2 July 2010, Central Highlands, Vietnam
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i am in a classroom full of farmers, young and old... some dressed up
for the occasion, some straight out of bed... all listening to Sunny, who is
our agronomist and the most jobless person in my company (not an easy title the
way we work)... he conducts 2-3 surveys a year and generally goes around
drinking beer with our people in different places all year long... he's
suitably fat and looks like the bad guy who turns into a snake in conan the
barbarian.
Sunny is in the local community hall, facing the farmers, who are
the most intent listeners i've ever seen inside a class room. like they're
reliving the excitement of going to school after years of toil in their coffee
fields. the room is dusty and damp even before the rains... the soft 8 am
sunlight makes everything look beautiful... the audience starts murmuring and Sunny
gets the projector projecting and the audience is enamoured by his desktop... a
few more mins to go... Sunny plays tom and jerry to entertain his
students-to-be... all eyes are fixed on tom as he chases jerry... something
falls on tom, flattening him, filling the classroom with laughter... but why
are we all here? why would my company give a fuck about farmers if we can't
make a little something out of it?
it all started with the coffee-drinkers in rich countries feeling bad
for the poor vietnamese farmers sitting in front of Sunny today. they said,
this is blood coffee! grown with no regard to society or environment or the
children of the farmers and workers... how do i know my coffee is not stained
by sweat from a child who ought to be in school? or a worker who doesn't get
decent working conditions? so here came UTZ which said i'll certify all the
good coffee... so if you see my name UTZ on the cover of the coffee you, since
its so distinctively meaningless, you know it has to be good... you can pay up
a little extra, drink in peace and sleep with the pride of having done your bit
for humanity. go have a party now... feel good about yourself, please.
so on a ton of coffee worth $1700 today, the farmer stands to get $10
extra if he does all the right things prescribed by UTZ. let's put that in
perspective now... the average farmer who has 1 hectare - or 3 tons of coffee,
stands to gain $30 - that is Rs. 1500 in extra income for the entire year... in
return for sending his kids to school, and ensuring the kids of his workers
too... and adhering to environmental issues like soil erosion and
deforestation... essentially things that he'd be hard-pressed to give a fuck.
enter capitalism... the $10 is not guaranteed. if the economy slips the
coffee companies will see fewer consumers paying up to feel good, hence they
will buy less of UTZ and the farmers have to watch the mood and pockets of the
rich consumers... then comes the middlemen... the actual premium is way higher
than $10, but what will the world come to if not for middlemen? so for the
trouble of waking up early and educating farmers and proving the goodness of
the coffee using documents which cannot be verified, i get a little cut... and
so does the little agent in the village... and so do the Nestles... after we've
all eaten our cuts, we also put it in our brochures and annual reports so our
investors can also feel good about themselves.
for me, the beauty lies in the inability to verify any of this. who
knows about kids in faraway lands and their trips to school? or the conditions
in remote farms and big factories... aren't we smart enough to know that $10 is
too little to expect a farmer to change. how come free-market brains switch off
here? don't we know that we're doing all this only for the money and nothing
else. so if a little fudging can happen, why would we do otherwise?
moving back inside the class room after cigarettes and coffee in a plastic
cover, i sit in the front row... Sunny is one third into his 3 hour monologue.
he shows pictures of coffee and fertilizers and gives free knowledge on the
right amount to be used... on how soil need N, P and K... from NPK
fertilizers... the slides are full of color, and all bright... one for each
line... a phone is ringing loudly... one farmers picks the call and speaks even
louder... a few farmers light cigarettes while the monologue continues... the
room is filled with the smell of smoke and Sunny's voice.
my head is spinning with all the vietnamese falling into my ears and
flashing into my eyes... i wish i were in school where i could sleep... its not
fun being the tall guy with big eyes, sitting in the first row. i try my best
to understand what he's saying... like a detective knitting together stray
clues.
Sunny is nearing the end of his talk... where he has a slide titled
'World 2070', which contains his views on the future of humanity... he shows
pictures of famine and floods, drought and wild storms, starvation, death and
suffering... the audience is suitably shocked and Sunny is happy... because it
gives him the necessary build-up for his final point in that day's monologue -
save the environment or else!
the farmers are called one by one to sign on papers confirming their
participation in today's session... free-market fanatics might prefer to ignore
my accountant chicks distributing $3 (Rs 140) to each farmer for having devoted
their mornings to our pockets.
class over - the middlemen shift to a local restaurant for lunch with
rice wine and beer... the village head repeats the same lengthy speech as he
raises a toast 5 times.. everyone is drunk... he asks me if i go massa... i
say yes, of course... he asks how many times i've been to massa... i ask him how many times he's downed beer in his life... he
says he can't remember... i pause for effect and feel like birbal while people laugh appreciatively at my wit and move on to getting drunk and erasing the day from
our collective memory.
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