Small Business Training Helps Fair Trade Coops Remain Competitive
15 March 2006
Oxfam partner teaches coffee farmers everything from organic farming to basic bookkeeping.
By Andrea Perera
SAN JUAN LA LAGUNA, GUATEMALA--Don Domingo Cholotio Quic didn’t know much about coffee when he started growing it more than 25 years ago.
"We just sold the coffee cherries in the streets," Quic said. "We didn't know how to process it."
The local middlemen knew the business much better. Representing powerful importers and roasters, they pulled in all the profits.
Quic, his family, and friends decided that if they were going to stand a chance of competing, they needed to organize. Their first decision, choosing a name for their coop, came easily. They settled on La Voz que Clama en el Desierto (the voice that cries out in the desert), a play on their town name and its patron saint, John the Baptist. But every decision after that was much more difficult.
With experience came learning, Quic said. And then came some targeted help. Groups like Oxfam America partner, CRECER, have trained La Voz and other coops to work more effectively. CRECER offers technical assistance in the categories where small-scale farmers need it most: agriculture techniques, writing business plans, meeting certification standards, administration, bookkeeping, marketing, and coffee tasting.
"The organizations haven't always invested in training their members," said Don Angel Mendoza, Internal Control Consultant at CRECER. "They're looking to improve their productivity, management, and understanding of certification."
CRECER passes on its knowledge by training a handful of coop members who then train the rest of the members. This system of "training the trainers" allows them to build skills in a lasting and efficient way.
"We needed to know: What is coffee? And how do you grow it?" Quic said.
Tailoring their Approach
Sometimes coops need more than training. Sometimes they need real, tangible advice. That was the case with Rio Azul coop. The coop had a long history stretching back to the late 1960s. But at various periods its management was weak. At one point in the late 1990s, the coop lost half its members, went into serious debt, and had to relearn how to be a coop all over again.
In 2003, CRECER stepped in and helped Rio Azul hire five agriculture technicians, as well as a coop manager.
"CRECER recommended that the coop could recover by selling a portion of its land," said Ramon Delgado Sanchez, manager of Rio Azul. "We were at a point where we had to make a decision, lose everything or start working again."
With the money they made off the sale, Rio Azul paid off its debts. "Now we have our books in order and can get back to work," Sanchez said.
CRECER, an Oxfam partner since 2003, has used its strong relationships with coffee cooperatives to expand its own work and do some broad-based research on the impact of fair trade and organic certification. The results are still being finalized, but Mendoza said CRECER would be satisfied if the research proved that the farmers who were participating in fair trade and organic were meeting their certification standards, and fulfilling their contracts with buyers.
If this much is accomplished, small-scale farmers will "have more confidence in the coops themselves and be more active and committed."
