Tadesse Meskela - Equal Exchange's 20th Anniv. interv.

Profile of OCFCU in Ethiopia

Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee over 3,000 years ago, is the third largest coffee producing country in Africa. Coffee is Ethiopia's most important export and about 98% of the coffee is produced by small-scale farmers. The world's dependence on the export of Ethiopian coffee has made small-scale farmers vulnerable to drops in the global market price, creating severe hardships for the over one million coffee farmers in the country.

To help save their farms and livelihood, the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) was established in 1999 by 35 farmer co-operatives, with a total of 22,691 starting members, in southern and western Ethiopia. Today, membership has grown to include over 100 co-ops and nearly 75,000 farmer households.

The OCFCU aims to: improve farmers' income by selling coffee at a higher price; improve and maintain the quality, productivity and sustainability of coffee production; regulate and stabilize the local market; and assist the coffee communities in providing social services, such as providing clean water and school health centers.

The co-operative sorts the beans for quality, then roasts and exports its own coffee – unlike most other Ethiopian coffee farmers who simply grow and pick their beans before sending them to intermediaries. The OCFCU produces 230,209 tons of coffee annually, with 30,415 tons produced organically. Equal Exchange's Organic Ethiopian coffee comes from the OCFCU and is grown in the Sidama region. The coffee is exotic and complex, with a heavy body, gentle acidity and hints of vanilla, black pepper and raspberry.

Since the OCFCU avoids working with middlemen, it is able to return 70% of the net profit back to the farmers themselves, rather than the 30% they would receive going through the traditional market. Fair Trade premiums from Equal Exchange benefit the entire community by helping farmers better support their families. Parents can afford to keep their children in school rather than sending them to work. Several communities in Ethiopia can now ensure that their children have an education in the new Fair Trade Primary School, which was built with money from Fair Trade premiums. The increased income has also led to better health facilities.

"Before Fair Trade, people [in one Ethiopian village] used to walk 15 or 30 kilometers to a nearby school," said Tadesse Meskela, the OCFCU general manager, during a visit to Equal Exchange in 2006. "They had to travel a similar distance to get to a health center. Because of Fair Trade, there is now a health center in their village, a school, and a clean water supply station. But this is just a start. There are only four co-operatives that benefit from the school and the health center, and we have more than 100 co-operatives."

Meskela was featured in the film Black Gold, a critically-acclaimed documentary on the exploitation of farmers in the coffee industry. Meskela is followed as he travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price, in hopes of keeping the OCFCU farmers from bankruptcy.

"The price of coffee has stayed low while the price of other commodities has increased," Meskela said. "We don't ask for charity; we ask for the right price for our product."

History of Coffee in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. In the tenth century, Ethiopian nomadic mountain people may have been the first to recognize coffee's stimulating effect, although they ate the red cherries directly and did not drink it as a beverage. The mystic Sufi pilgrims of Islam spread coffee throughout the Middle East. From the Middle East these beans spread to Europe and then throughout their colonial empire including Indonesia and the Americas.

Geography and Environment

Ethiopia is in sub-Saharan Africa, bordered on the west by the Sudan, the east by Somalia and Djibouti, the south by Kenya, and the northeast by Eritrea. Ethiopia’s landscapes are covered in beautiful earth colors. The country has several high mountain ranges that maintain tropical cloud forests. The Blue Nile, or Abbai, is the chief reservoir for drinking water.

Ethiopia has a population of nearly 75 million people, many of whom struggle to make a living from their production and export of primary goods. Sixty four percent of the population doesn't have access to clean and safe water systems³. Fifty percent of the population lives in economic poverty. The majority of the communities don't have access to electricity. There are many reasons for this poverty, however, the combination of regional conflict and dependence on exporting primary agricultural products are often cited as obstacles to more inclusive sustainable growth.

Crisis, coffee and politics

Ethiopia's history is full of dramatic changes. Over the last four decades, the Ethiopian people have lived under three different forms of government, which include a semi-feudal imperial, a military rule with Marxist ideological orientation from 1974-1991, and a federal governance system from 1991 until the present. All of these periods have been accompanied by dissatisfaction, armed resistance and rebellions.

Ethiopia has also confronted economic, social and environmental problems including a war with Eritrea from 1998-2000. This recent dispute with Eritrea as well other historical conflicts has provoked many damages, including lost lives, limited access to the land, emotional trauma, and extreme hunger. The financial cost of the war, according to the Ethiopian government, was about US$2.9 billion (although other sources have put the financial cost as high as US$5 billion)³.

The most recent coffee crisis occurred within a context of chronic economic poverty and amidst these persistent social conflicts. In 2003, coffee prices plummeted to their lowest levels in Ethiopian coffee history. The prices no longer covered farmers' costs of production, and this generated a variety of problems. Many producers abandoned their farms in Kaffa and Oromia regions and migrated to the city. Other farmers have turned to non-coffee crops. Farmers' incomes were reduced and families were often not able to buy basic material necessities including clothing, food and medicine, construction materials to repair their houses, cover the costs of important social and religious ceremonies, and their children's education⁸. Despite these difficulties most Ethiopia farmers are still dedicated to coffee cultivation.

Coffee

Arabica coffee, or jasminum arabicum laurifolia, has always grown wild in the forests of the south-western highlands of the Kaffa and Buno districts. The total area covered by Arabica and other types of coffee is about 400,000 hectares. Total coffee production is about 200,000 tonnes of clean coffee per year⁵. This directly or indirectly affects the livelihoods for over 15 million people in this county⁶. Ethiopia's economy is based on agriculture. Currently agricultural activities represent 45% of the GDP, 85% of employment, and 90% of foreign exchange earnings⁴.

Coffee still grows wild in Ethiopia's mountain forests. Ethiopian farmers cultivate coffee in four different systems, which include forest coffee, semi-forest coffee, garden coffee and plantation coffee⁵. About 98% of the coffee in Ethiopia is produced by peasants on small farms1 and it is the country's most important export. Ethiopia is Africa's third largest coffee producer. There are about 700,000 coffee smallholders in Ethiopia, of which 54 percent are in semi forest areas⁷. Coffee has been part of their indigenous cultural traditions for more than 10 generations.

