After a turbulent arrival to one of the biggest airports I’ve ever been, a very angry migration Officer who shouted on me many questions like I was worse than a criminal and the disappearance of my luggage, finally I was in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The reason, to participate in the main global meeting of the coffee industry: Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) Conference 2009.

Downtown Atlanta seemed to be a very nice and quiet city. The days after the arrival would change my opinion in some way. Nevertheless, I was ready and excited to participate in the conference because it was going to be an excellent opportunity to meet current coffee customers of Shared Interest and specially, potential new ones. The designated place for it was the Georgia World Congress Center, an incredibly huge facility. The previous day to starting the activities, TransFair USA organized a producer forum, full of presentations oriented to FairTrade producer groups. We had a particular presence in one panel about social lenders thanks to our friend Hugo Villela. After that presentation, I realized there were organizations largely bigger than Shared Interest with massive amounts of capital to lend. But, it didn’t make me feel bad or “little”, on the contrary, it would imply a bigger effort, or even better, look it as an opportunity of establishing alliances in favour of producers and our work.

Hugo had told me some stories about the conferences of previous years, but there is nothing like the real experience to fully understand how the incredibly enormous industry of the second biggest commodity in the world was. Such tiny grains with delicious smell could move billions (or trillions) of dollars. Nevertheless, it is not just about money. Behind it, there were hundreds of thousands of individuals and producer groups who benefited of it.  And our job was to help them. I had different meetings with all kind of producers, since the biggest and very well organized ones to the smaller but enterprising ones. It took three days to meet most of them, meetings after meetings. It was a very hard work, not only for me but also for my colleagues Hugo and Elisabeth. We met other social lenders, NGOs, individual contacts, buyers and a wide variety of organizations and institutions related to the coffee industry and the FairTrade world. At the end, the three of us agreed there was an enormous potential of lending in Latin America for FairTrade coffee. With dozens of business cards with me and plenty of new contacts, I was sure that our trip to Atlanta was a success.

Naturally, we also had opportunity to enjoy some of the hospitality of the Atlanta people (during the day) and socialize in some party organized by the Nicaraguan delegation, crowned by Latin music, great food and fantastic “Flor de Caña”, a typical liquor of the country. But, during the night, the hospitality of the city was completely different. I was almost robbed when I walked back to our hotel. Hugo was not as lucky as me… It was all part of the adventure.

The last day, when I took the plane to return home, it came to my mind many of the faces I had met during the trip. I was completely sure I would see those faces in the very near future again.

Paul Sablich – RDE South America.

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