Small Farmers. Big Change.

By Virginia Berman, Equal Exchange Fundraising Program Manager

Twenty years ago I lived in Honduras with the Peace Corps in Santiago de Puringla working with hillside farmers to find campesino leaders to help in soil conservation. These farmers had tiny plots of land they nurtured to grow enough food to survive and earned a little cash from growing coffee for export. The people I worked with had hope in the land, themselves, and for a reason I still don’t know but for which I am grateful, even in me.

The farmers and I walked for two hours from the mountains where they lived up to even higher mountains where they had their farms. We experimented with the bean that had on other farms improved soil fertility and preserved the soil—the velvet bean. We carved A-frames leveled out of long branches to create a natural barrier so that the coffee, corn and beans went across the hillside, keeping more soil on the land than if they went straight down the hillside.

These farmers with five kids in one bedroom trusted this unknown, suburban white girl and we met and talked in my one room rental, Dona Fidelina’s home. We talked about what we had seen on field trips– the thick, verdant corn and dark soil from the model plots at Don Elias Sanchez’ farm; we remembered the farmers from La Esperanza who, with the zeal of evangelists, told their stories of soil conservation. We talked about having a new group and experimenting on our plots and what we wanted to be called. They chose Amigos Todos Unidos Siempre (Friends United Together Forever).

One farmer who stood out was Don Beto. He was a leader in the loosely organized group we formed to help us in the harsh world of coffee trading. He brought me to his farm to show me and others his soil growing in organic matter after growing the new beans. As a result, his corn had increased its yields. But for their cash crop, coffee, the farmers had one option for selling—to the middlemen at dirt cheap prices. I left Honduras determined to do something at home to help.

When I returned, I worked on an organic farm in upstate NY. Later, I organized first-time home buyers in Hartford, CT. But I was pulled back to the land, and to doing something about the situation of Don Beto and the other farmers in Honduras, so I went to the Tufts School of Nutrition in the Agriculture, Food and Environment Masters Program. And for the past 15 years I have worked at Equal Exchange—a Fair Trade importer of organic coffee and other products from small-scale farmer cooperatives. Each day at work I’ve known that farmers who grow our coffee are working hard. And I’ve never forgotten that children like my 3-year-old neighbor Transito, the youngest and only boy in a family of six children, who shared my birthdate in Honduran mountains–I learned in a letter–died from malnutrition soon after I left.

Today I learned something that has my heart aflutter! For the first time Equal Exchange is buying from the Honduran co-operative, COMSA in Marcala, with members in it from that remote mountain town, Santiago de Puringla. I took a peek on the very 21st century thing—a database of the remote coffee farmer co-op members. In the cooperative I ran through the list of names. I scrolled down and saw familiar appellidos, last names. Finally, I see names from our group — Don Beto Osorio. It’s been 20 years since I was in Honduras. Don Beto is alive! Don Beto is still farming? Yes, Don Beto grows coffee, and Don Beto sells his coffee to me and Equal Exchange!

This is a gift better than anything I could ask for from Peace Corps, from Equal Exchange, from all those who buy Equal Exchange. Thank you all!