Filmmaker Michael Persinger with coffee farmer, Filipa Mendoza and translator Julieta Mendez Rojas. Courtesy of Michael Persinger
December 2004
School for Change
by Michael Persinger
Two years ago, I attended San Francisco’s first Green Festival and it had these impacts on my life: I drank my first good organic beer; I decided to drive less; and I learned about a dynamic grad school program focused on environment, social justice and psychology of change. Today I’m commuting on a sport utility bicycle, studying at Sonoma State University and completing a documentary film on sustainable coffee production as part of the school’s “Action for a Viable Future” program.
My graduate studies began with a course in “Critical Inquiry” that combined weekly readings and online postings with monthly Socratic dialogues on cultural mythology, democracy, capitalism, and alternative economic systems. After a full day of class, our cohort got in the habit of heading to a local café to discuss things like sustainable building design and the role of class in the formal economy. By spring, each of us had initiated a project. I am making a documentary on coffee that examines how consumption choices in the United States directly impact global ecological and social justice issues.
After oil, coffee is the world’s most traded commodity. For all the artistry and chic surrounding specialty coffee, the most striking truth about it is the global economic crisis devastating the farmers. While small-scale coffee farmers around the world are being paid the lowest commodity prices in 30 years, coffee retailers in the United States continue to enjoy robust profits. That reality became clear to me this summer while filming in the community of Agua Buena, Costa Rica. I stayed on the family farm of William Delgado where he produces coffee without the use of agrochemicals. His small-scale farm is rich in biodiversity and includes a wide range of native hardwoods and subsistence crops such as bananas and other fruit trees, as well as sugar cane and tubers.
In the Southern Zone of Costa Rica, coffee production is quite labor-intensive. The continuous afternoon rains that bless the region with wonderful coffee, also bring a lot of other vegetation and cause the dreaded “ojo del gallo” that plagues coffee leaves with round discolorations that resemble rooster’s eyes. The longer rainy season also means that the harvest season is long. These factors require even more labor (which is done here completely by hand) than in other coffee-growing regions.
During my stay in Agua Buena, I learned about this community’s innovative farming practices and their hope that these techniques will help reverse the economic downturn that has led others to turn their land into cow pasture, or abandon it altogether. I had the opportunity to work side-by-side with Delgado as we swung machetes to knock down the knee-high weeds, which in turn become biomass that naturally composts into the soil. Delgado, bent over at the waist, glided as he worked — his breathing, step, and swish of the machete all aligned. He has farmed this land for more than 20 years, the last three without pesticides or petroleum-based fertilizers. His yield has gone down nearly 75% while the land rebounds from chemical dependence. Delgado is among 650 farmers that are members of the Coopabuena RL cooperative. By their own initiative, and with the help of others such the Community Agroecology Network of UC Santa Cruz, they are transitioning to organic coffee, and have begun selling directly to customers in the United States by online mail order. This is their long-term vision of improving their quality of life by continuing to improve the quality of their coffee and also conserving the land.
Back at home, I sort through the footage hoping that I can give their story justice within the movie. Soon I will complete filming and begin post-production on the documentary tentatively titled, Start with Coffee. One of my colleagues is working with a committee to launch a local alternative currency, while another member of our cohort will make her second trip to Alaska to photograph a native subsistence fishing community. Each of us in the program is researching, building alliances, and developing materials as part of our projects. Action that is viable takes a variety of forms, but it always goes beyond reacting to leveraging power structures and invoking dialogue. This process begins with turning inward and finding the stories we can tell, and then going out and being witnesses.
Michael Persinger is completing his first documentory film.
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