Loma Linda: Escaping the Coffee Crisis
16 October 2002
Oxfam's partner, Manos Campesinas, is changing—for the better—the day-to-day life of the people in the Guatemalan town of Loma Linda.
Loma Linda is nestled comfortably atop a plateau in the heart of the Sierra Madres mountains, about 200 kilometers west of Guatemala City in the department of Quetzaltenango, whose Mayan name, "Xe laju' noj," means "under 10 mountains."
The mountains themselves are a patchwork of vegetable and coffee farms, stitched together by winding rivers that dip and rise lazily over the quilted foothills. Imagine the most fertile swath of Iowa farmland buckled and compressed under tremendous seismic pressure, and draped over rolling hills in perfect geometry.
Loma Linda's high-altitude perch yields a high-quality Arabica coffee, a connoisseur's coffee bean.
Everyone in the village—men, women, and children—works the harvest.
"We were born together with the coffee plant," says Mateo Reyneso, President of Loma Linda.
Since the categorical collapse in coffee prices in 1997, the world price of coffee has fallen 70 percent to a 30-year low. The U.N. World Food Program reports that thousands are suffering from severe malnutrition in the coffeeproducing areas of Guatemala.
Unable to cover the cost of production, thousands of coffee farmers cannot earn the income necessary to feed their families, send their children to school, purchase essential medicines or pay for visits to the local doctor.
While many coffee farming communities across Central America and around the world have been subjected to dramatic losses, the villagers of Loma Linda are seeing the benefits of selling their coffee to an Oxfam supported Fair Trade cooperative, Manos Campesinos. With the assistance of Manos, they have been able maintain and even improve their standard of living.
In the conventional coffee trading system, small-scale producers receive only a tiny percentage of the final market value of their product. Fair Trade cooperatives like Manos Campesinos address this inequity by bypassing middlemen and selling directly international buyers at a fair price.
Farmers selling to the Fair Trade market are currently guaranteed a minimum
of $1.26 a pound, as compared to average price on the conventional market of 48 cents a pound.
For Loma Linda, a relationship with Manos Campesinos has drastically altered daily life in the village.
In 1996, Loma Linda sold one container of coffee (37,000 pounds) to the conventional market in Guatemala. In the 2001-02 harvest, Loma Linda sold over three containers of coffee (over 113,000 pounds) to the Fair Trade market, and one container to the conventional market, earning over $105,000 in a single harvest - record earnings for the community. With this extra income, farmers in Loma Linda and other villages that work with Manos Campesinos have purchased food and clothes for their family, sent their children to school, and purchased coffee processing equipment and other machinery to overhaul their operation.
Agricultural training and technical support have enabled farmers to increase their yield, and Manos Campesinos has equipped them for a wider and more lucrative market.
With the extra income from Fair Trade marketing, young people have seen the promise of growing coffee yields and no longer have to leave their villages to find work elsewhere. Families are no longer torn apart and demoralized.
"In these communities that export their coffee to the Fair Trade market," says Jeronimo Bollen, President of Manos Campesinos, "there are people who have said to us recently 'It's amazing to see how migration has decreased almost to zero!' The social impact of the Fair Trade market is incredible for us."
Oxfam America is helping Manos Campesinos to strengthen members' ability to export their coffee more efficiently and increase their visibility to
coffee buyers. Manos offers workshops and seminars to outfit farmers with the necessary training and skills to negotiate these contracts and streamline their production and exportation process.
Jeronimo and his team are currently assisting the farmers of Loma Linda to
make a switch to organic coffee, replacing pesticides and chemical fertilizers with an all-natural production process that fetches a much higher price on the Fair Trade market.
Loma Linda's only school is built at the entrance to the village. There are seven classrooms, overflowing with eager students, who four years earlier were working in the coffee fields. Despite the leaky roof and outdated teaching materials, the villagers see the school as a blessing. The school is an investment in their children, and a vision for the future of their community.
