Small Farmers. Big Change.

I would like to share a highly inspiring story from Nicaragua of solidarity between unemployed farm workers and a small-scale farmer co-operative that Equal Exchange has partnered with for over 15 years.

In the early 1990s when the coffee crisis was most severe, conventional coffee companies were paying farmers as little as 45 cents per pound. With costs of production about twice that high, plantations throughout Nicaragua were going bankrupt. Landowners abandoned their estates and many thousands of coffee pickers had nowhere to work and no way to feed their families. Malnutrition throughout the country was high and 14 children died in 2002, literally from lack of food. The Farmworkers Association (ATC) organized a 100-mile march from Matagalpa to Managua to demand the government help find a solution. For several long weeks, the workers marched under the hot sun, camping along the road and occasionally stopping traffic on the Pan American highway. They refused to quit until the government agreed to negotiate solutions to their demands for food, work, credit and land. CECOCAFEN, Equal Exchange’s long-term co-operative trading partner, faced difficulties as well but was in a slightly better position to navigate the crisis: although very poor, each of the 1,900 members had 3 – 5 acres of land, were joint owners of their business, and as a Fair Trade co-operative, were being paid a $1.41/pound for organic coffee for the 30% of their coffee that they managed to sell to the Fair Trade market. During the long march to Managua, CECOCAFEN supported the unemployed farm workers with food, shelter and logistics. Seen as protagonists in the campesino movement, the co-op’s leadership was invited to participate in the negotiations with the government. Eventually an agreement was reached to provide short-term jobs and food for the workers and a longer-term strategy to provide access to credit and land. A solidarity organization in Europe agreed to donate money for the creation of a revolving loan fund for the workers to borrow low-interest money to buy land. CECOCAFEN was seen as one of the only organizations in Matagalpa with the credibility and proven track to administer this fund. So the co-op agreed to serve as fiscal agent and administrator to help the farmworkers purchase their own land. Once they had titles, they would form co-operatives and with CECOCAFEN’s help, begin to access the Fair Trade market – which is one of the only hopeful options for coffee farmers in Nicaragua.