| Coffee bulletin November 2001 Volume 6 - Number 8 |
1|
Protest exploitation of
farmers
Nationwide Day of Action Against Folgers December 15, 2001
Millions of coffee farmers around the world who depend on their harvests to provide for their families are facing debt and starvation. That's because global coffee prices have plummeted in recent years, and are now at an all-time low of less than 50 cents per pound. This worldwide coffee crisis threatens to ruin an entire generation of families and is causing problems such as malnutrition in Nicaragua, rural unrest in Mexico, and increased drug cultivation in Colombia.
At the Procter and Gamble shareholder meeting on October 9, 2001, Global Exchange called on Folgers, the largest coffee brand in the US, to immediately begin offering its consumers the choice to buy "Fair Trade certified" coffee. Folgers said No!
Last year, Fair Trade cooperatives produced 165 million pounds of coffee yet only 30 million pounds were sold under Fair Trade terms. That means 135 million pounds of coffee - that we need to create a demand for! With just 5% of Procter & Gamble¹s purchasing, we could DOUBLE the amount of Fair Trade coffee sold WORLDWIDE!!
Even as farmers struggle to survive, consumers haven't seen any discounts because Folgers is pocketing the difference. While P & G¹s Folgers brand made over $1 billion last year, the average coffee farmer made about $300. This is outrageous and morally unacceptable!
The Solution? Fair Trade Coffee
"Fair Trade Certified" coffee guarantees farmers a minimum of $1.26 per pound. With this income, farmers can put food on the table and shoes on their kids' feet. Although 100 other US coffee companies have already made a commitment to Fair Trade, Folgers has not yet done so, choosing instead to let millions of farmers and their families get roasted and ground.
Outraged? What you can DO:
Participate in the "Nationwide Folgers Day of Action" on December 15, 2001. Let Folgers know that it's wrong to exploit farmers in a time of crisis. Download the Day of Action flyer http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/coffee/folgers.html
Distribute leaflets about the coffee crisis and Folgers wherever Folgers is sold. Download the leaflet at the website above.
Write or fax a letter to Procter and Gamble, the company that owns Folgers. Fax a letter direct from our website at our website above. To send an e-mail, go to the Folgers website http://www.folgers.com. Call them at 1-800-937-9745 to demand Fair Trade coffee.
Gather petitions asking Folgers to start retailing Fair Trade coffee. http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/coffee/folgers.html
Call or write us for more ideas and details, and to let us know if you¹re planning an action. Contact Melissa at melissa@globalexchange.org or 415.255.7296 x245.
Farmers deserve Fair Trade!!
Let's all get together and KICK THE CAN!
2| P&G eschews fair-trade coffee offered by some sellers
By JOHN NOLAN
CINCINNATI‹Procter & Gamble Co. is resisting the decision of some companies to sell coffee that returns more profits to growers. Instead, P&G prefers its tradition of helping poor communities where the coffee is grown.
P&G, an industry leader with $1 billion in annual coffee sales through its Folgers brand, says its operations in coffee-producing countries have raised millions of dollars to support education programs, build or remodel schools and donate computers to schools. The company produces coffee in countries ranging from Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico to Thailand and China.
P&G spokeswoman Margaret Swallow said the company believes direct assistance to growers' communities and schools is more effective than selling what is called fair-trade coffee.
"Fair-trade coffee is just one element," Swallow said. "If you look at the big picture, there are a lot of ways to do it."
But an activist urging P&G to sell fair-trade coffee products said Wednesday that she thinks it helps growers work their way out of poverty.
Deborah James, fair-trade director for the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange, said she is waiting for P&G's response to the request she made at its annual shareholders meeting Tuesday.
Sara Lee Corp., whose brands include Chock Full o' Nuts and Chase & Sanborn, began offering fair-trade coffee earlier this year, James said. Starbucks Coffee Co. began selling it a year ago.
P&G and Kraft Foods, which sells Maxwell House, haven't warmed up the idea, and activists pushing the cause have a tall order.
Less than 1 percent of the coffee sold in the United States is of the fair-trade variety. An annual survey this year by the National Coffee Association found low awareness of what fair-trade coffee is, spokesman Gary Goldstein said Wednesday.
"In the industry at this point, it's not even a drop in the bucket," said Mike Ferguson, spokesman for the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
Fair-trade organizations say they bypass middlemen and deal directly with coffee growers, to reduce costs and return a greater percentage of the retail price to producers.
Deborah
James, Fair Trade Director
Global Exchange
deborah@globalexchange.org
415.255.7296 x245
415.255.7498 fax
2017 Mission Street #303, San Francisco, CA 94110
http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/coffee
Buying Fair Trade Certified coffee is a simple, easy thing you can do on a daily basis to support fairness for farmers around the world. At least when it comes to our daily brew, there is finally an independently monitored alternative to sweatshops that sets a standard for Fair Trade in the global economy.
3|Specialty Coffee Association of America recommends that U.S. rejoin International Coffee Association
Long Beach, CA—The Board of Directors of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) voted to recommend that the U.S. Government rejoin the International Coffee Organization (ICO).
Since its inception in 1962, the U.S. had been a member of the ICO, a London based group administrating an international coffee trade agreement sponsored by the United Nations. The U.S. withdrew from the ICO in 1993, in opposition to economic provisions in the agreement that were no longer consistent with U.S. interests.
In September 2000, the 63 member governments of the International Coffee Council signed a new coffee agreement. Economic clauses had been eliminated and important changes were made in the agreement that brought a greater market focus to the ICO. The new six-year agreement, which went into effect on October 1, 2001, puts into place new provisions to: establish a Private Sector Consultative Board, revise collection of statistical data to improve market transparency, expand promotional efforts to build coffee consumption, create joint projects with the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) to assist producers, and increase technical cooperation among members by linking their coffee research institutions.
“Under the leadership of Executive Director Celsius Lodder, the ICO has made substantial changes in the scope of its activities, now providing valuable resources and initiatives that benefit the coffee industry,” said Ted Lingle, SCAA Executive Director.
“In addition to formation of the Private Sector Consultative Board, whose focus is on improving positive communications on coffee, increasing sustainable development programs for producers, and providing direction on global standards for food safety regulations pertaining to coffee exports, Mr. Lodder was also successful in funding through CFC the Gourmet Coffee Project that created the mechanisms for an SCAA worldwide Internet auction of specialty coffees as well as forming within the ICO a Coffee Quality Committee to review international standards for coffee exports,” added Lingle.
For the four past years, SCAA has been working with the National Coffee Association (NCA) to represent U.S. coffee interests at meetings of the Private Sector Consultative Board. Last week the NCA Board voted to recommend that the U.S. government rejoin the International Coffee Organization under the provisions of the new agreement. SCAA is in total support of this action. The issue will be reviewed by the U.S. State Department before making a recommendation to the President, but as an international treaty on coffee commerce, the final decision rests with the U.S. Senate.
