alleviates dependency on outside fuel—with a potential surplus and income there."

Newman also was enthusiastic upon meeting Rudolf, having been introduced to him by Teitelbaum at a gathering of Coffee Kids supporters at the SCAA conference. "We were really impressed by Matt's attitude and ideas. And we are really into biodiesel ourselves—we traveled to the conference using biodiesel," she says. "We are a tiny company É but we just had to give this kid some bread to make it happen."

Sweetwater and Coffee Kids both put capital toward equipment to help Nueva Alianza produce biodiesel more efficiently. Funds in hand, Rudolf returned to Nueva Alianza to upgrade its system. "At that time, we could make 65-gallon batches, and we were getting waste oil from hotels and restaurants that would sell it to us cheaply." Nueva Alianza now easily produces 100 gallons of biodiesel a week and has begun experimenting with the fuel in its vehicles. In addition to using waste oil, third-class macadamia harvests (nuts not suitable for human consumption) are pressed to make oil, and test plots of castor plants and jatropha curcas are in the works in lowland areas where coffee cannot be grown.

José Luis Zárate is an international program coordinator with Coffee Kids, and he has visited the community since the reactor has been up and running. "Their biodiesel plant has the necessary level of sophistication to get the job done, and no more. This is a positive thing, since it does not create an unnecessary dependence on costly renovations and repairs. This project was funded by Coffee Kids because, for STIAP, producing biodiesel is not the overriding goal. The goal is to generate the energy necessary to maintain and expand their [coffee] production system."

STIAP is now looking to promote biodiesel among neighboring communities and possibly to develop a network that could supply the group with raw materials for biodiesel production. "We're trying to get funding now to take this project more small-scale commercial," says Rudolf, "to ramp up production, get jatropha plantations in the ground, to replicate the program in other rural communities that want to supply their own fuel, and to set up a small farmer cooperative where they can bring their oil stocks like castor, soy, palm and macadamia to a central place where there's a press and biodiesel reactor."

As part of its programs, Coffee Kids facilitates meetings between its partners to share new ideas and programs. "Ideally, Nueva Alianza will be able to share their advances with other communities," says Kyle Freund, Coffee Kids' communications coordinator. "This can really spread the idea of appropriate approaches to energy, whether it's biodiesel, micro-hydroelectric or some other solution."

Given the global energy crisis and remote coffee-growing communities' already precarious access to resources, the advent of these programs and information sharing are nothing if not timely. Electricity rationing has begun in countries like Nicaragua, which could seriously affect coffee growers as they head into the next harvest season. "Growing biodiesel feedstock follows the sustainable model for coffee farms concerned with lowering their costs, diversifying their crops and growing their own fuel," says Teitelbaum. "Coffee farmers have traditionally been at the mercy of the C-market and widely fluctuating prices that many times has been responsible for problems of growing poverty and farmers having to leave their farms."

Which is what makes alternative energy projects all the more exciting. Newman's enthusiasm is palpable: "The potential is awe inspiring, particularly within the context of the remote regions our growers live and work in. This project is viable on a global scale and completely sustainable. And cheap. And easy to sustain."

Fairman stresses the importance of equipment that is easy to use and maintain. "The thing that's important to Coffee Kids is not just having the equipment, which can break down, in terms of sustainability. Being able to maintain and repair it in remote regions is key. And this fits perfectly with Coffee Kids' mission to produce coffee without outside dependence."

The one negative of global demand for alternative fuels is the potential for biofuel-intended crops to be grown on land that would be used for food production, which then drives up the cost of food, which ultimately has the biggest impact in the developing world. "We're willing to pay a lot for our fuels," says Rudolf. "Recent rise in corn and tortilla prices and surrounding concern is directly related to the increasing price of ethanol. Food prices are rising, and in places where 20 cents actually means something."

But Rudolf insists that projects like the one at Nueva Alianza are sustainable—even in the face of rising global demand and cost for all kinds of energy—because they are local and renewable. "Small, local projects are more about creating jobs and developing rural economies and independence," he says. "And we take advantage of waste resources—used vegetable oil and uncultivated land."

Rudolf is now executive director of Piedmont Biofuels, a cooperative in Pittsboro, N.C. He plans to work on more community-level projects and hopes Piedmont will provide an umbrella. "Sweetwater and Barefoot are interested in doing another Guatemala community project, so there's a possibility for that," he says. "The focus for me is always on rural economic development and community organizing."

New sources of capital are necessary to meet growing demand for energy projects such as the one at Nueva Alianza. It can be difficult to attract investment for small, rural projects; they can require greater time and effort to bring returns on investment than large conventional projects, and they often involve little-used technologies. Rudolf agrees that finding funding for small-scale projects can be difficult. "But it's not impossible," he insists, citing the Finish government and the Central American Bank of Economic Integration's (BCIE) financing of a number of small-scale biodiesel projects in El Salvador and Guatemala. "Now that we have done this at Nueva Alianza, three different groups—with money—have asked us to replicate the project in their communities." Rudolf has had to decline for now due to his commitments at Piedmont. But he knows the funding exists. "You just need to put together a good project team and convince the investors or donors that the project will be successful."

 

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