the challenge

To bring all This Side Up’s partners together in physical space. To support the creation of strong, lasting, and trustworthy bonds within our network by providing the time and space for all the agents in our value chain to gather and share, from farmer and exporter to importer, roaster and barista. To keep the momentum of this beautiful gathering also after everyone goes back to their daily lives.

 

WHERE: The event has been hosted next to the World of Coffee in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Milan. 


WHAT: To facilitate the horizontal and vertical connection between TSU coffee value chain agents. 

WHO: This Side Up, The Coffee Circle and This Side Up roaster partners.

The investments

Milan Producer Crossover, 2022: €16,156

Roasters: € 3,996,00

The exchange through out the years has allowed ongoing cooperation between roasters and us. This amount supported the cost of the plane tickets for the producers

Amsterdam, KIT, 2018: €5,192,00

Berlin Producer Crossover, 2019: €4,125

Roasters:
€ 3,692,00

Tickets purchased by roasters partners helped us pay for the producers' plane tickets to Amsterdam for the first time. We gathered in the emblematic and historic KIT.

Roasters:
€ 625,00

As in the previous year, the tickets to the event helped us purchase the plane tickets for our partners at origin.

 

This Side UP: € 12,16,00

This includes the cost of the location, food, accommodation an travel expenses for our network of producers.

This Side UP: € 1,500,00

We paid for the accommodation, rent venue, food, and transportation.

This Side UP: € 3,500

This allowed us to pay food, rent venue, plane tickets for partners, amongst others.

 

Goals

To discuss the future of agriculture as a global network of growers and roasters.

To facilitate knowledge interchange between agents in our value chain.

To assist producers, roasters, and actors in our value chain to know more about each other by facilitating the resources that can benefit everyone. 

 

PROJECT
timeline

 

amsterdam 2018

The primary outcome of this event was to get everyone to know each other. And The main output from the 2018 crossover was that relationships were formed between our producer partners that still exist today. Some of these relationships have turned into a significant interchange of knowledge and friendships. Some have been to each other's farm, they even share business models with each other. This lateral communication led to many conversations: the concept of asking each other for advice and not looking to some sort of consultant, started happening.

 

berlin 2019

Around 120 coffee professional gather for the second time. The relationships that sprouted in 2018 became stronger. By meeting again, conversations became more in-depth. For the first time in our network, specialty robusta was discussed at length, astounding many, even seasoned coffee professionals. By bringing together the network from the Coffee Circle and This Side Up, many unique perspectives and cross-pollinations were born.

 

 

milAn 2022

This gathering reflected what we learnt from the first two events. To introduce the topic of regenerative agriculture, we held our first Virtual Crossover a month prior to the event to not waste valuable time together. On the main day, there were no main speakers, just moderators that guided the group's conversations between 76 coffee professionals in our network. Joint projects between roasters, social lenders and producers are born. It was all about exchange  and harnessing all the creative energy from our partners from all over the world.

 

Copenhagen 2024

June 2024

This time we had a bold and clear goal: to shape our next ten years together. Ten years ago, we had a dream too - to make direct trade possible for roasters of any shape and size. And it’s come true in ways beyond our imagination. So now, ten years later, we asked our community to guide our next decade together. How can we expand what we did up to today to amplify our dream not just in specialty, but in the whole coffee world? What would an ideal coffee world even look like? We framed the question along the two basic drivers of future behaviour: what would the coffee world look like in ten years if fear would be the dominant emotion, and what if trust would guide the future?

 

RESOURCES

 

Berlin Producer Crossover, 2019.

The price of green coffee over the last few years has plummeted at an alarming rate. Whilst hosting the Producer Crossover event during the World of Coffee 2019 with This Side Up, we took the chance to talk one-to-one with some of the industry’s leading authorities on the matter.

 
 

2022 Virtual Crossover - Why Regenerative?

To introduce the attendees of the 2022 Producer Crossover in Milan to the concept of Regenerative Agriculture, we invited two of our most regenerative farming experts to bring this complex concept to life with their insights from decades of experience.

Alfredo Cunhal Sendim: owner of Freixo do Meio in Central Portugal and long time innovator in agroforestry. Specialised in restoring the unique "montado" forest system but designs and coordinates projects in various climates, including a coffee project in the Azores.