Ethiopian coffee is one of the most popular coffee origins in the world. However, Ethiopia must compete and partner with the coffee companies, which generally have more market power and earn higher profits. Annually, the average Ethiopian coffee farmer earns about $900 per year. The women who work in the coffee processing warehouses can make as little as $20 a month8. At times the government has played a more active role. In 1952, the government developed a coffee classification and grading system and then modified it in 1955⁵. Ethiopian coffee certification began after the establishment of the National Coffee Board of Ethiopia (NCBE) in 1957. The NCBE's aims were to control and coordinate producers, traders, and exporters interests and to improve the quality of Ethiopian coffee. More recently, partnerships with small-scale Fair Trade roasters, like Equal Exchange, have helped the Ethiopian farmers find a fairer deal for their coffee.

Ethiopian Cooperative and Fair Trade movements

Farmers' organizations have existed in Ethiopia throughout different historical periods. Most of the first level cooperatives were established during the military government, which ruled from 1974 to 1991. The cooperative system provides their small-scale farmer members with services that include coffee processing, credit, human and financial resources for rural development. As of 2004, Ethiopia had 4,052 coffee cooperatives⁶.

The Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) is an excellent example of what is possible through farmer organizing and connection to Fair Trade coffee roasters. This cooperative was established in 1999 to help 100,000 farm families access better coffee prices during the difficult coffee crisis. OCFCU has about 23,000 members who have organized themselves into 34 primary society cooperatives. This makes it one of the largest Fair Trade coffee cooperatives in the world. OCFCU farmers cultivate over 86,000 acres of coffee and annually produce about 16,500 tons of coffee.

The smallholder coffee producers of OCFCU have helped to conserve the heirloom coffee varieties. They use organic management techniques to grow coffee in the native forests. This environmentally sustainable coffee is also very high quality. Through fair trade certification, Ethiopian farmers have found an additional tool in the long term struggle to link coffee quality, to opportunities for improving the quality of their own lives and conserving environmental quality.

History of Coffee in El Salvador

The turbulent history of coffee has left a deep imprint on El Salvador’s history, politics and development. No other country in the region has depended as deeply on coffee, and the country’s fate has risen and fallen sharply with the boom and bust cycles brought by what Salvadorans call “el grano de oro” (the “grain of gold”.) Coffee, however, has treated very differently the elite, whose fortunes rose during the boom years and weathered the bust years, and the small farmers and laborers who have been exploited at nearly every turn.

For many years, indigo had been El Salvador’s most important export crop. In the 1880s, coffee surpassed indigo as the leading export crop and was viewed as the path to progress and development. Indeed, coffee created both great wealth for the landed elite as well as opportunities to rule.

However, in 1881 and 1882, the so-called Liberal Reforms were enacted, which dramatically changed land tenure in the country. One decree stated that “access to common lands was no longer a right and that private title to such lands could be received upon cultivation of specified crops” such as export crops. Another decree forbid “vagrancy”, so this newly created class of landless campesinos was suddenly forced to work for slave-like wages, and in poor conditions on coffee, sugar and cotton plantations. These reforms, in effect, stripped nearly half of El Salvador’s population of their lands because Indigenous communities in El Salvador typically farmed communal property and very few farmers held individual property titles for the land they cultivated.

In 1895, General Tomás Regalado won the presidency. This position enabled the General and his family to ultimately amass 6,000 hectares of plantation land distributed throughout six different provinces. Following Regalado’s term, coffee barons served as successive presidents for the next thirty-one years extending coffee’s dominance and building their own fortunes.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, coffee exports alone totaled 90% of all of the country’s exports. However, what seemed a smart strategy during boom years appeared foolish during downturns, and the global depression of the 1930’s pushed El Salvador to the brink. With coffee prices dropping to one-third of previous levels, coffee producers cut wages by half while others dismissed their workers altogether. Coffee rotted in the fields, while rural unemployment skyrocketed. Rural discontent turned to anger. For three days in January 1932, tens of thousands of peasants organized an open insurrection in western El Salvador. Their actions were met by bullets.

Thirty thousand peasants were killed in La Matanza, El Salvador’s worst massacre. As historian Thomas Anderson suggests, La Matanza is a way of understanding “the whole political labyrinth of El Salvador.” The combination of the strong grip of a coffee plantation class and a desperate rural proletariat proved to be as volatile in the 1970’s and 1980’s as it was fifty years earlier.

The coffee industry, however, survived and even prospered after the Great Depression. El Salvador became known as one of the most advanced producers of coffee by introducing modern technology on the plantations and sophisticated systems in the coffee processing.

While descendants of Spanish families continued to control the land and production, Italian and English immigrants established themselves in the coffee processing and exporting sectors. Over time, the small number of family groups of the Salvadoran elite began to divide into two factions: the landed aristocracy which held to a low-wage, “plantation” development model for El Salvador, and the modernizing sector of coffee producers and exporters who looked out into the global economy and sought to industrialize and diversify El Salvador’s economy and their control of it. By the 1970’s, El Salvador had become the world’s fourth largest exporter of coffee, but neither the landed aristocracy nor the modernizing faction of the elite showed interest in addressing the poverty and dislocation associated with the coffee trade.

For the small producers and laborers, coffee was a way to survive—barely—and they lacked the power to force changes in the industry. Over time, the rural peasantry became transformed into a rural proletariat, people working for a wage rather than earning a living from a crop.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the rumblings of discontent in the rural areas grew once again. Progressive Catholic clergy influenced by the progressive doctrines of liberation theology began to work in rural areas and supported rural workers in organizing unions and self-help cooperatives. The Salvadoran elite, especially the coffee barons, opposed their efforts and formed various paramilitary vigilante groups, or used the National Guard to violently suppress these movements. While many leaders were killed, others went underground joining a growing leftist insurgency known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) front. Fearing a communist domino effect in the region, the United States stepped up military aid and advisors in the late 1970’s to confront the guerrillas.

The United States also pushed a social reform agenda intended to erode the popular support of the insurgency. Key to the agenda was agrarian reform: expropriating large landholdings, returning land to the tiller and fomenting agricultural cooperatives. Under pressure from the U.S. government, the Salvadoran government declared the first phase of an agrarian reform program. Practically overnight, plantation workers were declared owners of cooperatives (with thirty years to pay for the land). Despite this newly acquired land ownership however, the former coffee pickers were given very little, if any technical assistance, bank credits, or trainings in administration and management.

The 1980 land reform was an anathema to the coffee barons and they opposed the measures both vehemently and violently. Although hundreds of coffee cooperatives were established through the land reform, the price was high: hundreds of cooperativists and two US reform specialists were killed by right wing death squads. The violence reached such proportions that human rights activists launched a boycott against “death squad coffee” from El Salvador.

