GLOBAL EXCHANGE
help campesinos harvest coffee beans
NICARAGUA
I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
—Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States
18 Coffee is the world’s second most valuable traded commodity (petroleum is first), with 25 million farmers and coffee workers in more than 50 countries around the world.
And even though the United States consumes one-fifth of the 12 billion pounds of coffee produced each year, few Americans realize that the people who grow their precious morning wake-me-up often toil in what some observers have described as “sweatshops in the fields.” What’s even worse, amid a volatile market, many small coffee farmers receive less for their coffee than it costs to produce. Some years, farmers (campesinos) are forced into debt, which makes it impossible for them to break out of an endless cycle of poverty and also makes it difficult for them to provide adequate food for their families.
Global Exchange is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that organizes socially and politically conscious tours, which they call Reality Tours, to more than 30 countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Every December, it sends coffee pickers to Nicaragua to work at a fair-trade coffee cooperative, La Central de Cooperativas Cafetaleras del Norte (CECOCAFEN). Volunteers live with a family and work alongside the farmers to harvest the coffee, as well as learn about the global issues involved in coffee and fair trade.
Fair-trade practices give small farmers a seat at the bargaining table. It keeps them from being exploited by global corporations that sometimes insist they take the price offered for their coffee beans, even when it is clearly inadequate pay for their labor and their product. Instead, fair-trade importers offer small-scale farmers a minimum price per pound and provide them with credit and technical assistance. According to Global Exchange, “To become fair trade certified, an importer must meet stringent international criteria; paying a minimum price per pound of $1.26, providing much needed credit to farmers, and providing technical assistance such as help transitioning to organic farming. Fair trade for coffee farmers means community development, health, education, and environmental stewardship.”
ONLINE COFFEE SHOP
Okay, so you’re not quite ready to travel to Nicaragua to pick coffee beans, but you are willing to put your money where your heart is. Global Exchange operates three brick-and-mortar stores (one each in San Francisco and Berkeley, California, and one in Portland, Oregon) and an online store that sell fair-trade products from 40 countries around the world.
The online store, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2008, offers such products as:
- mother-of-pearl boxes from Egypt
- crocheted necklaces from Argentina
- baby slippers made by Thailand’s Lisu tribe
- finger puppets from a Peruvian village on the shores of Lake Titicaca
- baskets woven by Zulu artisans
- sweatshop-free sneakers from Pakistan
- leatherbound journals from India
- laptop bags made by survivors of genocidal rape in Rwanda.
As for their fair-trade coffee shop, they sell a wide variety of coffees from companies such as Cloudforest, Dean’s Beans, Equal Exchange, Global Giving, and Peace Coffee. They also sell Thanksgiving Coffee Company’s Gorilla Coffee, which supports both farmer-owned cooperatives in Rwanda and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
Check out all the goods at www.globalexchangestore.org.
One of the most troubling issues facing millions of coffee farmers is the recent precipitous drop in global coffee prices. Since 1998, prices have plummeted 50 percent, leaving more than a quarter of a million Nicaraguans destitute. Many live in makeshift roadside camps and some are suffering from malnutrition as a result of the reduced income.
On this once-a-year Global Exchange coffee harvest trip, you’ll not only pick coffee beans (a task that begins bright and early each morning at 5), but you’ll help the families at the cooperative depulp, ferment, wash, dry, and sort the morning’s harvest. Participants must have at least basic Spanish language ability and be self-reliant people who are not afraid of challenging situations.
While the coffee you pick on this eight-day journey is important, your most important job—the place where you can make the most difference—awaits back at home. Being an advocate in your community for fair trade may include talking to the media, giving presentations, writing articles, and urging your local stores to offer fair-trade products. While they might cost more, knowing that farmers and craftspeople are being given a fair shake is worth a little extra expense.
You will experience life on an upe (coffee cooperative) in Matagalpa, a misty, mountainous region in the north of Nicaragua, and meet with community leaders. While you’re there, you’ll also get to visit such nature sites as the Yasica waterfall, hike the Poza Bruja Trail, and learn to cook typical Nicaraguan food.
The cost for eight nights’ accommodation, all breakfasts and dinners, sightseeing excursions, the services of a translator, and transportation on a private bus runs $950.
HOW TO GET IN TOUCH
Global Exchange, 2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94110, 415-255-7296 or 800-497-1994, www.globalexchange.org.
