Nica (4/5) Café, Malanga and a trip to Matagalpa

     We rose early monday to pile into the bus off to the city of Matagalpa further north in Nicaragua (population 430,000). We spent the better part of two hours driving to Matagalpa only to sit in the office of a company called PAC waiting to get right back on the bus for another hour and a half to a café finca (coffee farm) near the town of San Rafael. The group of farmers that we met with welcomed us warmly and gave us the rundown on coffee production and distribution for small farmers in Central America. I might be able to tell you a bit more about coffee than you ever thought a non coffee person would know, but instead I think I'll focus on the real reason we were there.

Bus ride into Matagalpa 

Hydro-Electric power found near San Rafael

     PAC, Pueblos en Acción Communitaria, was founded in 1996 with the intent of bringing small farmers together and allow them to pull loans from the organization as well as information from fellow farmers and organization leaders. We met with two coffee 'co-ops' as we would call them and they explained that PAC provides a credit history that allows the individual farmers and the co-ops to apply for loans. Often these loans are needed for small farmers to buy new seed or fix machinery and can almost always be repaid. The issue for the farmer is that individually they have no way of applying for the loan because they have no credit history. World relief was originally involved with kick-starting PAC, but soon stepped out as PAC became self sufficient. Producers and farmers of various crops come together to gain knowledge and support through PAC.

Coffee seedling

Travis translating as we discuss the coffee greenhouse

Mature coffee plant and all those beans 

The whole group learning about the steps to processing the beans

     We stayed the night in a great hostel not far from the PAC office (and only a block from delicious Mexican food for dinner!). Met a girl from Portland who was on her second week of six to eight months of travel through Central and South America and Australia and New Zealand, pretty courageous if you ask me! Interesting people around the hostel as there usually are in traveler friendly places. We had typical breakfast the next day and headed out once again into the countryside.

That my friends is a malanga plant (and a small one at that!)

Let's talk malanga!

Bean describing some part of the cleaning process for malanga

     This time our destination was a malanga processing plant that was another PAC venture. Malanga (very similar to taro root) must be processed before distributing to consumers. The process is difficult at best for small farmers to produce high enough quality products for foreign markets, but as malanga is very popular in places like Miami it can be a profitable farming venture. The cooperative of farmers that works with this particular processing plant prides itself on shipping out the highest quality malanga possible. That way they are ensured a large portion of the market and buyers who are always willing. There has been a slight slip in the prices of malanga in the last year or so and because of that PAC and the farmers have decided to begin to split the loads of malanga that are shipped out with oriental vegetables (squash, cucumber, zucchini, etc). 

Coffee Farmer

     We spent time at both locations discussing some of the diseases that are present with the different vegetables and how to successfully care for the plant from seeds to produce ready to ship. Both the café finca and the malanga plant were very interesting and provided a positive view of a practical response to a weak economical system that benefits and maintains the small farms and producers in the country of Nicaragua.
     We concluded the trip that afternoon with another stop by the Mexican restaurant and then got right back into the bus for the trip home to the Villa.

Hey look! Background of the blog came from this trip!