Ruben Borge: microbe and organic fertiliser expert. Helps communities worldwide to restore their soils using locally available and affordable means. Worked with several of our partners in Rwanda and Congo, so we have seen his successes first hand.

 

WHAT IS REGENERATIVE AGROFORESTRY?

By Lennart Clerkx

Far from straightforward, one of the main goals of the 2022 Producer Crossover is to gather a common understanding of this concept…

 

Regenerative agriculture: Farming in nature’s form

By, Louisa Durkin and Andrew McCue

 

Tirion’s Agroforestry Manual

If you want to know more about the nitty gritty of how regenerative agriculture applies to the coffee context from the point of view of the farmer / practitioner, browse through this very practical guide Tirion Keatinge of PretaTerra made for us.

Project images (Producer crossover 2018).

Feel free to use when supporting this initiative.

Project images (Producer crossover 2019).

Feel free to use when supporting this initiative.

Project images (Producer crossover 2022).

Feel free to use when supporting this initiative.

 

Background

 

The path to the Producer Crossover began in 2016 when Lennart Clerkx, founder of This Side Up, created a WhatsApp group including all the producers from our network. The original idea was to facilitate a forum that could help farmers communicate. This virtual exchange allowed producers to access an international network for the first time, and the response was highly positive. It quickly became clear that farmers had a lot of valuable knowledge to share and that our role was to support this to happen. 

The event crystallised into the first Producer Crossover in 2018. This gradual development led our network of partners to have in-depth conversations, with us becoming the “facilitator” of such conversations. After these experiences, it became clear that most of the exchange, the main reason for holding the gatherings, happened in the breaks! Therefore, in 2022 we created a gathering without keynote speakers, 100% exchange and discussion, moderated. More voices were heard and ideas cross-pollinated.

The future of the Crossover is bright. More and more producers stay in touch with each other, roasters and development professionals start projects in origin… We are up for the challenge to create more events, both virtual and in the flesh!

Attendees at the Producer Crossover in Berlín, in 2019, gather and talk after the event.

“Look at how far you’ve come from 2018 to now.
”
— Luiz Roberto Saldanha, Capricornio, Brazil
“We got more ideas from fifteen minutes drinking beer with the world at one table - than from a year of online interactions.”
— Lennart Clerkx

Future Steps. 

  1. To ignite this community more by consolidating it in the best possible way, according to everyone's needs, interests and resources.   

  2. Make each Xover event stronger, tighter and more specific by gradually developing the conversations that concern us all. 

  3. To evaluate, within our community, the interest to develop the projects that came out from the Regenerative Agriculture Crossover gathering. These are the projects:




Ideas that SPROUTED IN MIlan.

1. Communication Cooperative

 Create a communication platform that spreads the word and practices on regenerative farming.  In this space, everyone on the coffee value chain is represented, everyone is heard: all needs are met.  Everyone participates and feels included because the language is accessible for  everyone. 

2. Risk Sharing 

This will be a platform that connects roasters and farmers by ways of experimentation. A financial network of supporters will allow farmers to create the experiments designed by the roasters, without them taking any risks. 

3. Regen Coffee, back to nature

Prove how agroforestry grown coffee can offer a new scope over organic coffee. Prove how agroforestry can offer a better cup. 

4. The Forest Unit

 Design a step by step process that promotes agroforestry practices, motivated by financial incentives. This will be shared amongst neighbouring farmers to motivate them to switch certain practices. 

5. Relationships between Roasters and Producers/ Link  agroforestry with financial development

Roasters and producers experimenting together by developing an agroforestry project. By creating a baseline that enables the producers to evaluate how things were before and after the project, farmers will be able to measure what’s happening for themselves.  

6. Demonstration plot

By creating a community plot where farmers can communicate and experiment with regenerative farming, farm leaders will promote the benefits of agroforestry practices. 

7. Self-Sustaining farm, everything that a farmer needs is in his/her farm

 How to integrate other crops and animals? How do we deal with erosion? How would we regenerate the soil and retain water? How to increase knowledge? How are we going to communicate with the farmers? with the buyers? 

“At other conferences they never ask us what we really need. They just ask what THEY really want.””
— Farmer at the Producer Crossover Berlin (2019)