LOS ALPES, Nicaragua – The two-room schoolhouse in Los Alpes, a small farming community in northern Nicaragua, is on a grassy hill surrounded by swaying banana trees.
On a regular morning, visitors can find about 80 young students seated at the desks inside, their faces turned to the whiteboard at the front of the room as a teacher presents the day’s lesson.
Five years ago, there was no school here and Los Alpes coffee farmers say that without the extra earnings they get from selling through a fair-trade co-op, this school wouldn’t exist.
Thirty-eight members of the community of 65 families (population 390) grow coffee certified as fair trade – a marketing and export movement that aims to provide producers in developing countries with a fair wage by guaranteeing a floor price for their product, regardless of market fluctuations.
Before the school was built, “children had to walk long distances to go to school, and in many instances didn’t even go” because their parents couldn’t afford school supplies, said Luis William Hernandez Perez, youth program director for SOPPEXCCA, an umbrella group of fair-trade co-operatives through which Los Alpes’s farmers market their coffee.
After failing to receive government funding to build the school, the Los Alpes co-operative decided to put its social premium – collective savings that, according to fair-trade practices, are set aside for community projects – toward the school. SOPPEXCCA pitched in as well.
“It started with a grain of sand from everyone – a contribution from the parents, from SOPPEXCCA, from the community and from charity groups abroad,” said Hernandez Perez.
All the children in the community attend the school, not just co-operative members’ kids – so everybody benefits, he said. “It’s just one example of what fair trade can do for a community.”
Especially a community – and, indeed, a country – that relies so heavily on coffee.
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In this Central American nation slightly smaller than New York state, roughly half a million people depend on the coffee industry for work during the harvest season, which runs from November to March. That’s over 10 per cent of the country’s population.
The country was hard hit by the coffee crisis, which saw the price of coffee plummet because of a glut in the world market in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The market is only now recovering.
Around Jinotega and Matagalpa, two coffee-producing regions of Nicaragua affected by the crisis, the United Nations World Food Program notes malnutrition rates reached more than 50 per cent, causing stunted growth in some children.
Understandably, many small-scale Nicaraguan farmers see fair trade as a better option.
“Coffee is a very volatile market,” said Kieran Durnien, Central American liaison officer for Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, the global body that markets, promotes and sets standards for fair trade.
Coffee was the first product to become fair-trade certified and remains the most heavily sold fair-trade product.
“The original idea (of fair trade) was to bring some stability to the market for small producers, so there would be more of a guaranteed income to at least cover the costs of production (and) of basic necessities,” Durnien said.
In 2005, the average annual income of coffee producers in the Jinotega region was about $750 but for fair-trade certified producers in the area who worked with SOPPEXCCA, Durnien said, the average was closer to $905.
“That’s a positive difference of roughly 20 per cent,” he said. “That’s quite a substantial difference. Not to mention the impact of educational projects” and other social projects implemented by SOPPEXCCA.
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Like Los Alpes, the rural community of San Antonio outside Matagalpa city is dependent on coffee, but the farmers here haven’t been able to form a co-operative, a necessary step for coffee-makers seeking fair-trade certification.
The community does have a small schoolhouse where every morning children are fed a hot meal – for many, it’s their first solid meal of the day. The food is supplied by the World Food Program, and prepared in a small kitchen by the students’ mothers.
Poverty, malnutrition, and a lack of medical centres, electricity and even outhouses are some of the problems affecting San Antonio, according to the WFP.
Community leader Boanerge Rugama Suorez says a rural worker in the area may make about 30 cordoba ($2) a day – roughly the price of one pound of meat at the local market. “A worker with six or seven children can’t afford to feed his family on that,” he said.
For over 10 years, 36 San Antonio farmers – including Suorez – have been struggling to form a legally recognized co-operative. “If we were organized, we could afford to hold onto our coffee” instead of selling it out of necessity when the market price is low, Suorez said.
Groups wishing to form a legal co-op must pay the government a base fee of $18 and an additional $9.70 per potential member. Other fees might include “filing paperwork, hiring a lawyer, travelling to Managua – all the red tape,” said Fatima Ismael, manager of SOPPEXCCA.
San Antonio coffee farmer Juan Rodriguez Gonzalez said the total cost of legalizing their co-op would be about $776. “In the end it costs money. Right now we can’t pay it,” he said.
The government does not offer financial help to individuals wishing to form a co-operative, said Jessica Leslie Cantarero, director of Agricultural Co-operatives with the Nicaraguan government.
Nicaragua’s three largest fair-trade groups – CECOCAFEN, PRODECOOP, and SOPPEXCCA – do what they can to help producers with the fees, whether it’s accepting payment in the form of coffee beans (which PRODECOOP does) or using communal savings to cover members’ fees altogether (which SOPPEXCCA does).
Farming co-operatives seeking fair- trade certification must also pay initial fees to FLO-Cert, the global fair-trade certification body, and annual fees once they’re certified.
Initial certification fees range from $2,150 and up, depending on the co-operative’s size and what it produces.
FLO has a fund available to help producer groups pay up to 75 per cent of the certification fee, said Chantal Havard, public-relations officer for Canadian certification body TransFair Canada.
To become certified, producers must meet a series of social, economic, and environmental criteria – 106 in all – and submit to yearly inspections, said Durnien of FLO International. The inspections are conducted by FLO-Cert, an independent certification body.
Among their obligations, fair-trade coffee farmers aren’t allowed to use pesticides on their crops, and must belong to a democratically run co-operative, said Rob Clarke, executive director of TransFair Canada. And while children are allowed to help out on their family’s coffee farm, he added, it can’t interfere with their education.
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Sift through a bag of Flora Montenegro’s coffee beans and their quality is evident immediately, even to an untrained eye – the unroasted beans are a delicate green shade, round and smooth, and look almost perfectly symmetrical.
Ask Montenegro how she manages to produce such excellent beans, and you probably won’t get more than a secretive smile.
Montenegro’s coffee ranked among the best in Nicaragua in the Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence, which judges the country’s finest beans, in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
“As a woman producer, I feel proud” to have placed above so many male producers, Montenegro said.
She is one of SOPPEXCCA’s 200 female members. Women represent 38 per cent of the group’s membership.
“As a woman producer, if SOPPEXCCA wasn’t around, I wouldn’t have had support from anyone,” Montenegro said. “I was always depending on my husband; he would negotiate everything. Since joining SOPPEXCCA (six years ago), I’ve learned to manage my own farm.”
Nicaragua’s three largest fair trade co-operatives – PRODECOOP,
CECOCAFEN, and SOPPEXCCA – all offer programs for female farmers and farmers’ wives or daughters ranging from education, to medical services, and access to credit.
After finishing well in the 2002 Cup of Excellence, Montenegro was able to invest almost $7,000 in her farm to bring about a goal she’d long held: to transform her rustic farmhouse into an ecotourism project.
SOPPEXCCA matched her investment with an interest-free loan.
Montenegro opened her farm to tourists two years ago. She’s since welcomed about 50 visitors from Europe and North America into her home.
For a fee of $20 U.S. a day, which covers food and lodging, tourists can “help pick, de-pulp, wash and dry the beans, or they go for hikes on the mountain,” she said.
Montenegro attributed the success of her farm in large part to her involvement with SOPPEXCCA: “It gives female producers more power.”