Level Ground Trading

Was founded by four Canadian families for the purpose of improving the lives of disadvantaged producers through trade. The company's first trade relationship was setup through Hugo Ciro with a cooperative of small-scale coffee farmers in Antioquia, Colombia.

From interviews and visits with community members Hugo heard that the farming families' greatest desire was to see their children go to school. Hugo found a group of dedicated teachers and community members who joined together to form Famicafé. In that first year, six students were provided full scholarships to high school. These original students all completed high school with top marks and are now attending university and technical colleges on Famicafé scholarships.

Back in Canada, the Colombian coffee arrived—so much that we joked that we would have to store it in our living rooms! A local roaster provided access to roasting equipment after hours and so we roasted the coffee in very small batches every day from midnight to 5 am. The coffee was sold in Ten Thousand Villages stores across Canada.

In 1999, Level Ground moved to its own roasting and packaging facility in Central Saanich (north of Victoria, B.C.).

Hugo also saw a need and desire to diversify the local economy so that families were not solely dependent on the wildly fluctuating coffee market. One idea was to market the fruit from the trees that shade the coffee on the farms. In 2001, Level Ground Trading donated funds to purchase a commercial dehydrator, sponsored a Colombian agronomist to come to Canada and learn food drying techniques and established an independent Colombian fruit drying company in Bogotá. This company is providing economic and social development in two ways:

1) it is creating a new market for fruit and pays a fair price to small scale farmers;

2) it works with a local relief and development agency in order to provide employment for displaced women from the Cazuca township.

All employees of the fruit-drying company receive fair wages, health benefits, and school tuition for their families. In April 2002, Hugo visited Bolivia to establish a trade relationship there. The UNDP (United Nations Development Program) had deployed a team of technical advisors to provide specialized technical assistance to Aymara coffee farmers and to promote international trade for their unique variety of specialty coffee.

Level Ground was pleased to be the first Fair Trade importer of this coffee to North America

In November 2002 the Bolivian coffee and the first trial Frutos (dried tropical fruit) from the Fruandes in Bogota arrived! Soon after, Panela (Colombian cane sugar) arrived and Level Ground was working hard to partner with stores to sell these products.

By 2003, Level Ground was bursting at the seams (some office staff had moved to a Volkswagen van in the parking lot) and therefore purchased and renovated a larger facility. This move included the installation of two roasters and provided room for storage of our Colombian coffee, decaf, Bolivian organic, Panela (cane sugar) and Frutos (dried tropical fruit).

In 2004 & 2005 we developed relationships with CAC Pangoa in Peru and launched Cafe Pangoa. We helped Fruandes move to a solid business footing in Colombia and launched two important Green Initiatives; EnviroTotes to customers on Vancouver Island and an organic pilot project in Colombia where 25 families are working together with an agronomist to learn about producing certified organic coffee.

In 2006 we were feeling crowded yet again and moved all office staff upstairs to give the production team a little elbow room (there were now 20 people, sacks of coffee, Frutos, sugar, roasting and packaging equipment etc all coinciding in 3000 sq ft.) The big excitement this year was the visits to East Africa through which we were privileged to establish trading relationships in Tanzania and Ethiopia. We were also pleased to be led through an IFAT External evaluation in May 2006.

2007 became the year of bureaucracy for Level Ground (don't laugh). With 28 people grew from a collection of individuals to a team following process. This was good for us as an FTO because it means that we are having to wrangle all our common practices and values and get them down on paper in the form of policies for decision making. A benefit of this process was building a structure for providing transparency and accountability—something we’ve always sought to do but have only been able to manage on an informal basis.

2008 was the year we FINALLY moved to a larger facility. We no longer feel like we're crammed onto a subway car all day, everyday and the elbow room is greatly appreciated. With a larger facility and larger contracts we stepped up to write and implement more stringent standards and were recently recognized as a organic food processing facility.