Fair Trade Vancouver Visits Mexico and Guatemala
In June, Fair Trade Vancouver’s Executive Director Jeff Geipel visited Fair Trade co-operatives in Mexicoand Guatemala. The goal was to learn more about Fair Trade and to see the benefits of it first-hand, talking to the very producers Fair Trade Vancouver is working to help. Here is his story
FairTrasa and Pragor, in Uruapan, Mexico
The beautiful city of Uruapan, in Michoacan state, is the “avocado capital of the world.” Avocados, which we pay one to two dollars for here in Canada, bring a lot of revenue to this region. However, not everyone sees the benefits in the same way.
Here, as with many agricultural regions in developing countries under conventional trade, the packing companies and exporters often take the lion’s share of the wealth. The farmers are usually left with very little. Local packers like Calavo have enough market power that they can essentially set the price that farmers have to take. Most of the farmers do not have their own harvesting equipment so they have little choice but to take the price they are given, or else see their products rot on the tree.
Coyotes, or local middlemen, play a huge role in this. These traders move from region to region with harvest equipment to purchase fruit from small-scale farmers. Here they offer the market price for avocadoes, but it is not uncommon for only partial payment to be made, or for deals to go awry at the expense of the farmers. The general impression around here is that while the big packers tell farmers not to sell to these coyotes, but that they buy from them all the time anyways.
FairTrasa is trying to change this. This Fair Trade fruit organization buys Fair Trade certified avocados, grapefruits and mangoes from co-operatives in the surrounding area. Founder Patrick Streubi used to work in conventional international trade, but left it because he felt that all he was doing was “making rich people richer” at the expense of producers around the world. This is why he moved to Uruapan and started the company six years ago.
I met with Patrick and his head of operations, Manuel Huerta, and they explained what their mission was. FairTrasa is working hard to spread the message of Fair Trade around Mexico, so that farmers know they have another choice. Patrick said that “what Fair Trade Vancouver is doing on the demand side, we are doing on the supply end.”
FairTrasa provides training for farmers so they can improve their agricultural practices and purse organic certification. The social premiums provided by Fair Trade have helped farmers in the area buy computers, improve schools, and build medical clinics and dispensaries.
Before meeting with Patrick and Manuel, I met with Benjamin Cazares in the small village of Timgambato. Benjamin is an avocado farmer, and a member of the Pragor Fair Trade Co-operative that sells to FairTrasa. For him, being a member of a co-operative means he doesn’t have to go it alone and be at the mercy of local middlemen. It also means he often gets a higher price for his crop than if he was not certified. When FairTrasa offers a price, Benjamin can count on it and not worry about complications.
Patrick also told me about harsh conditions faced in the isolated regions they purchase from. Far away from the major packing centres, many of these farmers lack accurate price information. In some areas FairTrasa is offering three times the price that local middlemen are giving for their fruit.
This was one of the key points I discovered on this trip. Fair Trade helps the most when the farmers are the least well informed, and the least connected to the market. While Fair Trade helps the avocado growers around Uruapan a great deal with the guaranteed prices and social premiums, the isolated regions are where Fair Trade really does its magic.
Patrick and Manuel told me some of the farmers they certify Fair Trade in the these especially poor regions tell them it’s like a miracle they can be paid these higher prices. For Patrick, a fair price is no “miracle,” but simply the way it should be.
UCIRI in Oaxaca
The Union of Indigenous Communities in the Isthmus Region of R.I., or UCIRI, was the world first Fair Trade Coffee organization to use a certification system. As such, I was very excited to get to the coffee producing state of Oaxaca to see the story first-hand.
Unlike many Fair Trade organizations, UCIRI is able to sell all of its products at the Fair Trade price. In fact, poor weather due to climate change is actually making it difficult for them to keep up with orders. In Canada, UCIRI’s beans are used by Just Us coffee out of Nova Scotia.
I met with Javier Cabadilla at the Ixtepec office of UCIRI, where he told me the about the history of the project. Javier then took me into the rugged highlands of Oaxaca, to La Chaviza, where UCIRI has its processing facilities. He showed all the machinery that turned raw beans into “green beans” that are ready for export to roasters. I also was able to meet with some of the democratically elected officials of the cooperative.
Javier showed me some of the facilities Fair Trade provides, such as a massive meeting area where the members of the co-operatives meet, and where UCIRI provides training to its members. He also showed me the credit union run by UCIRI, which provides badly needed credit to its members and their families.
A bumpy hour long ride later, we were in the village of Santa Cruz, and there I met Joel Guzman. Joel has been a farmer with UCIRI since the very beginning in 1982, and as such, is one the worlds first Fair Trade certified farmers.
We parked the car at the end of the road, and started our hike to find the coffee. Coffee here is not grown in big plantations, or anything resembling what we Canadians typically think of as a “farm.” We hiked up into the hills and over streams – including one where I slipped and stepped into it, to the laughing delight of Javier and Joel. Finally we arrived at the coffee plants, way up on a hillside. Coffee plants are just another plant in the diverse array of plant life here, and it was rewarding to see how coffee cultivation could be done in harmony with the environment.
Joel said for him, the higher prices provided by Fair Trade were the principle benefit for him. Being a member since 1982, he has seen many periods when conventional coffee prices have been low. In 2002, while conventional farmers were receiving as low as 50 cents a pound (not even enough to cover the costs of production), he was receiving $1.26. His life has been drastically improved by being a member of UCIRI, and his story inspires us to keep spreading awareness of Fair Trade so that all co-operatives can sell 100% of their products at Fair Trade prices.
The CCDA in Guatemala
One week later I was in Guatemala, on the shores of Lake Atitlan. Rigoberto Hernandez, from the CCDA picked me up at the dock at Santiago Atitlan. The CCDA is a Fair Trade organization that helps over 600 coffee farmers in the region.
Here in the highlands of Guatemala, coffee is grown every where. The roads are lined with it and huge swaths of land are covered with coffee plants with large trees providing shade. Here in Guatemala I regrettably saw many of the unpleasant “sun plantations” I had read about, with huge areas of land with trees cut down, leaving only a monoculture of coffee. I was happy to hear the CCDA did not use these kind of growing methods.
Currently coffee prices are high, and so Fair Trade doesn’t have as huge a price impact as say, grapefruits in Mexico. However, coyotes still take up to 10% of the coffee’s market price for themselves, which is a lot of revenue lost by farmers to unnecessary middlemen. The CCDA always buys coffee at or above the real market price and has set up a minimum floor price similar to under the
The CCDA is not a certified Fair Trade co-operative in the
In the town of Zerro Deoro, Rigoberto showed me the processing facility used by the CCDA. Like a
The most important thing I learned from my visit to the CCDA, and from my whole trip really, was just how important the idea of solidarity is in Fair Trade. Farmers join the CCDA because the CCDA provides services, and because it represents a pooling of resources. While the often higher price is important, the fact that these farmers have somewhere to turn to is really inspiring, and provides even more reason to keep supporting Fair Trade here in Canada.