Founded in 1982, SCAA is the world’s largest coffee trade association with over 2,500 members. SCAA members are located in over 40 countries and represent every aspect of the specialty coffee industry, from coffee growers to coffee retailers. The SCAA’s mission is to be the recognized authority on specialty coffee, providing a common forum for the development and promotion of coffee excellence and sustainability. The SCAA’s dedication to excellence in coffee is realized through the setting of quality standards for the industry; conducting research on coffee, equipment, and perfection of craft; and providing education, training, resources and services for members. The SCAA’s annual conference is held in a different U.S. city each year and is the coffee industry’s largest gathering and exhibition. 7,000 participants attend dozens of workshops and round tables on a variety of timely topics, from cupping coffee to merchandising. The exhibition hosts over 800 trade booths. SCAA’s next Conference & Exhibition will beheld in Anaheim, California May 3 – 6, 2002, where SCAA will celebrate 20 years of serving the most passionate coffee [professionals in the world.
4|Fair trade farmers
Fair Trade Farmers in Mexico
In Oaxaca, Mexico, the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region, established in 1982 now has over 5,000 families who farm roughly 15 acres. The tree was chosen by the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region, UCIRI, in Oaxaca, Mexico to represent the structure of the organization. The roots are the families of 53 communities that make up the foundation of UCIRI. The trunk stands for the General Assembly of Delegates elected by each of the communities. This assembly is the primary forum for the creation and implementation of the Union's projects, signified by the branches. The fruit hanging from the branches represents the results of their labor, shared by all of its members. These fruits include schools, health clinics, home visits by doctors, the training of nurses and dentists, and the strengthening of their indigenous culture. This coop has helped create the region's only public busline; a hardware and farm supply center; healthcare services; cooperative corn mills; an agricultural extension and training program; accounting training; and the only secondary school in the region. Many Fair Traders purchase UCIRI's fine coffees.
S.S.S. Mut Vitz of Mexico, "Bird Mountain" Coffee Cooperative The communities linked to this cooperative are located in the Northern Highlands of Chiapas, in 6 municipalities: El Bosque, Simojovel, Bochil, Jitotol, San Andres Larrainzar, and Chenalho. There are currently over 1,000 farmers associated to the cooperative, and Mut Vitz will produce an estimate 15,000 quintales (100-pound bags) of high-altitude coffee this year. The cooperative Mut Vitz is primarily comprised of Tzotzil Indigenous campesino farmers. The producers are currently in transition from "natural production" to "certifiable organic" production methods and pay particular attention to all appropriate practices for sustainable, shade-grown coffee.
Mut Vitz coordinates a network of 48 organic promoters working in 28 communities to consolidate their own participative process for the transfer of technology and practical know-how for the organic production of coffee. These promoters have already made great strides towards fortifying their own organizational structures and local leadership. Because of the lack of government support for people living in this zone, producers have been searching for autonomous economic and social alternatives to support development in their communities. One critical aspect is the creation of alternative, economic models, supportive of social development for the promotion of democracy, self-management and sustainability, as well as covering the people's basic needs of food, health care and local infrastructure.
More information about Mut Vitz
Fair Trade Farmers in Nicaragua
PRODECOOP, based in Esteli, Nicaragua was founded in 1993. The membership includes 69 cooperatives with over 2,420 families, who typically farm 7 to 11 acres. Projects undertaken by PRODECOOP involve the construction of schools and healthcare centers; training in administration; legal matters and organizational issues. From sales to the fair trade market, PRODECOOP will generate over $600,000 in premiums for the membership this year alone. This is used to pay bank debt, invest in farm improvements, improve nutrition and avoid the loss of land due to crushing debt service.
Miguel Rodriguez and his family are a member of this coop. Over the last 5 years, Miguel estimates that his family has more than doubled their annual income as a result of fair trade. This has allowed Miguel's daughter Rosa Maria (age 11) to stay in school long past the age when she would have had to start working in the fields.
Merling Preza Ramos, Director of the Fair Trade Cooperative PRODECOOP in Nicaragua, told Global Exchange in April that "El productor esta ofertando café de muy buena calidad, y a cambio, pide que le paguen el precio justo, el precio real, el valor real de su producto. Entonces no es una caridad. Debe haber un piso que le permite al productor seguir produciendo su café, seguir mejorando, porque el café no solo es la taza que se toma. Detras de la taza hay caras, hay gente. Gente que estan trabajando por producir un buen café. Se debe revisar la estructura porque de repente, nosotros vemos aqui que hay mucho dinero y el pequeño productor esta allá, muchas veces sin que comer."
"The producer is offering coffee of very high quality, and in return, asks that they are paid a fair price, the real price, the real value of their product. Therefore, it's not a charity. There should be a floor price that permits the producer to keep producing the coffee, keep improving the quality because coffee is not just the cup that you drink. Behind the cup there are faces, there are people. People who are working to produce a good quality coffee. The structure should be revised because we can see that there is a lot of money here, and yet the small producer is far away, often times without anything to eat."
Fair Trade Farmers in Costa Rica
A long history of agrarian reform as well as government programs supporting small farmer cooperatives has created a greater counterbalance between the interests of small farmers and those of large plantations in Costa Rica. COOCAFÉ, the Consortium of Coffee Cooperatives of Guanacaste & Montes de Oro, is an excellent model. COOCAFÉ was founded in 1988 as a coalition of small producer cooperatives working in the Fair Trade market in order to build an economy of scale large enough to provide direct marketing and services to the nine member cooperatives. In January of 2001, Global Exchange visited COOCAFÉ to hear directly from producers about how Fair Trade affects their lives.
Costa Rica was the first country in Central America to register coffee exports in 1840. Coffee currently accounts for 11% of export revenues and employs 5% of the nation's labor force, which represents 20% of the rural workforce. Costa Rica accounts for 2.6% of world production of coffee and 20% of Central American production. There are 72,942 coffee growers in Costa Rica, 45,000 of whom are members of cooperatives (62%).
Although Costa Rica claims a stronger focus on small farmers than in other countries in Latin America, concentration of land in the hands of the few still disadvantages small producers. Most farmers (92%) produce with less than 5 hectares, which amounts to 44% of the total coffee production. In terms of medium-sized farmers, 6% of growers own between 5-20 hectares, accounting for 21% of the national production. However, while only 2% of coffee growers own more than 20 hectares, they produce an entire 35% of the national crop. In terms of processing, the concentration of mills reveals even more disparity; of the 94 coffee mills (beneficios), only 25 are owned by cooperatives. Additionally, there are only 35 roasters and 44 exporters in the country.
Representing nine of the smallest co-ops in the country, COOCAFÉ works to improve standards of living and provides resources for crop diversification, rainforest reforestation, women's development and educational programs. They have twelve staff; 3 sales and marketing, 3 accounting and finance; 3 general administration; 1 quality control; and 2 technical assistance and proposal writers who work directly for coops. Founders of the Latin American Small Coffee Growers Front (Frente Solidario), COOCAFÉ also works to strengthen co-ops in other countries.
COOCAFÉ is a second level cooperative of nine producer cooperatives, with a total of 4,000 small farmer members. The average landholding in production of coffee is 2 hectares. They account for 3% of the total coffee production of Costa Rica. Many of their members are also involved in production of citrus, plantains, tubers (root vegetables like yucca) and macadamias. Cooperatives of COOCAFÉ include Pilangosta, Tilaran, Coopeldos, Santa Elena, Sarapiqui, Buenavista, Montes de Oro, and Llano Bonito.
