IN THE SPOTLIGHT
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Faces and portraits
20 Years of ICP:
International cooperation helps individual households
20 Years of ICP:
International cooperation helps individual households
Sara Morrocchi, who was moderating the event, took the audience on a brief journey through ICP’s history. Neumann Gruppe is one of the founding members, which are all family-owned. After the coffee crisis in 2001 Michael R. Neumann, managing shareholder of Neumann Gruppe at the time, took the initiative and gathered the first companies around the table. His goal here was to create an organization that would fill the void in the industry and address the problems that plagued the sector. Since then, the pre-competitive non-profit organization has aimed to make smallholder coffee farmers able to compete through sustainable practices and to provide them with access to essential services to improve their livelihoods. Over the past 20 years, ICP has served more than 90,000 family farmer households. Shared values among family businesses are the glue of collaboration.
Between the various speakers, videos of coffee farmers were shown to give the audience their perspective. Among other things, the farmers wished that consumers would respect and appreciate their work and passion for coffee more. The videos also showed that the basic attitude of the farmers regarding their way of working is not different from that of the ICP shareholders. Both are characterized by a high level of passion for coffee as a product, thinking long-term, having to operate in an unstable environment, and adapting flexibly and courageously to a wide variety of potential problems.
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Lenita Ingelin, Managing Director of the Finnish company Paulig, shared a guiding principle for ICP’s work with viewers in a video greeting that fits perfectly: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Current and future challenges were also discussed lively in the meeting. The topics addressed included the issue of climate change, how to keep younger people in agriculture and, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. All of this, the speakers agreed, can only be overcome by working together. Giuseppe Lavazza appealed to himself and his colleagues to be patient with the projects: “to create an impact takes time.” Building trust among farmers and with cooperatives is crucial to ICP’s future work, he emphasized. The main objectives of the ICP remain helping smallholder families improve their processes, productivity, and quality. ICP will also continue to strengthen collaboration in farm organizations and enhance access to markets.
Michael Opitz, Managing Director of Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung, emphasized that ICP’s success is based on a learning component. Through various projects, ICP participants learn about the needs and challenges coffee farmers face and how to overcome them. Getting out of poverty must remain the overarching goal in the work for smallholder families, he said. The Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung is currently implementing various ICP projects in the origins.
Closing the event, Michael R. Neumann pointed out that it will remain very important for ICP to stick together and preserve the spirit that has made ICP strong over the past 20 years. Or, as Giuseppe Lavazza put it in a nutshell: “We have to go straight and do our best.”
Working remotely, meeting virtually, finding digital solutions – these are just some experiences that most of us have become familiar with during the last months. Out of these new working conditions, ideas and projects within NKG have evolved – here’s an insight into some of them.
Despite Covid-19 restrictions, roaster clients and employees of NKG found a way to discuss important market developments at “NKG Roaster Day 2021”. For the first time, the event took place in a virtual environment – a challenging and inspiring experience at the same time.
Stay home – stay safe: this has been the motto for almost one and a half years now. Not being allowed to go out and visit our favorite cafés and not even our workplaces, many of us had to enjoy our daily dose of caffeine at home. One of the few advantages about that: we were free to choose our favorite cup from the shelf!
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