By the late 1980’s, the modernizing sector of the Salvadoran elite including the processors and exporters, wanted to expand their control of the Salvadoran economy and diversify their holdings. They joined other sectors in urging a negotiated settlement to the civil war. They knew that the war had to end if they were going to be able to further economic development and implement their policies of corporate globalization. In 1989, the right wing modernist candidate, Alfredo Cristiani, who was a prominent coffee grower and banker, was elected President. In 1992, the government and the FMLN reached a peace agreement brokered by the United Nations. The loss was catastrophic—seventy-five thousand people lost their lives in the twelve year war—but the promise of a new era of peace and prosperity brought hope to the country.

For a country recovering from war and facing overwhelming poverty, high foreign debt, low education levels and other development challenges, coffee presented an opportunity to reap a new kind of wealth—socially distributed wealth. Coffee still accounted for half of El Salvador’s GDP (1988 figures). By the 1990’s, 78% of coffee farms and 40% of the total area were in the hands of small producers. Furthermore, coffee trees represented the majority of forested land in the hemisphere’s second most deforested country, and coffee provided direct employment for 155,000 Salvadorans.

Over the past fifteen years, the politics of repression has given way to elected, civilian governments, but coffee farmers have faced a new challenge: the conventional coffee market. Plummeting global coffee prices over the past decade have forced more than 80,000 small scale coffee producers and coffee pickers off the land and into desperation. Thousands migrated to the cities in search of work—in the informal sector as street vendors and the textile maquilas (sweat shops) —and to live in squatter communities. Thousands more risk their lives in journeys to Mexico and the United States in search of work. Over two millions Salvadorans now live in the U.S. and the over $2 billion per year they send home in remittances to their families keeps the economy in their home country afloat.

For those who stayed, the prospects have been grim. In the coffee producing provinces of Ahuachapan, Sonsonate, Santa Ana and La Libertad, UNICEF reports that nearly 30,000 families suffer hunger due to the coffee crisis. El Salvador’s Ministry of Health documents that in one year alone, 4,000 children under the age of five whose parents were coffee producers were ill from malnutrition. Fifty-two of those children died.

Although coffee farmers today face many challenges, those farmers who are organized in Fair Trade cooperatives are receiving the best prices, as well as technical assistance in the production, marketing and exporting of their coffee. In addition, because they belong to global networks of Fair Trade advocates and buyers, they have been able to take advantage of development projects and other forms of support from governmental, non-governmental and religious development agencies. One “Fair Trade” cooperative is El Pinal, which was founded on land in La Libertad province expropriated from El Salvador’s former President Pio Romero Bosque (1927-1931). Unlike many of the other coffee cooperatives in El Salvador, El Pinal has managed to pay its land debt to the banks. In addition, by participating in the Fair Trade system, El Pinal has used both premiums from the sales of its coffee and emergency funds from concerned Fair Trade partners, to build a grade school, rebuild their homes from earthquake damage and train members in leadership development.

Las Colinas, another Fair Trade coop is located in the western province of Ahuachapan. One of the provinces most affected by the low coffee prices of the past, the members of Las Colinas are receiving prices for their coffee often two and three times that of neighboring communities. The coop inherited a dry processing mill and has used its premiums to maintain, rebuild, and modernize the infrastructure. An emergency medical fund enables the coop’s health promoter to keep a supply of basic medicines on-hand and to help pay for transportation to the local health clinic or hospital. In 2005, Equal Exchange gave a donation of computers to the coop, and members have been receiving trainings in computer programs and in use of the Internet.

Today, the first Fair Trade Café, “Foto Café” has opened in San Salvador. The café sells coffee exclusively from two Fair Trade coops: El Pinal and Las Colinas. Photos on the wall and brochures on the tables help educate fellow Salvadorans about the plight of the farmers and the importance of Fair Trade coffee. The Café’s owners hope that they can begin to influence the buying decisions of local Salvadorans, while taking advantage of the growing number of foreign visitors coming to the country.

Fair Trade has made a difference in the lives of these farmers and others who participate in coffee cooperatives. The more Fair Trade coffee that can be sold in this country, the more opportunities can be given to other farmers and the greater the impact can be. In this way, we hope to accompany the Salvadoran farmers and make coffee a means to development instead of the bitter grounds of disappointment.

Espresso Italiano Roasting: roasting and blending from the tasters’ point of view

Espresso Italiano Roasting: roasting and blending from the tasters’ point of view

Espresso Italiano Roasting, the new publication from the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, has just been published. It is completely focused on the Italian way of roasting and blending.
Italian espresso stands out as a concrete expression of the elegance typical of “Made in Italy”, products covering the key role of testimonial of our agro-food culture. And this is why science can only resort to all the modern available means to photograph this art, hoping to replicate and innovate it.
And the aim of Espresso Italiano Roasting is all about this, in fact it focuses on collecting and arranging the output of coffee research using appropriate technical terms to promote its diffusion, giving special attention to the current available means in the field of coffee roasting. As a matter of fact, each single chapter and paragraph is soaked in sensory analysis, which is the main tool used at present for selecting green coffee, setting the roasting process and realizing the blends. The countless correlations involving chemistry, technology and sensory results will easily guide the readers, giving them the tools to understand phenomena they have certainly already observed in the past without the necessary competence.
Espresso Italiano Roasting is in fact based on the experience that the author has achieved with the courses held by the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, the thousands of consumer and laboratory tests carried out by the Taster Study Centre and the tens of samples that have undergone sophisticated chemical analysis.