Although COOCAFÉ is a strong cooperative offering good quality Costa Rican coffee, the Fair Trade market is still not yet big enough to absorb all of their production. From 1993-2000, an average of 53% of their sales went to the Fair Trade market, meaning that 47% had to be sold at conventional terms to importers or to national exporters. Their primary Fair Trade market is Holland, followed by Germany and then the United States.
Since their founding ten year ago, they have earned over $7 million in premiums from Fair Trade out of a total income of about $40 million. How have they allocated these premiums?
COOCAFÉ cooperative of Sarapiqui, Costa Rica One of the producer cooperatives of COOCAFÉ is the Coope Sarapiqui. Sarapiqui has its own processing mill, which has a capacity of about 15,000 QQ (quintales, or 100 pounds) per year. Sarapiqui markets its own packaged coffee. They also have two local stores for members to purchase goods at reduced rates, as well as a delivery service for bulk cooperative purchases of farm goods.
Coope Sarapiqui has invested significant resources into sustainable coffee production. They have a large water treatment facility, with three different lagoons with a capacity of 5,000 QQ (quintales; 100 pounds) each. Up on the hill, a large vermiculture compost mill churns out beautiful organic compost. They are developing a model diversified organic farm on the hillside above the mill. There they grow impatients as groundcover (to attract the nematodes away from the coffee), banana and other trees, and palmito, or the plant from which comes the hearts of palm.
COOCAFÉ has made serious investments in environmental conservation programs on the cooperative farms and processing mills. One is the ten-fold reduction in the amount of water used in the processing to separate the bean from the cherry pulp. The 9 cooperatives have collectively invested $600,000 in these water treatment systems. They have reduced the overall usage of chemicals by half. The Montes de Oro cooperative boasts the only hi-tech solar dryer in Costa Rica. Coopeldos is certified organic, and Montes de Oro and Santa Elena are in the three year transition period towards organic. They have serious investments in reforestation programs (see below). They have reduced wood use in dryers, using the coffee husk instead to fuel the drying ovens.
A recent document entitled Fair Trade in Costa Rica: An Impact Report gives concrete examples of some of the achievements of COOCAFÉ from working together in the Fair Trade market. The information in the following summary is taken from that report by Loraine Ronchi, University of Sussex, l.ronchi@sussex.ac.uk
Like its member cooperatives, the management and departments of COOCAFÉ are accountable to an Administrative Council elected by the General Assembly. Most major cooperative policy decisions are made in the General Assembly, the highest decision-making body, held once or twice a year to which all members are invited to attend.
Some of the benefits and programs of COOCAFÉ include the following:
Financial
The Fair Trade premium is the difference between the higher price paid by the Fair Trade market and the conventional market. COOCAFÉ cooperatives have decided to divide the premium as follows: 15% to the Development Fund, 15% to the Social Capital Fund, and 70% to the Producer's Fund for distribution to producers by the primary level cooperatives. Over the ten years of operation, the producer's fund has distributed $1,260,000 to some 4,000 affiliated small coffee producers and their families. The Social Capital Fund provides much-needed credit to the farmers in a revolving loan fund. Records of coffee prices demonstrate consistently higher prices paid to cooperative farmers than to farmers in the area who were not involved in Fair Trade.
Preserving landholdings
The best indicator of the financial impact of Fair Trade on the cooperatives is witnessed by the continued existence of the cooperative in times of low prices and high production costs. "In the period from 1989 to 1994, the Fair Trade market and COOCAFÉ were essential to the survival not only of the Cooperative Sarapiqui: to ALL of the cooperatives of the consortium," says the Manager of Coope Sarapiqui. Many other cooperatives closed their doors during this time period, leaving the farmers with no marketing options.
Development of final products
The export department of COOCAFÉ entirely credits the successful production of final products to the assistance received from Fair Trade organizations. The experience has had a positive impact that is only inadequately described in financial terms. Producing for the final market has given them an important understanding of the full coffee marketing chain and hence allowed them to learn a great deal about a number of markets and build capacity of the organization to independently develop and control their own marketing.
Solidarity work and education
Working with the Fair Trade market has also positively impacted the social development of the cooperatives through their ability to carry out solidarity work and education. Most of the member cooperatives conduct educational programs concerning the benefits of cooperativism, and proactively attempt, through education, to instill a sense of solidarity in their members. They also consistently and financially support the Frente Solidario, a San José-based solidarity and activist body of Latin American coffee producers.
In 1996 the nine cooperatives in the consortium established a foundation known as Fundación Hijos del Campo, which operates three programs; secondary and university scholarships and an extension program. In the first two years of inception, the secondary school scholarships were awarded to 71 schools at an average donation of $360 per school, directly benefiting 5061 students. From 1997-1999 the university scholarships directly benefited 574 students, 54% of whom are women. COOCAFÉ also promotes an educational extension fund aimed at bridging the enormous gap between the quality and accessibility of urban versus rural education. Funds from the Fair Trade market are used to administer the three programs.
Environment
Over the ten years of operation, more than $3,500,000 has been invested in environmental protection and development programs. A recent report by a independent environmental auditing association traced the source of these funds to the Funcadión Café Forestal, which is entirely funded by sales from COOCAFÉ's Café Forestal brand of roasted coffee to the fair trade markets ($1 per kg sold) as well as COOCAFÉ's Social Capital Fund. Projects include: environmental education and research, converting the entire beneficio (mill) to 'Clean Technology,' the development of hydroelectricity programs, developing coffee dryers using renewable resources, conversion to intercropping programs with shade trees, reforestation, and conversion to organic coffee production.
Thanks to Loraine Ronchi for the above information. For more information or to contact Coocafe directly, email Director Carlos Vargas at coocafe@sol.racsa.co.cr .
You can purchase Coocafé's coffee through Equal Exchange and Café Campesino.
Fair Trade Farmers in Colombia
Like oil in the Middle East, coffee has been the fuel for much of Colombia's economic and political development.
In fact, Colombia is the only country in the world with a National Coffee Federation that pays a subsidy when international prices are low and provides social services and infrastructure improvements in coffee-growing regions. To fund this work, it taxes exports heavily when international prices are high. The Federation's export agency, EXPOCAFE, exports about half of the country's coffee.
Coffee has been a vital source of rural development income in this nation, the second largest coffee producer in the world, home to about 560,000 coffee farms. Railroads and roads were built to move coffee from the cool slopes of Antioquia and its southern neighbors to the Pacific coast, where ports were built to ship it out. Coffee proceeds financed the development of such other exports, as well as rural clinics and schools. Colombia's coffee belt became one of the richest and most stable regions of the country.
Small farmers have always been the dominant mode of production, in contrast to other Latin American countries where large plantations controlled the growing of such commodities as coffee, sugar, and bananas. Today, 96 percent of the country's coffee farmers tend plots smaller than seven acres.
