Ethiopia's finest coffee is grown in the shade of native trees, which allows the coffee cherries to retain their moisture until they are ready to be picked. Without the shade of these generations-old trees, the coffee bushes would produce bitter tasting, inferior quality beans.
Berhanu says he knows it pays dividends to protect the environment. "One of our family plots had its natural shade deforested and so the coffee beans that particular plot yields are not of the expected high quality," says Berhanu. "Our cooperative union will not accept lower-grade coffee to be sold in the international specialty market, so we sell it for local consumption and make less money from it."
To remedy this problem, Berhanu is getting technical support from experts at the local agricultural bureau to reforest the plot with indigenous trees. The agricultural bureau is providing Berhanu and others in the area with tree seedlings.
With the mid-day sun peeking through the canopy of trees and the birds calling in the distance, Berhanu says he is at his best when he is hard at work on his family's coffee plots. "You see, it is not just the coffee bushes that enjoy the shades," he chuckles as he makes himself comfortable under a giant sycamore tree. "After a long day's work, a little rest under the shade of these old trees rejuvenates my soul."
Parents to 12 children, Berhanu and his wife Aster have been growing coffee for the past 10 years. They depend on the income they get from growing world renowned Yirgacheffe coffee to support eight of their children that are still living with them and are attending school.
Berhanu and Aster were new to the coffee business when, in 2001, the price of coffee sank to a 30-year low and the global coffee crisis hit Ethiopia—the birthplace of coffee. Rather than giving up in despair, Berhanu and his family were determined to ride out the storm and come out stronger than when they started. Oxfam America was by their side as it led a global campaign to bring the plight of Ethiopian coffee growers to the attention of national and international policy makers, consumer governments, international coffee roasters and consumers.
The couple says they have come a long way since the coffee crisis, which threatened their livelihoods and caused a shock to the country's coffee economy. Gone are the days when they had to sell whatever meager assets they had to put food on the table. "Our living conditions have improved significantly," says Aster. "As a mother, I dream of even better things for my family, but right now, I am secure knowing that my family is well fed, healthy, and that my children go to school".
It was just a little over a year ago that 238 coffee growers in Werka came together to form a primary cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. Soon after Werka joined the Union, membership shot up to 300 when word got out that Oxfam America was launching a project to support coffee quality improvement by funding the purchase of an eco-friendly coffee washing station.
As a natural extension of its global campaign and advocacy work to help Ethiopian coffee growers earn better prices, Oxfam America is increasingly investing in coffee quality improvement, focusing on eco-friendly coffee processing. This is one component of Oxfam America's effort to help cooperatives produce quality coffee and generate additional premium by selling their beans on the international specialty coffee market. The Werka project is one of three such projects that Oxfam America has funded in three different coffee growing regions of Ethiopia.
The funding for Werka and the other two cooperatives was made available as an interest free revolving loan of about US$ 150,000 each to be paid back in five years to be re-invested in another cooperative, yielding much higher returns on initial donor investment. Financing the equipment with a loan makes cooperative members accountable for the loan repayment and solidifies the fact that they are the real owners of the investment.
By utilizing eco-friendly coffee processing, the cooperatives will not only increase their income as a result of selling washed coffee but also address environmental pollution related to the conventional coffee processing method. In the conventional method the coffee pulp and mucilage are removed from the beans and get discharged into nearby streams and ponds where they decompose and deteriorate the water quality of ponds and streams that the local community uses for household consumption. The eco-friendly method of processing reduces the amount of organic waste from the washing process and cuts water usage by 98.5 percent.
Members of Werka cooperative are eagerly awaiting the next coffee harvesting season to begin using their newly installed eco-friendly washing machine. They say having such a facility on site will allow them to kill two birds with one stone—increase their income by selling washed coffee and also in the process conserve the environment that is so crucial for their ability to continue producing high quality coffee. With minimum additional investment, the accumulated pulp and mucilage, which are organic by-products of washed coffee, can be converted into bio-fuel, fertilizer, and animal feed to boost the income of coffee growers; Oxfam America has plans to invest in such a pilot project in 2008.
"Producing high-quality coffee will give us the legitimacy to demand better price in the international market," says Berhanu, his fingers moving nimbly as he carefully picks the ripened coffee cherries and places them in a basket. "So, the way I see it, the Werka project represents the best combination of solutions—earn more for our hard work, while at the same time preserving the environment that we depend on for our livelihoods."
]]>"One part was washed out by the landslides," cooperative member Lucas Izapo told us. "Before Stan, the land was thick with coffee plants, everything was covered with coffee plants. When the landslide came, it took the coffee bushes with it. The hill was left bald, and covered in rock.
"Now I am fixing up my land, little by little. But it's not going to take a year to fix it, it'll take three, four, or more years before this part is back to normal. Because it isn't easy to build walls. This year I planted living fences with Yucca and Bower Vine. And little by little I am going to make a stone wall, to protect the coffee from the rain that falls [each winter]."
The cooperative was able to support its members with the donation of new coffee plants to replace the older ones, organic fertilizer, and $62 for each member. They needed to make this investment to care for the plants they still had left.