History of Coffee in Ecuador

Ecuador is known to be one of the world's most biologically diverse countries. There are over 1500 bird species in the country, roughly 1/6 of all bird species in the world. Despite its small size (comparable to Colorado), Ecuador ranks not only fifth in total bird species, but also seventh in reptiles, third in amphibians, and sixth in butterflies. In fact, Ecuador has twice the plant and animal species of the United States and Canada together, four times more than all of Europe, and the largest number of plant species per unit of area in the Americas. Unfortunately, the rate of deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate: today only 6% of the country's rich tropical forests remain.¹

The Decline of Ecuadorian Coffee

Coffee was introduced in Ecuador early in the nineteenth century, and remained one of Ecuador's top export crops through the 1970s. (Today, the top exports are oil, shrimp and bananas.) Ecuador produces Arabica coffee in the western foothills of the Andes south of Guayaquil, and in the hilly areas of coastal Manabí Province. Some Robusta varieties, used for soluble (instant) coffee, are grown in the north. Most Ecuadorian coffee is grown on small farms, from 1 to 10 hectares. About half of the coffee land is planted in coffee alone, while the rest is co-planted with cacao, citrus fruits, bananas, and/ or mangoes.²

The decline in Ecuador's coffee production began in the 1980s as the amount of land in cultivation began falling, with coffee often going unharvested because of low prices.³ Since 1997, production has decreased significantly (1997: 709,000 quintales; 2001: 392,000 quintales; 2002: 200,000 quintales). In terms of world coffee production, Ecuador now accounts for less than 1%. Income from coffee has diminished as well, especially considering that during this period international prices have been quite low, often falling below the costs of production.

Farmers have been given little help in solving the problems of the failing coffee industry. Very low yields, estimated at between 5 and 6 quintales per hectare yearly, are about half the yields of other countries⁴ (which are, on average, 11 quintales per hectare.) While the Ecuadorian government supported the formation of COFENAC, the National Coffee Council (Consejo Cafetalero Nacional) and allowed it to impose a 2% surcharge on all coffee exports, small farmers complain that they see few benefits. Despite their mission statement⁵, COFENAC has not delivered the training, technology transfer, agricultural credits, or producer support that most observers claim is needed.

Instead, it could be claimed that COFENAC actually contributes to the decline in quality and market access for Ecuadorian coffee. Concerned more with brokering coffee sales than improving production, COFENAC approved the importation of 100,000 quintales of Vietnamese coffee in order to feed Ecuador's instant coffee production. In a stunning example of the irrationality of corporate-led globalization, the Ecuadorian coffee barons found it more profitable to import cheap, low quality coffee from Vietnam (burning countless barrels of fossil fuel in the process) than to pay a fair price to local Ecuadorian small farmers. While perhaps generating immediate profits, this shortsighted policy has continued the freefall of Ecuadorian soluble and whole bean coffee exports from 3% in 2000 to 1% in 2001 and 2002.⁶

About half a million people depend on coffee for their livelihood in Ecuador, which is about 1 out of every 8 farmers and their families. An unbearable poverty is the reality for small coffee farmers and has led to the abandonment of many coffee plantations. Many impoverished farmers have migrated to Spain, Italy and the U.S. to search for work and survival. Problems with pests, caused by leaving coffee to rot on the bushes when prices are too low to justify the harvest, plague coffee farmers struggling to hang on.

History of Coffee in Bolivia

Bolivian coffee is just starting to make a name for itself in the world of Specialty coffees. Once considered a producer of low-quality coffee, only suitable for blended roasts, Bolivia is working to change its image one bean at a time. For this heavily impoverished country, it is a matter of creating the infrastructure, technology, and skills needed to produce a quality product that supports economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Initiatives such as Fair Trade and organic, along with economic development projects have provided opportunity and support to coffee producers on the local, national, and international level.

Geography and Environment

Bolivia is located in the western heart of South America and covers an area of 1,098,581 square kilometers – roughly three times the size of Montana. Two ranges of the Andes Mountains stretch across western Bolivia and shape the country’s three major geographic regions: the mountainous highlands and Altiplano in the west, the semitropical Yungas and temperate valleys of the eastern mountain slopes, and the tropical lowlands that span across the northern and eastern regions, known as the Oriente¹.

Coffee

Coffee production in Bolivia is concentrated in the rural areas of the Yungas, where approximately 95% cultivation occurs². Other growing regions include Santa Cruz, Beni, Cochabamba, Tarija, and Pando. While commercial farms and haciendas exist, governmental land reforms have expropriated most of the large landholdings and redistributed them back to rural farming families3. These small plots range from 1-8 hectares and produce between 85-95% of Bolivia’s coffee, most of which is the Arabica variety and grown organically³.

Bolivia has all the ingredients to be a high-quality coffee producer, such as altitude, fertile soil, and a consistent rainy season. However, the rugged terrain and lack of infrastructure and technology make post-harvest quality control a challenging task. Funds from development agencies are working to establish processing facilities in rural areas so that farmers have access to the resources that will help ensure quality beans, while also adding value to their product⁴.

Within the entire industry, 28 privately owned firms control more than 70 percent of coffee export trade². The remaining percentage is traded by Bolivia’s 17 coffee cooperatives. Both the private and cooperative sectors are members of the Bolivian Coffee Committee, or Cobolca². Most of Bolivia’s (green) beans are exported to the United States, Germany and other parts of Europe, the Russian Federation, and Japan⁵.

The Coffee Crisis

The global coffee crisis has produced devastating effects for Bolivia’s rural farming population, as well as the economy as a whole. With coffee prices reaching as low as $0.40 in early 2002, many producers have been unable to cover the costs of production⁶. Despite a price spike in 1997, coffee production and its value on the international market has been decreasing steadily since the early 1990’s⁷. The role of coffee in the national economy fluctuates based on the highly volatile international commodity price, or New York “C” price. In 1997, Bolivia exported 6,725 metric tons of coffee (green) and received $26,040,000, meaning that each metric ton was worth approximately $3872⁷. However, in 2003 coffee exports (green) totaled 4,453 metric tons and returned only $6,389,000, thus valuing each metric ton at a mere $1,423⁷ . This staggering price disparity reflects (on a smaller scale) the natural boom and bust cycles of the coffee economy, making small-scale farmers extremely vulnerable to cyclical price shocks.

Deforestation for the purposes of agriculture cultivation and timber exports pose a serious threat to the environment and biodiversity of Bolivia⁸. Soil erosion due to cattle grazing and unsustainable farming practices, such as the “slash-and-burn” method, have also become a major problem, particularly for conventional farmers⁸. Water pollution ails the country as well.

Yet there is hope on the horizon. Bolivia is currently working to transform its coffee industry, developing infrastructure such as processing mills where they previously did not exist, and looking to the growing specialty coffee market for better prices. Also, many predict that Bolivia’s war on drugs will greatly benefit the coffee industry, providing increased funding and development opportunities for coca farmers transitioning to legal farming activities.