The bonanza years of the 60s and 70s, when cleverly marketed Colombian coffee was traded on the commodities market for near $3 a pound, have ended in crisis. Colombian coffee now sells for about 62 cents a pound on the New York Board of Trade, generating a mere 10 percent of the country's legal export income. It used to account for more than half. Assn of Organic Coffee Farmers of Colombia
Colombians, like coffee farmers around the world, have organized themselves into cooperatives to help gain more of the export income from their crop. One coffee cooperative, Asociacion de Caficultores Organicos de Colombia (ACOC), has an integrated agricultural approach to growing coffee. Members of this organization compost all the organic waste from processing their coffee in large beds of earthworms. The earthworms turn coffee pulp, and all other organic matter, including animal manure, into rich humus, which the farmers add back to the soil surrounding the root zone of their coffee trees.
Coop founder Luis Enrique Aranzazu is certain that his trees are healthier and more productive since he began applying compost as fertilizer. Another coop founder concurs. "I believe my Colombia variety trees, which are now organic, are definitely returning to the yield they had when they were chemically dependent."
ACOC boasts a very modest roasting facility which permits ACOC to roast, grind, and package its own brand of coffee, "Madremonte," the only roasted, organic coffee available in Colombia. Furthermore, the project lends ACOC a great deal of autonomy--the coop members control the product from field to store shelf.
ACOC is not alone in its pioneering quest. The group receives technical assistance from The Peasant Institue (Instituto Mayor Campesino--IMCA) in Buga, an organic farm research center run by Jesuit priest. The Institute is committed to improving campesinos' lives by offering economic programs utilizing cheap, local resources in a sustainable fashion. New coop members must begin the transition to organic production methods. They receive training--also known as "earthworm indoctrination"--from the founding members of the coop and IMCA's technical staff. IMCA is currently networking with similar organizations in Central and South America, exploring ways to set up a local solution to third party certification, owned and controlled by Latin Americans.
Regional Indigenous Council of Caldas
Another coffee cooperative is CRIDEC, the Regional Indigenous Council of Caldas, formed in 1984. It serves nearly 80,000 people on four reservations and provides technical support for farming, education, and promotion of indigenous culture.
In recent years, CRIDEC has started exporting coffee to the fair trade market in Europe and America. Since 1992, CRIDEC has earned over $800,000 in fair trade coffee exports. A committee consisting of a representative from each reservation ensures that the funds are used democratically, for the good of the community. These funds have enabled CRIDEC to build homes for 75 families, three reservation headquarters and two drying sites, to hire consultants, to start a revolving loan fund for agricultural supplies, and to work on a number of special projects.
Plan Colombia
In 2000 the US Congress voted to send $1.3 billion in US aid to Colombia, allegedly to help fight the war on drugs. However, most of the money will go to the military, which is well known for massive human rights violations in the country with the highest homicide rate in the Western Hemisphere. Human rights advocates say the aid will only exacerbate violence and displacement in the region.
Low world coffee prices are also having their effect. As farming coffee becomes increasing less viable as a source of income, more and more coffee farmers are turning to growing coca or opium poppies. Part of the mostly military aid package pays coca farmers to uproot their crops in favor of legal ones, an "alternative development" strategy. But here in rugged southeastern Antioquia and across its river border in Caldas province, the switch is working in reverse.
According to the Washington Post, in the town of Pensilvania, in eastern Caldas, Mayor Jose Oscar Gonzales said coffee has been uprooted in favor of coca in the nearby towns of El Verdal, Playa Rica, Pueblo Nuevo and La Ceba. In all, he said, about 440 acres of coca have replaced coffee. The plots are tiny, only enough to cover only a fraction of an acre.
But Gonzales predicted that the 100 or so farmers who have made the change to coca, which can be harvested three times a year to coffee's one, are just the vanguard. "This isn't pressure from the guerrillas," he said. "This is poverty. Look, coca brings in 10 times the amount as coffee right now. This is the heart of the crisis."
Americans concerned about the impact of drugs in the US can help Colombians gain security for their families through purchasing Fair Trade coffee from Colombia.
Resources on coffee in Colombia
Bergquist, Charles W. Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910. Durham: Duke University Press, 1986.
Ortiz, Sutti. Harvesting Coffee, Bargaining Wages; Rural Markets in Colombia, 1975-1990. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Roseberry, William, Lowell Gudmundson, Mario Samper Kutschbach, eds. Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Equal Exchange , ph: 781.830.0303 info@equalexchange.com
For more information on how the coffee crisis is affecting farmers in Colombia, please see:
Wilson, James. Colombian Coffee Growers Start Sowing Poppies. Financial Times, October 25, 2001
Wilson, Scott. Coca Invades Colombia's Coffee Fields. Washington Post, October 30, 2001
For information about Plan Colombia and the struggle for democracy and human rights, see: our Colombia page
Fair Trade Farmers in Guatemala
The coffee sector in Guatemala is a reflection of the dichotomy that characterizes the whole country: a large number of smallholders (campesinos) that produce small quantities of coffee, and a small number of large and very large plantations (fincas) that produce the largest share of coffee in Guatemala. Smallholders operate individually, or are organized in co-operatives or associations, and sell their coffee through these organizations or to intermediaries. Large coffee plantations either sell to exporting firms, intermediaries, or directly to foreign buyers.
Guatemala's current development model grew out of a CIA-backed military coup in 1954. The CIA engineered the coup to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company from a land reform process which threatened to redistribute 210,000 acres of idle United Fruit land. The coup overthrew the "ten years of spring" led by two moderate presidents who reformed some of Guatemala's basic social inequalities. Under Presidents Juan Jose Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz, Guatemala had experienced its first chance at real democracy: the government gave 100,000 landless families plots of unused land, instituted the country's first social security system, legalized unions -- allowing one-third of the workers to become formally organized -- and dramatically expanded public education and literacy. The series of military dictatorships which followed reversed these reforms. Today, Guatemala has the most unequal land tenure in all of Latin America, with less than 2 percent of the landowners controlling 65 percent of the farmland. At the other end of the scale, approximately 27 percent of the total population is landless and forced to work as part-time wage laborers. As more land has become concentrated in fewer hands in the last 30 years, the average size of small farms has declined from 1.71 to 0.79 hectares.
The small farmers who do exist in Guatemala try to eke out a living amongst national policies hostile to their economic interests. That makes the need for Fair Trade ever more pressing in Guatemala. There are approximately seven Fair Trade coffee cooperatives in Guatemala, including Manos Campesinas and the V'al Voq Quyol Chajul cooperative.
Global Exchange visited Manos Campesinas in January 2001. Their director, Jerónimo Bollen, shared information with us about the need they have to expand the market. jbollen@intelnet.net.gt Thanks also to Joel Perkes for providing additional information. jperkes@hotmail.com
Manos Campesinas started in 1997 as an association of six producer cooperatives in the Quetzaltenango region of Guatemala. The six cooperatives are comprised of 620 farmer members. With the average family consisting of 5 or 6 members the association provides income for approximately 3,720 people. The majority of members have less than one hectare of coffee planted.
The main goal of Manos Campesinas is to promote and market the coffee of the six producer cooperative associates. In addition, Manos Campesinas also gives technical support to the producers, mostly on improvement and diversification of their production, improvement of their administration, and promotion of the participation of women.
