Good Nicaraguan Coffee and Fair Trade

How low does one have to fall to “hit bottom?” How long does it take before someone makes an intervention? Many an alcoholic gets a faster response, it seems, than coffee growers and workers in Nicaragua. Children had died, families had lived for months at near starvation levels and acres of delicate coffee plants had suffered serious neglect. Additionally, over 600 farms in northern Nicaragua were days from complete financial failure. Finally, in September, the Nicaraguan government agreed to a program of aid to rescue what was, until recently, the country’s largest source of income.

Bank credit is to be available now for the important preparatory work before the November harvest begins. Government funds will also underwrite 5,000 jobs in the coffee industry to be paid with a “basic basket” of foodstuffs and a minimum salary of $1.50 per day, according to the September 18th Nicaragua Network Hotline. Land grants are also promised but most workers are not confident that promise will be kept.

Meanwhile, Some Producers Are Getting Creative

A precipitous drop in world coffee prices, largely due to the success of international efforts to divert Vietnam from heroin to coffee profits, has been ruinous for Nicaraguan coffee growers and their workers and a burden for the Nicaraguan economy. PML’s Heather Dolphin visited one of the coffee cooperatives, CECOCAEN, and learned first-hand about the group’s measures to recapture profitability by adjusting to this intense competition. CECOCAEN’s mission is to consolidate the efforts of small coffee producers in order to promote very high quality coffee, fine-tune production methods on their farms and search out new markets for what this group of small producers expect to be the finest of Nicaraguan coffees.

Since coffee is a delicate crop requiring a lot of care and attention, small producers who can keep their efforts “in the family” are at an advantage. Small producers are able to monitor and harvest coffee beans when they are perfectly ripe. Family members who feel greater ownership of their products and efforts do much of the farm labor by hand, and with greater care and attention. According to Hamilton Riveras, manager of SolCafe, Inc., once a producer has to hire a number of workers from outside the family, the degree of care and attention and thus, the quality of production, goes down. SolCafe, Inc. is a coffee processing plant in Matagalpa and a member of the CECOCAE cooperative. SolCafe processes coffee beans for small producers. Their objective is to transform the raw beans and prepare them for export. SolCafe prepares coffee shipments for various markets including organic, fair trade and specialty markets as well as for the conventional market.

The mission of SolCafe is to both export coffee and improve the social conditions of its members. Alternative markets such as the fair trade and organic markets allow small coffee producers to get a better price per 100 lb bag of coffee. The company also provides quality control training to individual small producers. SolCafe provides a revolving savings fund for women and will soon initiate a pilot program of scholarships for student workers in exchange for community service.

Besides careful attention during the bean picking part of coffee production, quality is also promoted by sun drying rather than machine drying. Sun drying preserves the natural flavor of the bean and avoids the potential for bitter tasting coffee. After drying, the beans are husked mechanically and then hand-sorted, maintaining the small-scale human attention to detail. The decision to utilize labor intensive methods not only ensures quality coffee, it is an investment in what tends to be a mostly female labor force.

Alternatives: Fair Trade and Organic Markets

As the impact of cooperatives on the coffee industry grows, community organizing gains importance in helping small producers have more control over prices they get for their crops. Some farmers, for example, deal only in the fair trade market thus cutting out the middle-man. Additionally a higher quality product is achieved by using small production methods. Smart advertising can help coffee consumers become aware that consumption of higher quality fair trade coffee is a way to help poor families achieve a higher quality of life.

Growing organic coffee is a challenge to producers but CECOCAFEN is making some progress in promoting their organic program to its members. In spite of the higher price commanded by organic coffee, the three to four year delay in achieving profits, while taking their soil through the regimen to rid the land of toxins, is discouraging, especially to farmers on the edge of survival. Thus CECOCAFEN emphasizes how the risk and delay of switching to organic will, with patience, help producers gain not only higher profits but also environmental protection for their forests, water supply, families and farm animals. On top of those benefits, over time, organic production is cheaper than conventional coffee production. It is these arguments CECOCAFEN hopes will win over growing numbers of small producers.

Those of us who love our café lattes and cappuccinos and our gourmet level coffee beans could, en masse, have a significant effect on coffee prices. A campaign to promote a large scale use of organic coffee by Dunn Bros. and Starbucks, for example, would be an effort worthy of our Nicaraguan friends’ needs.

Carol Bidon contributed to this article.