Activism and social change

In the past few years specialty labeling (Fair Trade, organic, and shade grown) and the cooperative movement have been gaining momentum among various rural commodity producers, including such goods as coffee, cocoa, bananas, and crafts. The purpose of these initiatives is to support sustainable livelihoods, improve working conditions, allocate credit, and promote environmentally sound agricultural practices, such as biodiversity, while maintaining productivity. In general, producer cooperatives form as a means to building solidarity, sharing knowledge and skills, and breaking out of the exploitive conventional agriculture system9. One of the most influential and empowering aspects of this cooperative structure is that a part of the coop’s income is dedicated to social projects, community development, technical training, and creating environmentally sustainable practices built from the ground up⁹.

Many cooperatives have united under this movement, yet others are incapable of paying the certification costs, which are considerable in the context of such poverty. ANTOFAGASTA, established near La Paz in 1992, was one of the first cooperatives on the Fair Trade register that sells a portion of their coffee through Equal Exchange’s Fair Trade market. This is just one example of the many cooperatives that are helping farmers take control of their own production, gain marketing power, and provide for their communities.

History of Coffee in Peru

History of Coffee in PeruPeru is located in Western South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean, between Chile and Ecuador with a total area of 1,285,220 sq km. Peru's climate is highly diverse, ranging from tropical in the east to dry desert in the west, from temperate to frigid in the Andes Mountains. The different climates closely match Peru's primary geographic regions including a western coastal plain (costa), the high and rugged Andes in center (sierra), and eastern lowland jungle of Amazon Basin (selva) ¹.

Coffee

Coffee production came to Peru in the 1700s. After two centuries, the heirloom typica variety still comprises 60 percent of the country's exports. There are more than 110,000 coffee growers in Peru, most of whom are indigenous to these landscapes and speak Spanish as a second language. The average land-holding farmer lives on two or three hectares, hours away from the comforts of electricity and running water. Peru’s coffee exports account for two percent of both the national economy and the global coffee supply², Peru is quickly building a global reputation for producing traditionally cultivated, shade grown, high quality Arabica beans.

Peruvian coffee farmers' landholdings are small, and the country's typical micro-wet-milling operation is even smaller. From May to September, farmers pick ripe cherries and carry them to hand pulpers and wooden fermentation tanks. This tradition of micro-wet-milling has protected Peru's water resources from the devastating effects of river-polluting pulping factories. After processing their coffee, most farmers hike their beans by foot or mule into the nearest town—a trip that can take anywhere from thirty minutes to eight hours. On Saturdays, the plaza of the closest town becomes a buying and selling station for the surrounding remote coffee growers. Farmers sell their coffee and buy goods for their homes before heading back up the mountainous foot trails.

An unfortunate--but all too common--experience at these buying and selling plazas is the arrival of only one buyer. This dramatically decreases the price paid to farmers for their coffee. With no personal warehouse space and only unreliable, expensive collective storage in town, farmers generally have no option but to accept lower prices. Buyers in the main city of the region then repeat this process during the week. The more remote the farms, the more times the coffees are mixed and traded before they arrive at the coast. Once there, the coffee is dry-milled and prepared for export. This unorganized trading system and isolation has caused farmers to become estranged from the end beverage that comes from their farms. For many years, growers have worked on a weight/dollar exchange for their coffee in the parchment, completely disconnecting the idea that they produce a beverage that will be enjoyed—or thrown away—based on its quality. Intermediary traders have even been known to increase the weight by throwing sand and water into each bag³.

Fair Trade cooperatives: cultivating alternatives with Peruvian coffee's futures

During the last decade, Peru’s smallholder cooperatives consolidated their movements and provided a more organized and rewarding opportunity for tens of thousands of smallholders who were once subjected to the exploitive trading practices explained above. An estimated 15 – 25 percent of Peru's 100,000+ smallholders now belong to cooperative organizations². These cooperatives have linked with international Fair Trade and organic networks to stimulate their growth. Working together with partners like Equal Exchange, Peruvian smallholder cooperatives quickly became the second largest suppliers of Fair Trade certified coffee after Mexico and one of the world's top organic producers. The higher prices offered through these certified and specialty markets have strengthened cooperatives and offered at least some price premiums to farmers. The more direct market access has also helped four Fair Trade Certified co-ops establish themselves among Peru's largest 21 coffee exporters².

Cooperatives have invested these price premiums and many donations from international development agencies into building infrastructure for improving coffee quality, processing and exporting, training farmers in their transition to certified organic production and social development projects.

The significant differences that farmers experience go well beyond better prices received at the farmgate. The differences are about being organized and developing a collective sense of identity through participation in their cooperatives, about the ability to own and control their means of production, and about the shared learning process through trainings and farmer exchanges. One farmer shares her reflections, -"Before there were no trainings. But now they tell us about the roles of men and women. You learn to value yourself. You learn about participation

Peru Pachakushi - Fertilizer Plant - English

Why do I have to drink just 25 milliliters of coffee?

By Luigi Odello -  Why do I have to drink just 25 milliliters of coffee?
There are moments in which you need to drink and our organism is satisfied only by a high quantity. And in these moments it is possible to commit two crimes: to water down wine and to order a ‘long’ at the bar.

Let go of the first and consider the second. What does happen in the 99% of cases in which you order a long espresso to the barman? He will let the liquid flow from the espresso machine till the cup is full. And if you have asked for a long in a big cup, he won’t make a different thing, and if he had a little good sense he will stop at three quarters.
The crime is then done: the espresso is not short or long, the Italian espresso, the best in the world, is of 25 milliliters because the blend is projected like that. Instant substances, suspended and emulsified, will reach the right balance in the cup to the strike of the 25th milliliter.

If it will be less, it means that a part of the components is not already pass in the extraction water, if it will be more the extraction will have effect of ever growing shares of unpleasant substances. But there is more. When the coffee is long the cooking is anomalous during the extraction phase and so the disgust grows. In many countries out of Italy, where less than 50 millilitres is not served, they maintain the grinding coarser and so they reduce the problem (more or less).

But what we can do if we want a real long coffee? The best long coffee that I have drunk in the world is the Peruvian ‘gota a gota’, made with a coffee syrup obtained with a particular coffeemaker. To make this coffee concentrate the real adepts need a couple of hours, keep on adding little quantity of hot water on the ground coffee and waiting that it goes down drop by drop. But then they have got coffee for a whole day: they just need to dilute the syrup with some hot water. And everyone can drink as much coffee has they want to. The only important thing is to use quality coffees as well as the washed Peruvians.