Manos Campesinas exported their first container (38,000 pounds) of coffee in 1998. In 2000, they exported 6 containers, and hope to export between 8 and 10 in 2001. They sell about 40% of their production to the Fair Trade market. The other 60% stays in the national market, where at least selling collectively as a cooperative they get a better market than what the intermediaries would pay individual farmers. A 7th group of farmers joined the cooperative in 2000. They estimate that they have to export about 20 containers to be in a point of equilibrium where their income covers their expenses, which they hope to achieve by 2003 or 2004. Currently Manos Campesinos is dependent on international donations. They get no help from the government or banks because they don't have title to the land.
They estimate their costs to be about $.45 per pound. If they sell to other exporters in the national market, the price is about $.35-.40 per pound; if they export directly to the international market the prices is $.60-.70. The current 8-year low in international coffee prices is a major problem and worry for the entire cooperative. How do the producers deal with low prices? Generally through lowering their investment in the farms and suffering severe poverty.
Each farm produces fruits and vegetables grown for personal consumption. They still have to buy some food items, although they do produce a lot of their own food. Some of the farmers mentioned that they want to grow more food for domestic consumption next year because they can often grow 2 or 3 crops in a year, instead of only 1 when they grow coffee. They want to be able to eat better.
All 6 farms use traditional natural farming and shade-grown methods. However, only three out of the six cooperatives are currently able to export their coffee in the organic market. That's because the other three cooperatives grow coffee at lower altitudes and therefore have a harder time finding buyers. Therefore they're not getting Fair Trade prices and haven't been able to afford organic certification. Organic certification costs about $2000 initially and then another $2000 every 3 years.
The 3 communities that export are doing very well. They have schools, health care, technically assistance and support. The 3 others are in transition to organic and are improving. The best thing going for them at the moment is that each family is equal in the association so that what money they do earn each year from the harvest is equally and fairly distributed.
In response to the world market price dipping below $.60 per pound in February of 2001, Jerónimo Bollen, Director of Manos Campesinas, told us that "with world market prices as low as they are right now, we see that a lot of farmers cannot maintain their families and their land anymore. Several producers of our organisation had to decide to go and look for work in the capital, leaving their families behind. To avoid this kind of family and community desintegration, we need Fair Trade now more than ever."
One cooperative Fair Traders such as Equal Exchange works with is V'al Voq Quyol Chajul Cooperative in the Guatemalan highlands. Guatemala's military-led war waged against the peasant farmers in the 1980s ravaged this indigenous Ixil Mayan community. The cooperative of 2,500 members -- 90% of whom live in areas not accessible by car -- are building back their strength and working to maintain the unique Ixil culture while building up its villages economically. Examples of this are their coffee exports to the fair trade market in Europe and the U.S., as well as a women-run store in the capital city selling handmade, indigenous crafts and clothing. With the money from fair trade premiums, Chajul has created its own bank and health clinic. The cooperative's Center for Development provides organic agriculture and leadership training working to make farming a desirable choice for the children of today's coffee farmers.
Cooperativa La Voz Que Clama En El Desierto
In 1977, there were several groups operating in San Juan La Laguna, helping men and women by providing them with small credits for agriculture and handicraft operations. In time, these groups no longer had the capacity to cover the needs of their members and it was decided to form a cooperative with the members of these groups. The first meeting was held under the shade of a cottonwood tree, "La Ceiba" (the national tree of Guatemala) in the courtyard of the old municipal building.
At this meeting, it was explained that the principal objective was to "procure the economic and social improvement of members and develop agricultural activities, especially coffee, onions and other regional crops". At this first meeting, many people were motivated to join the cooperative, which then started with 35 members of both sexes. There was discussion of the name to be given to the cooperative, but there were already too many organizations with the name St. John the Baptist, Patron Saint of the town. The members of the cooperative wanted a name which would honor their Patron Saint and so decided to call it "La Voz que Clama en el Desierto" or "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" because John the Baptist preached in the desert.
"A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" Cooperative has its headquarters on the banks of beautiful Lake Atitlán, in the district of San Juan La Laguna, Department of Sololá, at an altitude of 1,585 meters above sea level (5,000 feet). It has 96 members, 86 of them active producers of certified organic coffee and members of OCIA International Company. The cooperative has its own wet mill with modern technology for processing and paved yards for drying parchment coffee. It delivers its products to international roasting firms, both American and European.
The harvest of the 86 members is processed in a wet mill built with the support of the USAID/ANACAFE project. It features ecological characteristics that give the coffee a better appearance and minimize the pollution. The 1,500 60-kilo bags produced by the cooperative are the Strictly Hard Bean (SHB) type, which is in great demand internationally because of its organic features.
The members and townspeople of San Juan La Laguna belong to the Tzutuhil ethnic group, who inherited their culture and hard-working nature. There are still vestiges of the civilization at the bottom of Lake Atitlán. They preserve their traditions and it is a region rich in the production of handmade textiles and other handicrafts, which are exported worldwide.
Organic cultivation, suitable climatic conditions and the special characteristics of Atitlán coffee have helped to create a good image internationally. The cooperative has sold to companies who recognize the attributes of the cultivation and preparation of this coffee.
The cooperative's social and economic projection and the quality of the coffee have drawn many visitors from the coffee sector and tourists who visit the lake.
"A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" is a cooperative organization that is promoting the development of its community.
Thanks to Peace Coffee for this information.
Fair Trade Farmers in El Salvador
Coffee is El Salvador's primary export product. Almost 70 percent of the population makes its living growing, harvesting or processing it. However, since coffee was introduced to the country in the mid-nineteenth century, its cultivation and sale has been controlled by a very small number of wealthy landowners. This small oligarchy amassed immense fortunes while thousands of landless people lived on the edge of survival. In 1980, rural discontent with this situation forced the government to enact an agrarian reform to distribute land.
Under the reform, workers received land and farmed it cooperatively in order to share resources and maximize their economic power. FESACORA, the Salvadoran Federation of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives, was founded in 1982 and includes 154 community co-ops. By selling their coffee to the fair trade market, FESACORA helps these co-ops rebuild their communities after fifteen years of civil war.
SOCRA, the Society of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives, was established in 1992 to increase cooperative control over the processing and export of coffee so that farmers would receive a better price for their work. The organization represents three co-op federations, one confederation and 17 coffee cooperatives in central and western El Salvador and has been vital in building the independence of the Salvadoran cooperative movement.
Thanks to Equal Exchange for the above information.
For more information about the history of coffee in El Salvador, please see:
Brignoli, Héctor Pérez. Indians, Communists, and Peasants: The 1932 Rebellion in El Salvador, pp 232-261. In Roseberry, William, Lowell Gudmundson, Mario Samper Kutschbach, eds. Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Paige, Jeffrey M. Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Also see Sandra Benitez's novel Bitter Grounds, 1998, about three generations of women from different classes through the lens of the coffee industry.
