I want to be a hippy

Good morning all and sundry. I've had a busy last couple of days, so didn't get a chance to update the blog yesterday. On Tuesday I went to visit one of the Greenshops, outlets run by Keystone where the organic products produced by the villagers and tribesfolk are sold. Honey is a big seller - as you can see!

Yesterday I visited one of the Production Centres. These are places where the farmers sell their produce centrally to the village women, who put the products through some initial stages of processing to add value to the products, eg cleaning, drying, sorting and packaging.

We spent a good couple of hours chatting away to the village women. Or rather, I spent a couple of hours chatting away to the Leo and Anu, who interpreted, and they spent a couple of hours chatting to the village women. This tripartite conversation was tricky at first, but after a while the conversation began to flow and I found out some really useful information, especially about what their goal was as regards the Production Centre. I'll have to factor these ideas into the Business Plan I am pulling together.

One of the things that struck me was, although it had enjoyed a great deal of success thus far, there was still a huge amount of potential for future development. I guess I couldn't help it, my Western commercial instincts coming to the fore! For instance, we watched some people processing coffee. I felt so ignorant, having only a vague idea that it came from berries than were husked to release the beans or seeds. The beans are then dried in the sun. The Production Centre has three big barrelfulls of beans, which they sold in this relatively unprocessed state. If they could invest in a roasting machine (bit like an oven I guess) then they could sell the beans roasted and ground, and develop their own brand of coffee. This would add huge amounts of value to the sale price, and would surely improve margins. The tricky part is getting the beans evenly roasted throughout though, hence the need for a proper machine, and of course training to gain the expertise.

So all in all a great day, and very inspiring to see what a difference Keystone are making to the lives of the village ladies and the farmers. One of the farmers asked me what the seasonality of English food was. I had to think for a second. I told him that the big supermarkets imported stuff from all over the world, so the effect of seasonality was reduced. As for true, organic English food, dairy produce is pretty much year round now, with root vegetables at their best in the winter and green beans and salad in the summer. I didn't have too much of an idea to be honest , and desperately tried to think back to my Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall books. It certainly made me think about what an English consumer means by organic and what it means over here for Keystone. Here it is about the bigger picture - no chemicals added to fertilisers and pesticides, certainly no chemicals added to the food, good wages paid to the labourers who produce and manufacture the goods, produced in the local area and sold in the local area. I'm turning into a right hippy and .... oh god, no! I've just realised - the beard, the longer hair!! I really am turning into a hippy!! Noooooooooo!!!!! I even tried to get hold of a guitar over here. Next it'll be flowery shirts and a camper van, man! Please, save me - send me pictures of filofaxes, fox hunts, fur coats, indulgent, materialistic possessions like DVD players, anything, I beg you!