At home we have got different possibilities: the Neapolitan coffeemaker, the percolator, the siphon and the filter in last place because it isn’t useful to give quality. But if we have got an espresso machine, which you can find almost everywhere, or we are at the bar, how can we have a great long coffee? It is easy: a big cup and hot water apart. You extract the espresso in the right quantity and add as much water as you want. An excellent espresso holds till five parts of water, so you can have a big cup of 150 millilitres, like the cappuccino one. Pay attention however: do not you think you can do it without quality coffee just because you are drinking it long. Especially in this case you have to choose blends rich of washed coffees, better if there are some citrus aromas which are the best ones for dilution.
by  Luigi Odello

History of Coffee in Colombia

History of Coffee in Colombia

Colombian coffee is often regarded as some of the highest quality coffee in the world. Colombia has traditionally grown arabica beans and its unique geography makes it perfectly suited for producing a delicious, high quality brew¹. Colombia’s excellent growing conditions have paired with an aggressive marketing campaign by the National Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC), which has worked since the late 1950’s to bring Colombia’s coffee sector to the forefront of international attention. Colombia has traditionally been second in global coffee production only to Brazil², but has been set back to third by Vietnam’s recent market entry and rapidly expanding production of robusta coffees. Over 500,000 farms, most of them small landholdings of 5 hectares or less³ are scattered across the zonas cafeteras, some of the most biologically diverse landscapes in the world.

Geography and Environment

Colombia is bisected by the Andes Mountains which splits into three parallel cordilleras (mountain ranges) as they run south to north. Much of the nation’s coffee is grown in this area. The small nation, about three times the size of Montana⁴ contains two of South America’s five “biodiversity hotspots”⁵. The Tumbes-Choco hotspot occupies all of Colombia’s coast, while the Tropical Andes hotspot covers nearly all its mountain ranges. In fact, Conservation International calls the Colombian Andes the “richest and most diverse region on earth,” noting that the whole of the tropical Andes chain contains one sixth of the world’s plant species in only one percent of its land area⁵.

Coffee

No one knows exactly when coffee arrived in what is now Colombia. Some think the bean came with Jesuit priests in the seventeenth century⁷, but the first shipment of coffee overseas wasn’t until 1835, when 2500 pounds of coffee headed from Colombia to the United States⁸. In pre and post-independence times, most export agriculture was done on large-scale latifundos controlled by elites⁸. By 1860, coffee had emerged as the dominant export crop, and shortly thereafter, tariffs on coffee exports had become the main source of government revenues⁸. Land reform in the 1930’s did some to relieve the inequality in land ownership, but by 1980, 10% of farms, including ranches, managed 80% of arable land⁸. This chronic inequality has not been as prevalent in the coffee sector, and the nation has shown a strong trend towards small fincas in the last 30 years³.

The National Federation of Coffee Growers, an industry association which represents the nation’s coffee producers has been responsible for creating a name for Colombian coffee with their well-known spokesman, the fictional, charismatic Juan Valdez. The FNC guarantees purchase of green coffee, but farmers are under no obligation to sell to them¹.

Colombia has 38 cooperatives independent of the FNC, nineteen of which are certified fair trade by the Fair Trade Labeling Organization¹⁰. The FNC reports that the vast majority of the nation’s coffee is grown under shade with 1.4 million hectares under canopy and only 717,000 hectares grown in full sun¹.

Deforestation as well as soil and water contamination from overuse of pesticide are among two of the most grievous environmental problems facing the country⁴. Soil erosion has become a significant problem for some conventional farmers as well⁹. Sustainable coffee production holds great promise in addressing these issues, and has the potential to protect species that occur nowhere else in the world.

The Coffee Crisis and Colombia's Future

The global coffee crisis hit Colombia's small producers hard. Twenty-three percent of producers were not meeting production costs in the nineteen nineties¹⁰. The affect on producer families varied by region, but overall the crisis sent people further into poverty and debt. Malnutrition among small children in farm families went up significantly, while coffee production across the country fell 44% as farmers could no longer afford to harvest and process their crops¹¹. Many farmers were forced to migrate for work in urban areas leading to increased unemployment and more poverty¹¹.

With the rise in global coffee prices, Colombia’s economy has picked up overall⁴, and things are beginning to look better for farm families. Colombia has the potential use its rich biodiversity to gain a premium on its shade-grown coffee and simultaneously protect the ecology and improve livelihoods for its producer families. The history of control over agriculture by elites and large organizations, the threat leveled at both human and ecological communities through the U.S. led war on drugs, and continued political violence remain a real challenge to creating a most just and sustainable agricultural system.

History of Coffee in Peru

History of Coffee in Peru

Peru is located in Western South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean, between Chile and Ecuador with a total area of 1,285,220 sq km. Peru's climate is highly diverse, ranging from tropical in the east to dry desert in the west, from temperate to frigid in the Andes Mountains. The different climates closely match Peru's primary geographic regions including a western coastal plain (costa), the high and rugged Andes in center (sierra), and eastern lowland jungle of Amazon Basin (selva) ¹.

Coffee

Coffee production came to Peru in the 1700s. After two centuries, the heirloom typica variety still comprises 60 percent of the country's exports. There are more than 110,000 coffee growers in Peru, most of whom are indigenous to these landscapes and speak Spanish as a second language. The average land-holding farmer lives on two or three hectares, hours away from the comforts of electricity and running water. Peru’s coffee exports account for two percent of both the national economy and the global coffee supply², Peru is quickly building a global reputation for producing traditionally cultivated, shade grown, high quality Arabica beans.

Peruvian coffee farmers' landholdings are small, and the country's typical micro-wet-milling operation is even smaller. From May to September, farmers pick ripe cherries and carry them to hand pulpers and wooden fermentation tanks. This tradition of micro-wet-milling has protected Peru's water resources from the devastating effects of river-polluting pulping factories. After processing their coffee, most farmers hike their beans by foot or mule into the nearest town—a trip that can take anywhere from thirty minutes to eight hours. On Saturdays, the plaza of the closest town becomes a buying and selling station for the surrounding remote coffee growers. Farmers sell their coffee and buy goods for their homes before heading back up the mountainous foot trails.