Fair Trade Farmers in Honduras
La Central de Cooperativas Cafetaleras de Honduras (La Central) formed in 1997 with the objectives of direct coffee exportation and rural development. It is a national network of 61 coffee producing cooperative and pre-cooperative groups throughout ten departments of Honduras, representing over 6000 small-to-medium-scale coffee producers and their families. In addition, a technical team coordinates commercial activity, administration, rural development projects, training, and communications between cooperatives. La Central is a decentralized and democratic organization that actively encourages grassroots participation in its decision-making processes. Furthermore, elected representatives who are accountable to their cooperatives represent La Central in national and international political institutions.
For La Central's members, coffee cultivation is more than solely growing a top-quality product--it is a way of life that unites families towards cooperative goals and community solidarity. La Central aims to improve trade relations with international coffee importers, which benefits both coffee trader and farmer alike.
Organic coffee production is one of the cornerstones of La Central principles. The vast majority of its members are small-scale producers who farm the traditional way, using mixed shade cover augmented by natural fertilizers to cultivate their crop. These techniques provide an ecosystem rich in wildlife and do not contaminate waterways or cause soil erosion. In addition, La Central is continually extending its methods of organic production. Last year, several cooperatives started to use coffee threshing machinery designed to conserve the use of water. Furthermore, La Central is fighting for the establishment for a regionally accepted organic certification that will encourage small farmers to follow organic production techniques.
La Central's mission is to create a Honduran society free of abject poverty and social injustices. To accomplish this goal, it is essential to operate in areas beyond coffee production. Therefore, La Central has worked in partnership with other cooperative, peasant, indigenous, and other social movements as well as international development agencies in an array of community-based projects directed towards poverty reduction and regional infrastructure development. These projects have established and improved housing, roads, sanitation, schools, and medical centers. For example, a joint La Central and Centro Cooperativo Sueco project built houses in San Juancito after the Hurricane Mitch disaster.
La Central also provides financial services to those normally excluded from society. Lack of access to credit perpetuates the misery of subsistence living for many Honduran coffee farmers. La Central launched its Local Alternative Finance (LAF) initiative in 1999 to provide financial services that assist small farmers. Through this program, members can receive credit at favorable rates to facilitate greater and higher quality production levels.
Finally, La Central realizes that its greatest responsibility is to its members' education and training so that they can prosper. It regularly organizes workshops to suit local needs whereby members can learn how to manage their cooperatives better, understand how the world commodity exchanges function, and share techniques regarding best practices in coffee production. It also publishes day-by-day and bi-monthly reports on the coffee market as well as transmitting a daily radio program, "La Hora del Café," in order to provide its members comprehensive educational and informational services.
Fair Trade Farmers in Peru
One strong fair trade cooperative in Peru is CEPICAFE, started in 1995, an association of small-scale coffee farmers in Northern Peru. It is made up of 25 grassroots organizations. All of its coffee, which is grown in the shade of fruit trees, is grown by family units.
CEPICAFE acts as a price regulator and prevents intermediaries and private companies from colluding to pay farmers artificially low prices. This benefits co-op members as well as raising incomes throughout the entire coffee growing region. For instance, in 1998 the 1,000 members of CEPICAFE sold half of their production to fair trade organizations. Lacking additional fair trade markets for their remaining coffee, they had to sell to Peruvian exports. Coffee sold to the fair trade organizations averaged $1.37 per pound. The other coffee averaged 99 cents per pound. Farmers received nearly 40 percent more because of fair trade. Frederico Rivera Morena of CEPICAFE explained that with the 38 cent per pound difference, "With the money that arrived, I have bought clothing for my children, made home improvements, and renovated my farm."
CEPICAFE has been working on behalf of its members by providing the families in its coffee-growing region with a forum where they can make themselves heard by the Peruvian government. It aims to become a union organization in which the members are permanently involved in democratic decision-making processes. CEPICAFE provides its members with access to credit, and also offers permanent training in organic cultivation techniques and aspects of quality control by its advisory organization called PIDECAFE, a non-governmental organization that specializes in coffee.
Farmers also come together not only to improve their livelihood but also to steward the land they live on. Juan Ticliahuanca Ticliahuanca of CEPICAFE explains the first steps the community took as an organized cooperative by saying, "We started with 20,000 seedlings in 1997, including 3,000 fruit trees and native trees." These trees not only provide shade for the coffee, but also prevent soil erosion, nourish the earth, and provide a habitat for wildlife. Growing the seedlings is another way the community comes together. There is a lot more effort being put into cooperation between men and women members. In the days when we all work together in planting a nursery, there is a lot of collaboration and participation and we do good work," is how CEPICAFE grower Teofilo Santos Huaman explains it.
Another strong fair trade cooperatives in Peru is the Agrarian Cooperative Central of Cuzco (COCLA). COCLA also lends money to its members. Whereas a small farmer in Peru has no access to credit (and thus may be forced into debt to local moneylenders), COCLA's members have access to credit at 12-13%. Farmers use this money to increase plantings of shade trees and coffee trees, invest in tarps and equipment that improve quality, and pay for transporting their coffee to the coop's warehouse. Ninety eight percent of all loans are paid on time, testifying to their efficacy and their member's gratitude.
In Aquilayoc, members of COCLA were organized enough that they went to the electric company after the devastating flood in Huadquina and said, "If you give us the poles, we will put them in the ground." COCLA members determined their own future through the strength of their cooperative and its development vision. They did not have to rely on charitable donations.
The strength of these fair trade cooperatives in Peru can be seen in COCLA member-owner Marcelino Cuentas Baca's, statement "We've had great success in the past months in keeping prices (in the region) up, getting materials for wells and depulping stations, making loans in January and February, providing emergency transportation, paying year-end dividends, etc.--and so there are lots of producers in the region requesting to become members (of our cooperative)."
Fair Trade Farmers in Tanzania
The Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union is Africa's oldest coffee cooperative. KNCU was founded in 1924 as a marketing organization for the indigenous farmers of the Chagga tribe living on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain. Along with all of Tanzania's coffee cooperatives, KNCU was abolished by the government in 1976, but then reinstated in 1984. At this stage, law required that all coffee farmers belong to a cooperative in onrder to sell their crops. In 1991, Tanzania introduced a new Cooperative Act under which the co-ops became voluntary membership organizations. Today, KNCU has about 135,000 members from 90 local co-ops. Their smooth, mild beans are considered to be among the finest in Africa.
Tanzanian KNCU coffee is available from Equal Exchange.
5| Fair trade mmovements brew new hope for coffee growers
Millions of producers in Third World mired in poverty
By Bruce Finley Denver
Post International Affairs Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2001 - UNILDE, Nicaragua - Standing in a cloud forest on the side of a volcano, Santiago Rivera closes his calloused fingers over green coffee fruits blushing ripe - future flavor for U.S. consumers.
Santiago Rivera's coffee beans were just starting to redden in mid-September. Harvesting runs from December to February. Rivera, Nicaraguan coffee grower and Starbucks icon for free-trade coffee, belongs to a co-op and benefits from higher, free-trade prices at a time when coffee prices are down because of a glut on the world market. He descends a twisting trail, past banana trees and the donkey he fondly calls "the squirrel," to his adobe house with an earthen kitchen floor and no plumbing.
