The Co-op Food Stores of New Hampshire and Vermont

added 07/26/10

This October, the Equal Exchange coffee you buy at the Co-op Food Stores is funding sustainable advances in agriculture in Mexico. It’s literally making the earth richer and securing organic coffee production for the long term.

An Easy Way to Celebrate Co-op Month!

by Nicholas Reid
Equal Exchange

Originally charged with making coffee cultivation economically viable for small-scale producers, Equal Exchange now asks food co-ops to support those farmers in their efforts to adapt, innovate, and invest in the future of high-quality, organic coffee.

For each product sold to food co-ops in the month of October, Equal Exchange will donate 20 cents (up to $10,000) to the second phase of a soil fertility project in southern Mexico, spearheaded by the CESMACH co-operative.

We hope that our efforts will not only result in higher yields and income for the coffee co-op members, but will also create healthier ecosystems in coffee farming communities and build a sustainable model for soil rehabilitation for all the co-ops with which we work.

The history of commercial farming in Latin America, as in the United States, is one of extreme short-sightedness, environmental destruction, and an ever-increasing reliance on chemical and technological inputs. Declining yields due to soil exhaustion and global warming are threatening specialty coffee production and the livelihoods of thousands of farming communities that rely on it. Specialty coffee grown by small-scale farmers is inherently a more sustainable form of agriculture than large-scale plantations, but it, too, has felt the pressure of the corporate race to the scientific bottom. Regardless of our progress in the last 20 years, small farmers are struggling to compete and scrambling to maintain healthy, productive farms and soil. Unfortunately, traditional organic techniques for composting and mulching are falling short.

Global warming—which disproportionately affects the higher altitudes and subtropical regions where the majority of our coffee and cacao farmers operate—is exacerbating the problem. Changing weather, rainfall, and temperature patterns are threatening coffee cultivation (and traditional agriculture, in general) around the world. The future of specialty coffee is perilous at best; organic production is threatened even further.

We at Equal Exchange believe it is our responsibility to support our farmer partners as they invest in modern, sustainable agricultural methods and adapt to climate change. With that in mind, we have partnered with agronomists at the CESMACH cooperative who approached Equal Exchange with a proposal for a soil fertility project in the communities in which they work.

The first round of the project (to be completed this summer) involves taking soil samples in the coffee communities of the co-op to analyze the nutrient profiles. Armed with an overview of the health and deficiencies of the soil in each community, Equal Exchange and CESMACH will then implement the next round of the project, to be funded through food co-op sales in October.

The second phase of the project will explore the potential to produce organic fertilizer to meet the specific needs of each community, using locally available, low-cost inputs. The goal is to develop guidelines for composting (and other alternative agricultural techniques) that individual farmers can use. In the long run, the hope is to develop more centralized services for soil improvement and progressive agriculture, such as a facility to manufacture fertilizers for members and potentially sell locally.

Examples of visionary collaborations like these are what make cooperative Fair Trade so inspiring. The products we consume have the potential to produce something incredibly powerful: to make farming communities stronger and to build a healthier planet. We have the ability to buy a pound of excellent coffee and make a direct investment in a brighter future. That is “Small Farmers. Big Change.”

Equal Exchange credits co-ops with building Fair Trade coffee and making the alternative trade system possible by keeping farmers organized in developing countries and connecting them to consumers. This October, while we celebrate Fair Trade Month and National Co-op Month and consider the values and successes of these two intrinsically connected movements, we can help Equal Exchange raise money to invest in this inspiring initiative that epitomizes the value of co-operatives.