An unfortunate--but all too common--experience at these buying and selling plazas is the arrival of only one buyer. This dramatically decreases the price paid to farmers for their coffee. With no personal warehouse space and only unreliable, expensive collective storage in town, farmers generally have no option but to accept lower prices. Buyers in the main city of the region then repeat this process during the week. The more remote the farms, the more times the coffees are mixed and traded before they arrive at the coast. Once there, the coffee is dry-milled and prepared for export. This unorganized trading system and isolation has caused farmers to become estranged from the end beverage that comes from their farms. For many years, growers have worked on a weight/dollar exchange for their coffee in the parchment, completely disconnecting the idea that they produce a beverage that will be enjoyed—or thrown away—based on its quality. Intermediary traders have even been known to increase the weight by throwing sand and water into each bag³.

Fair Trade cooperatives: cultivating alternatives with Peruvian coffee's futures

During the last decade, Peru’s smallholder cooperatives consolidated their movements and provided a more organized and rewarding opportunity for tens of thousands of smallholders who were once subjected to the exploitive trading practices explained above. An estimated 15 – 25 percent of Peru's 100,000+ smallholders now belong to cooperative organizations². These cooperatives have linked with international Fair Trade and organic networks to stimulate their growth. Working together with partners like Equal Exchange, Peruvian smallholder cooperatives quickly became the second largest suppliers of Fair Trade certified coffee after Mexico and one of the world's top organic producers. The higher prices offered through these certified and specialty markets have strengthened cooperatives and offered at least some price premiums to farmers. The more direct market access has also helped four Fair Trade Certified co-ops establish themselves among Peru's largest 21 coffee exporters².

Cooperatives have invested these price premiums and many donations from international development agencies into building infrastructure for improving coffee quality, processing and exporting, training farmers in their transition to certified organic production and social development projects.

The significant differences that farmers experience go well beyond better prices received at the farmgate. The differences are about being organized and developing a collective sense of identity through participation in their cooperatives, about the ability to own and control their means of production, and about the shared learning process through trainings and farmer exchanges. One farmer shares her reflections, "Before there were no trainings. But now they tell us about the roles of men and women. You learn to value yourself. You learn about participation

How Much Caffeine In A Cup Of Coffee, Tea, Cola or Chocolate Bar?

How Much Caffeine In A Cup Of Coffee, Tea, Cola or Chocolate Bar?

On humans, caffeine acts particularly on the brain and skeletal muscles while theophylline targets heart, bronchia, and kidneys.
Other data on caffeine:

Cup of coffee         90-150 mg
Instant coffee                60-80 mg
Tea                              30-70 mg
Mate                            25-150 mg
Cola                             30-45 mg
Chocolate bar                30 mg
Stay-awake pill              100 mg
Vivarin                          200 mg
Cold relief tablet             30 mg

Chocolate — – – – — mg caffeine

baking choc, unsweetened, Bakers-- 1 oz(28 g)                 25
german sweet, Bakers -- 1 oz (28 g)                                       8
semi-sweet, Bakers -- 1 oz (28 g)                       13

Choc chips

Bakers -- 1/4 cup (43 g)                                13
german sweet, Bakers -- 1/4 cup (43 g)                  15
Chocolate bar, Cadbury -- 1 oz (28 g)                   15
1.4 oz bar of milk choc.                                3-10
1.4 oz bar of white choc                                2-4
1.4 oz. bar of dark choc                                28
Chocolate milk  8oz                                     8
Chocolate milk 8 oz. glass                              2-7

Desserts:

Jello Pudding Pops, Choc (47 g)                         2
Choc mousse from Jell-O mix (95 g)                      6
Jello choc fudge mousse (86 g)                          12
Chocolate covered espresso bean                         3-5

Beverages

3 heaping teaspoons of choc powder mix                  8
2 tablespoons choc syrup                                5
1 envelope hot cocoa mix                                5

Dietary formulas

Ensure, Plus, Choc, Ross Labs -- 8 oz (259 g)           10

COFFEE VARIETALS/STRAIGHTS

Brazil Bourbons                              1.20 %
Celebes Kalossi                              1.22
Colombia Excelso                             1.37
Colombia Supremo                             1.37
Ethiopian Harrar-Moka                        1.13
Guatemala Antigua                            1.32
Indian Mysore                                1.37
Jamaican Blue Mtn/Wallensford Estate         1.24
Java Estate Kuyumas                          1.20
Kenya AA                                     1.36
Kona Extra Prime                             1.32
Mexico Pluma Altura                          1.17
Mocha Mattari (Yemen)                        1.01
New Guinea                                   1.30
Panama Organic                               1.34
Sumatra Mandheling-Lintong                   1.30
Tanzania Peaberry                            1.42
Zimbabwe                                     1.10

BLENDS & DARK ROASTS

Colombia Supremo Dark                        1.37 %
Espresso Roast                               1.32
French Roast                                 1.22
Vienna Roast                                 1.27
Mocha-Java                                   1.17

Supporting Women Coffee Farmers in Mexico

History of Coffee in Guatemala

History of Coffee in Guatemala

While the world coffee crisis of the past few years has increased problems faced by the Mayan people in Guatemala, they have been facing a permanent crisis for centuries, ever since the Spaniards arrived and began to disrupt indigenous ways of life. This began when the Spanish crown awarded large swaths of land to settlers, and what had been traditional Mayan lands became large estates upon which the indigenous people were forced to work. Throughout the colonial period and after Central American independence in 1823, various laws around land tenure either drove indigenous people off their land or converted them into “residents” of the new plantations.

With the invention of chemical dyes in Europe in the 1800s, the export market for Guatemala’s indigo and cochineal collapsed. Coffee was developed as an export crop to take their place, supported by the government through preferential trade and tax treatment. By 1859, over a half million coffee trees had been planted around Antigua, Coban, Fraijanes and San Marcos and close to 400 quintales (100 lb. bags) were exported to Europe. The next year, production tripled to over 1100 quintales¹.

Guatemalan dictator Justo Rufino Barrios made the export of coffee the backbone of his government’s program in the 1870s. Barrios expropriated land belonging to the Catholic hierarchy, as well as communal lands held by Mayans, and by 1877, Barrios had virtually eliminated communal ownership of land in Guatemala. By 1880, coffee accounted for 90% of Guatemala's exports². While exports of sugar, bananas and other fruits and vegetables, as well as beef and clothing, have also grown, coffee remains Guatemala’s largest export³.

