SHEEP, cows and Vikings: All things that come to mind when you think about Dannevirke. Forward-thinking ambassadors of fair-trade business, not so much. Meet Matt Lamason, and prepare to change your mind.
THIRTY-two year old Matt Lamason is the founder and director of 100% fair-trade Newtown coffee roasting company Peoples Coffee.
The passionate and driven young man started life on the family farm in Dannevirke.  
“I had a childhood full of farm adventures. I loved the space a farm allows a kid, and had no real dreams of the big city. It probably scared me in more ways than encouraged me,” he says.
After High School, Lamason hit a crossroads –deciding between working on the family farm, or pursuing further education elsewhere.
“I went overseas for a year and then did a year of farming for my granddad. I think being out on the farm on my own put me off. I’m a bit more social than that,” he says.
Lamason decided to attend Victoria University, but it wasn’t a case of love at first sight.
“It was a horrid time. I’d just come back from London, and I grieved the loss of those friends and that life for six months. I just wanted to return to England. The turning point was at Olive Cafe, on Cuba Street, when I had this amazing experience of talking and drinking coffee. I was sold on cafes. [Victoria] University life revolved around drinking good flat whites at places like Galleria Barista, in the quad mezzanine, which shut down last year,” he says.  
When Lamason graduated in 2002, he says he was the only person to do so with a double major in psychology and politics.
“University is a great place to ferment ideas. Everyone should have to do at least part of a BA, I don’t think commerce and marketing, or even the sciences, require much thinking of wider society and what being a citizen in it means,” he says.
Lamason studied the best and worst examples of international development practice under politics and development lecturer Reggie Mascarenhas.
“I learned about justice for the poor, and how there were business-minded people doing what they are passionate about, with a bias toward the poor. This was rather revelational for a middle class, white, educated male. I was inspired.”
A chat, over coffee, of course, proved to be the push Lamason needed.
“Many Fair Trade ideas came out of reading and burning the midnight oil with classmates, and their encouragement to do something about it. I remember sitting in the cafe in the Student Union Building, where a friend Dave Cross cornered me and said that he thought I should take the risk and do something about Fair Trade in business. It was a defining moment,”
At 24 years old, Lamason turned down a job in parliament to discover how to start a coffee roastery.
“Numerous local roasters pooh-poohed the idea, but I was convinced I was on to something. I was also driven by my new knowledge that there was a lot of injustice in the coffee trade that few people were talking about, let alone doing anything about.”
A year before People’s Coffee was founded; Lamason visited his first coffee farm in Nicaragua.
“They all seemed to have reasonably good, simple lives, as long as they could sustain them. I thought, ‘I want to be on the side of those guys’.”
Don Wilfredo was the first coffee farmer Lamason ever met, and he now has a Peoples Coffee espresso blend named after him – his face decorating the side of the bag.
Wilfredo, a passionate organic and sustainable farmer, owns approximately five acres of coffee, grown under the shade of rainforest and banana leaf. Lamason says most of the world’s coffee comes from small farms like this, that join together to form co-ops so they can sell beans in volume for a better price.
Lamason refers to Fair Trade terms that stipulate a “human element” in trading.
“It means farmers get a say in the price, in what they get paid. They also get an advance up to 60% before buyers get the coffee. You’re dealing with people with no backstops, subject to huge interest rates, with limited access to banks, so traditionally the buyers and roasters have a lot of power and say as to what happens.’
Fair Trade co-ops also get a premium on top of the price of coffee, which goes straight back into the community.
“This money is spent on building schools and health centres. The good thing about buying through Fair Trade principals is the social premium develops local infrastructure, as opposed to giving cash in hand.”
Dealing exclusively in Fair Trade comes at a cost, but because Lamason isn’t “out to make a million”, those costs barely register on the receipts of consumers.
“It has not been easy financially, and it took a few years for the bank to back us. We have to be smart, and we have to connect even more with our customers… We need them to come on this journey with us, and to pay more for their coffee, because there is no other room in the value chain to move.”
When it comes down to it, the welfare of these farmers is what Lamason is most passionate about.
“Almost every place we visit, we have these sit downs where the farmers get the opportunity to speak and tell us how their co-op is going. They feel so enamoured that we would come all this way to meet with them - they always talk about the hope this offers them, and the sense of solidarity with their lives and communities. This is such a privilege. It connects us as people, whereas so much of the coffee, cocoa, sugar, cotton, you name it, is a faceless commodity, bought and sold on paper with no thought of the people and communities who must bear the consequences of profiteering.”