They cooperative also repaired the channel that drains the coffee washing stations. This was essential to renew their fair trade certification; without this certification their income would drop even more.
Like other places in Guatemala, farmers in Solola lost much of their corn. Lucas said it has been difficult to feed his family of 10.
"I had to work even harder to sustain us, because I didn't have my harvest which was lost the year before. I lost 160 to 200 pounds from that corn harvest. So I had to plant tomato and onion and sell it to buy the corn that I used to grow for myself. Little by little I was able to buy the corn—100 pounds, another 100 pounds—because I grew these other crops."
]]>Recovering the coffee crop is not a quick endeavor. In the majority of cases it will be three or four years until the harvest is at its normal level. And cleaning up the destroyed plots of land also takes time. It is an additional task that the coffee growers had to undertake in the moments when they weren't tending to the crops spared by the storm.
The first cooperative we visited was ASUVIM, in the province of Quetzaltenango, where we spoke with the president of the cooperative, Daniel Balux. The principle problem this cooperative faced was that nearly 30 percent of its harvest was affected by black bean, a deformation of the coffee bean that cannot be seen when the coffee is harvested, but only once it is dried. It changes the color and the taste of the coffee, disqualifying it from the gourmet and fair trade markets.
Can you tell us about the black bean problem?
Actually, we detected it here at the mill. We saw that we had black beans, but we didn't think it was so extensive, we thought it was just the first beans. But as we continued with the harvest it was the same. It was the whole harvest. The coffee looked good as parchment coffee but if we look at them all—the ones with a different color, they are black beans. We can't say that our members brought in bad coffee, because the cherries looked good, they didn't even look a little rotten or anything like that. The coffee was good. You can't say to the people, look, bring us better coffee or chose it better—[but] of course when they cup this coffee the cuppers will say it is green coffee, coffee that didn't reach its full maturity. So the aid for the black bean was something necessary [to compensate for the low price]. So, what did we do after all this? Well, thanks to the help that came from you, at least the members got their normal price. At least we could say to them, 'Look, the coffee was shipped at this price, but we are going to help you a little bit and we are going to pay you this much.' The people saw that at least there was an effort behind all this."
In addition to this monetary compensation that was given to the members, what other actions did ASUVIM take to overcome the crisis?
Here 60 percent of what people earn comes from coffee. If there are problems with the coffee, there are problems in the families. Either there is little schooling, or people are unable to complete projects they had planned or there isn't much food. Here in ASUVIM we also helped out with corn. We gave each member 800 pounds of corn. Part of it we donated, the other part the members had to buy. Each family of six consumes about 1,600 pounds of corn per year. [They lost 80 percent of the harvest.] What happened with the 20 percent that they were left with? They ate it in January, maybe into February, but by March they had to buy corn. Then the problem is that when there is high demand for corn, the price rises. So we helped them with this, with 800 pounds. We think it's 50 percent of the corn they eat, we could now say that at least they had corn to eat.
The other damage we suffered as an organization is related to the landslide here next to the patio where we sun dry the coffee. With the rain, little by little, we were losing more of it. So we were faced with an emergency. Either we did something or our patio would collapse. And the more time that passed, the worse it was. So we received aid from Oxfam America because the construction is big. But it was necessary because if we lose the patio, it'd be an additional expense.. We are still constructing, but we are making the wall. We aren't doing something that is simply going to fall apart next year and then we would have to invest in it all over again. We want to invest, to spend and if that means chipping in ourselves, we do it.
]]>I believe there are interests that we share that are very important to the work we do in Nicaragua—natural disaster preparedness work, extractive industries, and irrigation issues.
Oxfam also helps build campaign support, political understanding and meaningful participation.
We have firsthand information about what's going on with CAFTA. We are trying to provide that information to those people who don't have access to it.
We are influencing public opinion and pressuring the government to prevent the agreement from being ratified in the countries throughout Central America.
At the international level, we are trying to convince members of Congress who are undecided that CAFTA is not the thing to do.
CAFTA will have very serious consequences on the Central American environment. Even though there is a chapter on the environment in the agreement, it is not enough to mitigate the negative effects CAFTA will produce if approved.
The intellectual property rights provisions will allow exploitation of all the local environmental capital that Central America has. This chapter will just benefit big corporations at the expense of local companies and communities.
The big corporations will tap the genetic information in tropical forests and use it for their own needs. In this agreement, foreign investors will benefit to the detriment of local businesses in Central America.
Biodiversity is an area in which Central America is very rich. And those resources are at risk under CAFTA.
Another major problem for the environment is genetically modified organisms. US agriculture allows the use of these kinds of products without a problem. If CAFTA takes effect, increased trade will bring these products to Central America. Right now, these genetically engineered products don't exist in Central America. This would lead to contamination of the local resources.
We don't know what type of problems these new seeds will introduce. We don't know what consequences there will be.
After the agreement was negotiated, the nature of the activities changed. We moved from a phase where we constructed proposals to a second stage, which involved getting information to the people about what had been negotiated.
I believe that the US Congress is near a decision. It will be very tight, a very close call. So, this is a very important time. This is the time to influence the decision.
We still have to wait for the final result, but we have provided them with important information so they can make an informed decision.
]]>