Fair Trade Helps Veteran Coffee Farmer Survive a Tough Market
5 February 2003
Jesus Morales, 91 years old, is a coffee farmer in the El Pinal cooperative in El Salvador. The Oxfam-supported federation APECAFE helps small coffee producers like Jesus sell their coffee to the international market.
Jesus is a member of El Pinal, one of 11 groups of coffee producers who united to create the Oxfam-supported federation APECAFE. This cooperative helps small farmers produce and export their coffee to the international market, and ultimately, to the higher paying Fair Trade market.
APECAFE, founded in 1997, has united 560 small coffee producers like Jesus with equipment, resources, training, and marketing opportunities that they could never access independently.
"What we are doing now…selling to the Fair Trade market guarantees that we have enough food for the first time in years, and also guarantees much more freedom."
The price of coffee has plummeted 70% on the world market since 1997, and resulted in a widespread humanitarian crisis for over 25 million coffee growers around the world. A huge surplus of coffee on the world market that has allowed coffee processing corporations to pay rock-bottom prices to producers, well below the cost of production. El Pinal is one of thousands of coffee producing areas in Central America that has been devastated by this price drop, making the Fair Trade market absolutely vital to their survival. Fair Trade prices can be as much as three times what individual farmers might get otherwise, selling their product to the conventional market.
The U.N. World Food Program reports that thousands are suffering from severe malnutrition in the coffee-producing areas of Central America. Thousands of children have left school to work in the fields or because their parents cannot pay for their school fees and supplies. Many families have too little to eat, and can no longer afford healthcare, clothing, and basic necessities.
APECAFE has helped El Pinal and other cooperatives to improve the quality of their coffee by strengthening their business and increasing their capacity to market their product. APECAFE is currently assisting El Pinal produce organic coffee, which will fetch a much higher price on the international market.
“What we are doing now in the cooperative, and selling to the Fair Trade market” says Jesus, “guarantees that we have enough food for the first time in years, and also guarantees much more freedom.”
The quality of life in El Pinal, like many rural villages in El Salvador, depends upon coffee sales. Any profits are immediately invested in desperately needed food, clothes, healthcare, and education, and reinvested in equipment and training for a better harvest the following year.
"Some 30% of our children are now able to go to university," says APECAFE president Alfredo Rumaldo Osencio, “and in spite of the coffee crisis and the low prices, we have not abandoned our farms.”
Despite a 10% increase in sales and a dramatic rise in education and healthcare opportunities in El Pinal, the coffee crisis itself has not been alleviated; but Fair Trade has kept farmers on their land, their children in school, and food on the table.
For Jesus, who has seen three generations of coffee farmers come and go, the coffee market has never been so bleak, and the potential of Fair Trade coffee has never been so desperately desired. It’s now in the hands of the international community to stabilize coffee prices and ensure a secure future for Jesus and his village.
