Here, There, Yaoundé

   This past week I started a little trip to Bamenda on Tuesday in order to meet with Philip and plan out our next steps following the completion of the field visits. We are hoping to start organizing regular training sessions with each of our farmer groups and we also needed to discuss how we are going to handle delivering advances to our farmers. Advances are a standard part of doing business here and I’ll take some time to describe what we end up doing with that after I’ve had a chance to see it myself.

First things first upon arriving home.

   I was planning on traveling back to Oku on Thursday, but Wednesday night I received a text from Pierre telling me that there was an inspector from our certifying agency passing through Yaoundé in the next day or two. Funnily, about one year ago, when I first came to Cameroon I had a very similar experience: my boss calling from another country with a sudden assignment to head to Yaoundé for some kind of meeting. This time the pace was a lot more leisurely and I didn’t take a night bus (which I actually refuse to do now), but in both cases I didn’t pack nearly enough pants (this time two would have sufficed, oh well). 

   So I got to Yaoundé on Friday and the inspector (Teresa) and I arranged to meet in the evening. In the afternoon I checked in to my hotel, organized my thoughts and the questions I wanted to ask later that night, then took a nice walk around the city to stretch out after the bus ride and get some dinner (grilled fish, good city food). After that I went to meet Teresa, so not a ton of time for sightseeing, unfortunately.

   Our meeting was essentially a very pleasant conversation about what we have accomplished so far as an Internal Control System (ICS), what work we still have to accomplish, and Teresa’s opinions and advice on some of the less obvious problems that present themselves to people like us. As we spoke, I got a familiar feeling of anticipation and apprehension that I think is pretty much identical to the feeling I used to get at the start of every college semester when the professors would present the syllabi and I’d look forward to all the information we’d cover but also wonder how I’d get all the assignments done in time. At least there are no $150 textbooks to buy in this case.

   On the side of being encouraging, it seems like the field visits were done well. We collected the right sorts of information and we were getting them done at a pretty good pace (45-90 minutes, about the same time we’ll expect to use for our Internal Inspections). Similarly, the spatial distribution of our farms doesn’t seem to be any problem. I had been worried that we might be spreading a little far for our small staff, but Teresa’s experience tells her we shouldn’t worry about it. In all, it seems that we have a good jump on much of the documentation and organization we need to have in place.

   On the other hand, it seems that almost nothing we have started could be considered complete at this point. Frustratingly, it may be the case that these are the sorts of things that are never completed; rather, they are amended and refined for as long as the program is in place, dangerous for someone with a perfectionist streak. Looked at it a different way this is freeing; we can leave some pieces only partially formed and let time and circumstance complete them later. For example, Teresa and I agreed that we can simply leave our ‘Allowed Input’ list blank at the start as there are no purchased inputs our farmers are in the habit of using that aren’t strictly prohibited.

   The most distressing revelation is that Teresa does not regard our strategy of encouraging farmers to change part of their production to organic and keep part as conventional (a way to hedge the bet) as wise from a certification standpoint. It seems like we may have to return to quite a few farmers to encourage them to convert all of their holdings or maybe find another place to process their inorganic coffee. In any case, this part won’t be fun for me as it will mean I need to reverse something I said earlier.  When the time comes to talk about this, I certainly hope I have something positive to bring to the table at the same time.

   Finally, our discussion changed my perception of the relationship between our ICS, the farmers, and our certifier. If there are two major responsibilities between those parties, (1) ensuring the farms are up to the organic standard and (2) ensuring that the farms are well monitored and evaluated, I had seen those responsibilities mostly resting on the ICS and the certifier, respectively. In the last few days, the responsibilities migrated down the chain so that it is really in the hands of the farmers to keep their farms up to snuff and in our hands to watch and evaluate them, with just occasional oversight from the certifier. The ICS will be ready for that second shift, but I think some of our farmers would agree with my old view on the first. Remember, no coffee farmers in Oku asked for someone to come along and certify them as organic growers. It is important that our staff is on the same page and very clear about the expectations a farmer is going to be held to and in the next few weeks we’ll be separating the true believers from the opportunists.