He gets by thanks to the "fair trade" deal that gives him 91 cents a pound - double what most growers here get. In fact, Rivera is the model campesino pictured on brochures touting Starbucks Coffee's participation in fair trade, in which companies and consumers team up to get more money to peasants.
But millions of other coffee producers, across Central America and much of the Third World, are mired in some of the planet's worst poverty. A few hours from Rivera, women give birth in fly-infested black-plastic shanties without medical help, and barefoot children grow up on one meal a day.
The survival or suffering of people who produce your coffee is one of many aspects of today's world that U.S. consumers can control. Today, poverty and despair are spreading, creating breeding grounds for trouble in a world where the threshold for violence rose Sept. 11.
Leading analysts, including former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, who recently led a sweeping appraisal of U.S. national security, say we must confront global poverty - especially to combat terrorism.
"There must be much more concerted international effort to do what the Army calls drying up the swamp. The swamp is composed of four things - money, weapons, shelter and the fourth thing - recruits," Hart said. "The only way you do the fourth is by ending the despair and offering hope through concerted economic-development programs."
The emerging fair-trade movement tries to accomplish this within the market system instead of relying on aid handouts or moving farmers into low-wage factories. The way it works is U.S. consumers pay 5 to 10 percent more for products with fair-trade labels. Those additional cents, and savings from companies buying the products more directly from producers and co-ops abroad, can give producers in the field a minimum price. Inspectors verify whether the money gets through.
This movement brought "fair trade" coffee to Starbucks a year ago along with other coffee shops - Kaladi Brothers in Denver, Coffee Jones in Boulder and Bongo Billy's Coffees in Buena Vista, among them. Now, movement leaders target giant corporations that drive world prices - owners of Maxwell House, Folgers and the like. More than 80 percent of the coffee Americans drink is this relatively inexpensive canned coffee.
Fair-trade leaders also plan to broaden their strategy to encompass producers of other commodities - bananas, sugar, chocolate, clothing.
But consumer-led poverty reduction isn't possible unless corporations agree to offer fair-trade products. Many refuse. As it stands now, few coffee growers benefit because less than 1 percent, or 2.19 million of the 219 million cups of coffee Americans drink daily, is certified as fair trade.
Meanwhile, a global coffee crisis caused by overproduction drives millions ever deeper into poverty.
"We eat only beans," said Paula Mercado, 40, in a dark hillside shack near Rivera. "We're killing ourselves working, and we can't get a decent price."
Highly traded commodity
Four in five U.S. adults drink coffee, helping to make coffee the world's second most-traded commodity after oil with $55 billion in annual sales. And industry experts say the very best coffee generally comes from small-scale farmers like Santiago Rivera laboring in tropical highlands from Ethiopia to Indonesia.
This fine coffee grows on shaded plots, under diverse canopies considered ecologically healthy, where complex flavors develop. Here in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, brilliant blue butterflies bounce around Rivera's carefully tended coffee plants.
His classic method and wise, weathered face made him a modern-day Juan Valdez for Starbucks, which distributes its fair-trade brochures at 3,000 shops around North America. Soon Starbucks will offer fair-trade coffee worldwide, chief executive Orin Smith said. "We're going to be a force within our industry . . . working very hard to make this program work."
It isn't charity, he said. To keep selling top-quality coffee, "we need these people to survive."
For his role, Rivera gained a public-relations tour of America last year. He saw "streets made of nothing but buildings - beautiful."
Now back home he struggles, perched on a wood chair teetering on an uneven floor, weighing his finances. His wife, Ermelinda, brings him a cup of his own coffee - one of the few luxuries in his life. His earnings as a coffee grower aren't enough even to afford Nescafe instant from the village store, let alone an $11.45 bag of his beans in America.
He collects 91 cents a pound because he's part of a cooperative – Prodecoop based in Esteli - that sells 60 percent of its coffee at fair-trade prices -$1.26 a pound for fair-trade beans and $1.41 for beans also certified as organic. Directors said farmers usually receive about $1 a pound depending on deductions for transport, processing and community projects.
Rivera's 91 cents means his six children can attend school and, at this time of drought, eat store-bought rice and corn. He still relied on aid handouts after Hurricane Mitch to repair his roof and an outhouse.
Yet his struggles are minimal compared with those of neighbors around him who must sell their beans for 45 cents a pound. They beg regularly to let them join his co-op. Rivera must say no until demand grows - which torments him. "You should be able to work and have a better life," he said.
Sales are still low, but the volume of fair-trade coffee imported by the United States has more than doubled since 1999, said Paul Rice, director of the TransFair USA organization that coordinates monitoring and labeling. "U.S. consumers are a sleeping giant," Rice said. "As it awakens, corporate America has to sit up and listen." But fair traders face an uphill battle.
Across coffee-dependent Central America - where good times mean living on $2 a day - relief agencies estimate 1.5 million peasants lack food as a coffee crisis worsens. World market prices plunged to all-time lows last week – 19 cents a pound for low-quality robusta and 45 cents for arabica beans. In Nicaragua alone, a quarter-million people are suffering, and United Nations officials said more than 12,000 coffee workers now receive emergency food aid.
What caused this crisis? Investors over the past decade sensed profit opportunities in Vietnam, where peasants work as cheaply as anywhere in the world. Financiers and Vietnam's government directed rapid development of coffee plantations. Vietnam now is the second-largest coffee producer behind Brazil - churning out cheap robusta coffee that corporate giants like Procter & Gamble buy. A resulting glut of this coffee sucked down world prices.
Vietnamese peasants win.
But in Nicaragua, Victor Manual Alvarez, 45, sat on the floor of his two-room house measuring out the last of the corn that feeds his family. His four barefoot children watched listlessly.
"When this runs out . . ." His voice trailed off. The family has no money, he said. A dry cornfield behind the house isn't planted. He still counts on coffee, but unable to sell at fair-trade prices he must settle for 50 cents a pound. After tending to his coffee plants and harvesting, moving his coffee to local middlemen requires five day-long donkey treks down the volcano and then along a rocky 5-mile road to Somoto.
He devotes more time now to searching for construction work that might bring some money for food. Sometimes he's gone for weeks.
"It's not fair," he said. "Fifty cents a pound is not enough to provide coffee."
There was a time when he envisioned a better life for his children. "I've been working with a machete since I was a little boy. I never studied."
Now he just wants them to survive. "Give a good price to us, the poor producers of your coffee," he implored. "The coffee we produce is good coffee."
United Nations World Food Program supervisor Rosario Sanabria laments that too many commodity producers are falling behind.
"The companies play an important role," Sanabria said. "Their values are not human. They are commercial. What is their responsibility? In general, we're not taking care of human values. The world would be a little more fair if we thought more about human values."
Inside a Starbucks cafe on Denver's 16th Street Mall, bank-loan specialist Beth Bockenstedt, 44, ordered up a $3.80 Caramel Macchiato last week. She knew about fair-trade coffee. She'd seen the brochure featuring Santiago Rivera. The cafe in Denver offered no fair-trade coffee as a daily brew.Bockenstedt said she might be inclined to try it or buy fair-trade beans for home instead of French Roast - even if those beans aren't quite as good.
