A Coffee Solidarity Network that
Nurtures the Swarm of Ecological and Community Life
“No coffee without forests! No coffee without campesino livelihoods!”
These are the affirmations converging the work of organized coffee farmers, CAN and the AgroEco® Coffee direct solidarity trade network. For 20 years, CAN has sustained this network with cooperatives, roasters, ethical importers and students amid the sticky webbing of a dominant economic society that operates on profit-making relationships, and a specialty coffee world often organized around the incoming and outgoing waves of coffee fads. Yet AgroEco ® Coffee remains steady in its commitments as it inspires action in a new generation committed to building agrofood systems that nourish the swarm of ecological and community life.
Large-scale importers and roasters, and their associated investors, control the global coffee trade undermining the collective-decision making of cooperatives. Meanwhile, new coffee trends, emerging from specialty fair trade coffee, increasingly coalesce on flavor and aesthetics. Even these would-be alternatives now aim to provide ethically-minded coffee drinkers a minimalist chic experience based on newly discovered flavor notes. This recent coffee craze dilutes commitments to cooperatives, organized farmers, and community ecological sustainability.
In this landscape, CAN and partners swarm to find creative ways to bring AgroEco® Coffee to California, New York, and even Japan, directly from Campesinos in the Agrarian Struggle Cooperative in Veracruz, Mexico, and the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives in San Ramon, Nicaragua. CAN coordinates a patchwork of activities to make this possible. We accompany agroecological farming practices and knowledge sharing, carefully 
schedule with farmers and importers, facilitate direct and transparent negotiations for prices above fair trade, and bolster cooperatively managed revolving loan funds: the Women’s Unpaid Labor Fund & the Sustainable Agriculture Fund.
CAN’s method of direct negotiations with all partners relies on a review with farmers of their ever changing realities due to climate change, price hikes on cost of goods, and even consumer trends so together we can confront shocks and impacts on our ability to maintain the flow of coffee. This translates directly to the care of soil fertility, biodiverse forests, and women’s active participation in cooperative decision making. Making
adjustments when necessary we work together and redistribute burdens away from farmer cooperatives sharing the risks inherent in coffee production and trade throughout our network.
THE AGROECO SWARM
When the cost of goods in the south soared in 2023, CAN facilitated new agreements for a much needed increase in price sales to help farmers and cooperatives cover these gaps while making it economically possible for buyer partners to make their annual purchase. Because we work at a community-to-community scale, moving small lots of coffee, our partner importer gathers multiple small coffee lots, and other goods, to make a whole shipping container possible. And while the lure of coffee fashions sometimes seem to redirect attention away from land and community wellbeing, the new generation powering AgroEco® Coffee in California creates spaces with students and community to keep solidarity at the forefront of AgroEco® Coffee. CAN’s AgroEco® coordinator and farmer’s market youth host coffee cuppings, facilitate workshops in university classes, 
participate in harvest festivals, and simply build relationships with the people who purchase AgroEco® Coffee at the Cabrillo College Aptos Farmer’s Market every week. In this way CAN nurtures the swarm needed to sustain this solidarity economy.
MULTIPLY
Every cup of AgroEco® Coffee nurtures the swarm of life. For over 20 years we have remained stubbornly active building an alternative we are eager to keep multiplying with the new generations who seek the swarm of life.
Towards Building Solidarity Economies that
Nurture the Swarm of Life