The social unrest resulting from the world-wide economic depression of 1929 led to the Matanza (massacre) of 1932 in neighboring El Salvador; to Guatemala it brought the presidency of Jorge Ubico in 1931. Ubico’s dictatorship inaugurated a 13 year repressive campaign against trade unions and other forms of popular organization. The tide began to turn in 1950, when populist Jacobo Arbenz was elected president and slowly began implementing a land reform, incurring the wrath of the large coffee plantation owners as well as the United Fruit Company and the US government. The Arbenz government was overthrown by a CIA-organized coup in 1954. The land reform was reversed, the unions and popular organizations disbanded, and thousands of people were murdered, including organizers and members of agricultural cooperatives.

The terror unleashed by the US overthrow of Arbenz continued through a succession of governments, leading to the outbreak of civil war in 1962, which lasted through 1996 when Peace Accords were finally negotiated. The war functioned as a laboratory for methods of terror as a means to control the population. Entire villages were wiped out as the military, right-wing paramilitary, and government-organized “village patrols” murdered mostly rural, mostly poor, mostly indigenous people with impunity. The Guatemalan civil war resulted in an estimated 200,000 deaths and a society in which violence, distrust of government and law, and a culture of fear continue to this day.

The accomplishment of the peace agreements was that they brought an end to the longest war in the Americas. However, the causes of the conflict -- poverty, hunger, unequal land distribution, and racism faced by the indigenous population -- continue today and continue to define Guatemala’s coffee economy.

Labor relations in the coffee sector have not changed much in the last century. Plantation residents continue to complain of indentured servitude as some farms promote indebtedness through rents, credit policies at the company store, and loans for emergency health care. Many say they were evicted from their ancestral homes without being paid legally-mandated severance benefits. Others, however, have been able to negotiate land titles in exchange for leaving their places of origin. Tensions around land have resulted in some large growers establishing private security forces, increasing the levels of fear, violence, and inequality in rural areas⁴.

The coffee harvest depends on a massive, seasonal influx of migrant workers who travel to supplement the meager income generated by their small plots of land in the highlands. Seasonal and sometimes daily contract laborers, instead of permanent employees, represent significant savings for growers by not demanding year round wages and benefits. This arrangement also tends to lower wages in general, and makes access to food (and the land to grow it on), housing, medical care and schooling more difficult. In general, a season’s worth of work will only generate 1/3 of a family’s corn and bean calorie requirements for a family⁵.

Guatemalan coffee production peaked at the turn of the 21st century when it reached around 5 million quintales; however, production fell by 1/3 in just a few years (to 345,000 quintales in 2004) as coffee prices dropped drastically⁶. The decline in coffee’s price and production increased the already difficult conditions for Guatemala’s peasant farmers.

About the same size as the state of Ohio, Guatemala ranks second in the world (after Colombia) in the amount of high grade coffee it produces, and it has the highest percentage of its crop classified as high quality. Over half its coffee is exported to the US, representing 1/8 of the country’s GNP and generating about 1/3 of Guatemala’s foreign exchange. But when these hundreds of millions of dollars trickle down, this intense labor generates little for the coffee workers. Refugees International’s Larry Thompson believes that in the recent crisis, “those fortunate enough to have found work in the coffee harvest saw their wages fall from a previous average of about $3.00 per day to about $2.00 per day.”⁷ These starvation wages occur despite the existence of a legal daily rural minimum wage of $2.48⁸.

Although statistics vary significantly, even the more conservative sources like USAID estimate that 56% of the population lives in poverty, and 20% in extreme poverty. Infant mortality is among the worst in the region (39 per 1,000 live births), maternal mortality is extremely high (153 per 100,000 births) and chronic malnutrition remains a serious problem (49%)⁹. Others believe that as many as 85% of children under 5 are malnourished, and that stunted growth affects up to 95% of non-Spanish speaking children in some regions¹⁰. A survey of a region in eastern Guatemala in October 2001 found 2.1% of children under five suffered from acute malnutrition; a March 2002 re-survey of the same region found that acute malnutrition had increased to 4.3%¹¹.

Increased access to land and income in rural areas continues to be key to resolving these stark issues of malnutrition, disease and mortality. Unfortunately, solutions remain among the failed promises of the Peace Accords as real land reform and an end to discrimination against the Mayan peoples seem to be absent from the government’s agenda. While only a small step toward rectifying centuries of injustice, fair trade coffee is helping to improve the situation for Guatemala’s small coffee farmers.

One of Equal Exchange’s partners in Guatemala is Manos Campesinas (Farmers Hands). Founded in 1997 by 620 farmers organized in 6 cooperatives, it now has 1,073 members organized in 7 cooperatives located in the Departments of San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, Retalhuleu and Solola¹². The majority of these farmers each own less than 2 ¼ acres of coffee. In their first season (1997-1998), Manos Campesinas exported one container of coffee. The following harvest, they exported four containers. Over the next three years, their exports increased to six, nine and thirteen containers respectively. In 2003, they exported 16 containers, 40% of their total production. Considering that the fair trade price for coffee that year was $1.26, while the market (unfair) price was 60 to 70 cents¹³, the improvement in coffee farmers’ lives, health and nutrition becomes obvious.

According to Jerónimo Bollen, former General Manager of Manos Campesinas, “Fair Trade keeps farmers on their land. While low coffee prices have forced thousands of farmers to emigrate to Mexico and the U.S., none of our members have had to give up their land.”¹⁴

Carlos Reynoso, current General Manager of Manos Campesinas, agrees: “About four or five years ago, coffee prices began to fall. That made our existence and our lives that much more difficult. We received less income for our production, but that also meant less money for food, health care, and education. The premiums we receive from fair trade help us send our children to school, and provide food and medicines for our families.”¹⁵

The incentive to organize into cooperatives promoted by Equal Exchange and other fair trade partners is perhaps just as important for survival as is the extra income. When Hurricane Stan devastated Guatemala in October 2005, Manos Campesinas was able to mobilize to help its members and their neighbors. Jerónimo Bollen noted: “In an attempt to alleviate the problems caused by Hurricane Stan, Manos Campesinas first worked to provide emergency assistance such as food and supplies as well as medicines and medical assistance. Once the majority of these needs were met, Manos Campesinas was able to shift its focus onto the reconstruction of houses and infrastructure, economic reactivation, coffee production and the demarcation of landslides to ensure safety.”¹⁶

In a world in which inequality and hunger are increasing as a result of corporate-led globalization, Fair Trade is a good example of how globalization-from-below helps to improve people’s lives and strengthen their communities.

A good, readable book about the role of coffee in Guatemalan history from Arbenz through the peace accords is Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala (Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

Coffee tour in Guatemala

Antigua Guatemala

griding Guatemala