Alieth Polo
Regional PECA and Sustainability Director
Growing coffee is a farming tradition with centuries of history. Most producers nowadays grow coffee thanks to the legacy of knowledge and experience passed on to them through their parents, grandparents, great grandparents and beyond. For today’s producers, coffee cultivation means practicing what they learned from their family, as well as incorporating advice and techniques from their neighbors and peers.
The Development of the Compass
The Compass is a tool that allows coffee growers to organize, plan, register, and follow up their farm activities regardless of where they produce coffee. The Compas is comprised of two parts: the ACTIVITY PLANNER and a CALENDAR TO SCHEDULE ACTIVITIES. The activity planner has two wheels, the first one featuring the months of the year divided by weeks, and the second displaying all the agronomic tasks for disease and plague management and sustainability activities. Additionally, the compass has a calendar where coffee growers can document monthly activities. The tool was developed based on work from the different coffee research centers like Colombia’s CENICAFE, Costa Rica’s CATIE, Guatemala’s CEDICAFE of ANACAFÉ as well as key notes taken from the Colombian Coffee Grower Manual of CENICAFE. One of the foundations of this tool, besides the rigorous scientific research and our team’s know-how, was to consider first and foremost Latin American coffee growers' reality and needs. As such, the Coffee Compass does not require growers to have any formal agronomy training, much less Wi-Fi, batteries, or even electricity. It is a timeless tool that can be used by coffee growers harvest after harvest.
evelio zuñiga, palestina, huila (colombia)
jesús orlando lemus, de la plata, huila.
The Coffee Compass is centered around the flowering dates on a farm, which dictate when producers must carry out critical processes and activities over the course of the year, up until harvest. Using only this basic information, coffee growers can identify the dates when they need to undertake the most critical duties on their farms, such as control pests and diseases, create fertilization plans, perform weed controls, as well as plan for harvest and post-harvest phases. We’ve also included other activities that are vital to specialty coffee production under sustainability parameters. With this tool, coffee growers can schedule critical activities such as maintenance of drying stations or wet mills, shade management, and a variety of other essential tasks.
Up to date, we have donated more than 2,000 units of the compass to coffee growing families that work with Caravela in the seven origins where we work.
We believe the Coffee Compass will be a game changer for farmers, guiding them to keep a more organized, productive, and profitable farm. Because in the end, it isn’t coffee that’s special; it’s the millions of growers whose hard work and passion yield a product that uplifts millions of people around the world.
We have available for sale a limited number of units for growers all over the world. With the incomes received, we will be able to donate more Compasses to small-scale farmers
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