But she doubts fair-trade money really reaches peasants. She views fair trade as "just a gimmick" to hook socially conscious consumers.
At Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, chief executive Smith worried about the quality of fair-trade coffee. He said he wants fair-trade leaders to work with industry leaders to find cooperatives that can produce the best coffee in large volumes.
Specialty-coffee lobbyists fear this is happening too slowly and that an industry wide roughening of quality will result as Vietnamese robusta drives out savory arabicas.
Fair-trade pitch rejected
"We can't do what we need to do with fair trade," said Ted Lingle, director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. "We can't get consumers to connect with the issue fast enough to make a real difference for the farmer." Lingle wants coffee-market leaders in New York and London to remove "triage" waste products that inflate global coffee volume, in an emergency effort to resuscitate prices.
Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble directors at a shareholder meeting Oct. 9 rejected a pitch to offer fair-trade coffee. P&G prefers to help impoverished producers by giving aid, spokeswoman Margaret Swallow said.
Executives are looking for groups that work with farmers to help them switch from coffee into growing more profitable crops, she added.
Pressure groups plan to attack P&G as suppliers of "sweatshop coffee."
And in the U.S. Congress, lawmakers are trying to make up their own minds about what kind of coffee to drink. Last week lawmakers tested fair-trade blends in a congressional cafeteria.
Yet so far nobody is making a real difference for coffee workers. In a fly-infested shanty camp near Matagalpa, Dimas Carrazo, 40, grips an ax, trolling for wood to cut and sell, the only way he can afford food for his four starving kids. Frustrations mount. Carrazo and others once fought as U.S.-backed contra fighters to subvert Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Many still wear blue contra caps emblazoned "Guardians of Democracy."
Americans should help with the coffee crisis, said Marcos Molina Velazquez, 40, an ex-fighter now raising five kids. "If they helped us before to get arms, now they should help us get tools."
In another roadside camp, Samuel Tinoco, 53, suggested: "Maybe I should go to Vietnam?"
Leading a group of 350 landless coffee workers, who marched all the way to Managua pleading for aid to sick children and then camped at the National Assembly, Maria Victoria Picado, 45, announced: "If nobody does anything, this will get violent."
This year, a U.S. State Department report warned that "endemic poverty" in Nicaragua is driving entire communities into smuggling drugs from Colombia north to the United States.
Even Santiago Rivera questions the free-market system right now. He has friends in the United States, and excused himself tearfully after watching the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. "We're all brothers."
Yet in Nicaragua's election next month, he's backing ex-Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, a man with questionable connections to Libya and Iraq who once tried to lead Central America toward socialism. He's worth another try, in Rivera's view, as a leader responsive to real people.
Bruce Finley may be reached at bfinley@denverpost.com.
6| Forget the war against poverty
Who deserves western aid - Pakistan, producer of the Ghauri-II nuclear capable missile, left, or East African agricultural workers, right?
Charlotte Denny Wednesday October 24, 2001 The Guardian
In the rainy season, the fertile red earth around Mpiita primary school turns to sticky mud. When Ugandan farmer Sam Bamugoverere was a pupil there 15 years ago, the school had no classrooms, just trees for the pupils to shelter under. "We would bring a stone to sit on and a banana leaf mat to cover our heads," he says. If it got too wet under the jackfruit tree, the teachers would send them home.
Sam's seven year old son, Tony, started Mpiita school this year, but unlike his father he studies under a roof. The school has eight brand new classrooms built as part of a massive government investment programme in education. Since 1997, Kampala has abolished schools fees, doubled its spending on primary education, and built 10,000 new classrooms. The money has come from the savings the country has made on its bills to foreign creditors.
Uganda is the success story of the debt relief campaign, a country which has made good use of the money it has won back from the west. But now, as the global downturn triggered by the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington threatens to push millions more people below the global poverty line, aid agencies worry that benefits of debt relief have been largely wiped out by a collapse in commodity prices.
Uganda's finance minister, Gerald Ssenduala, says his country needs more help. Since the attacks, however, western attention has been focused on shoring up the economies of key members of its coalition - such as Pakistan - rather than on Africa. Countries have been queuing up to offer Pakistan help with its £26bn of foreign debt, even though the government spends 25% of its budget on the military and just 4% on primary education.
Key ally
But while G7 leaders dither about what to do for Africa, Pakistan, a key ally in the war against terrorism has jumped to top of the debtors' queue. Since September 11, the US has promised Islamabad $1bn in debt rescheduling and aid, while the EU has given it an extra £950m in trade concessions. With aid budgets already stretched, campaigners say the message appears to be that debt relief and trade concessions are no problem to arrange if you are a key US ally.
"The whole thrust of the international aid programmes over the last five years has been rewarding countries which have good poverty reduction programmes," says Kevin Watkins of Oxfam. "Is Pakistan good at reducing poverty? No. Is it corrupt? Yes. Does it have good spending priorities? No."
Uganda would not be receiving any money from the west at all, if its arms budget was similarly bloated. Under a landmark debt deal agreed with lenders three years ago, it has had nearly 40% of its loans written off, but in exchange has agreed to spend the savings on health and education.
Five years ago, the country spent 125bn shillings (£50m) a year on primary education and 180bn shillings on paying back its loans. This year, interest payments have fallen to just over 100bn shillings, and education spending has risen to over 250bn.
But Mpiita school and others like it are threatened by recessionary forces spreading out from the wounded US economy. Even before the attacks on the US last month, Mr Ssenduala was a worried man. The country depends on coffee for nearly 60% of its export earnings and coffee prices, along with most other commodities have been on the slide since the slowdown in the world economy began last autumn. Last week they hit a 30-year low.
"Coffee is the main export for Uganda and because of the drop in price it is now difficult for us to reach this 150% debt sustainability level," Mr Ssenduala says. With export earnings falling, Uganda may be forced to divert money from social services back into paying off its remaining debts.
Uganda is not alone. Despite the grand hopes of an escape from poverty laid out yesterday by Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders, without extra help from the west, the slump in commodity will threaten the economies of coffee producers like Uganda and Tanzania and cocoa exporters like Ghana and Ivory Coast, all of whom owe large sums to the west.
"The problems that poor countries such as Uganda are having with terms of trade prove that the debt sustainability calculations made by the World Bank and IMF are entirely spurious," says Christian Aid's head of policy, Mark Curtis. "They fail to take into account the kinds of shocks in commodity markets we are seeing at the moment."
Extra help
Oxfam says Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia may all need extra help this year because the export earnings projections on which their debt write-offs were based have proved hopelessly optimistic. Uganda, which does have the kind of anti-poverty programs held up as a model by the west, could definitely make good use of the kind of money Washington is throwing at Pakistan.
"We would like to be able to stand on our own but we have not been able to win the kind of investment we need," says Mr Ssenduala. "When you are a beggar you become a nuisance."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
7| Offers:
Caravan Trade is member of the Canadian Federation of Trading House (CAFTHA).
For more information please contact Caravan Trade:
116 West service road, pmb 358
Champlain, New York
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Tel:
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E-mail: kmd@caravantrade.biz
