Small Farmers. Big Change.

The following is the 5th part in Tom Hanlon Wilde’s series of posts from Cuzco, Peru:

“Tu cafe es muy bonito (your coffee trees look beautiful),” said Francesca Siena of Mother’s Markets to Yolanda Tapia Carasco of the Aguilayoc Coop as the two stood arm in arm on Yolanda’s patio. Francesca and the rest of our group had returned from lunch after hours of harvesting from trees loaded with coffee cherries. Yolanda and Francesca got along like a house-on-fire, running to check out coffee trees, feeding the chickens together, trading tips on recipes using the vegetables and herbs growing in Yolanda’s garden, and cooperating to roast coffee on Yolanda’s open fire stove. Within an hour of meeting each other, the two were so close one would have thought they were sisters who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.

Yolanda and her husband Elias Medina Canchaare 2nd generation members of the Co-op, and together they farm 6 acres of land overlooking the Vilcanota River in the Santa Ana district of Cusco. The coffee trees, almost all the arabica tipica variety, were so fruitful that our 7 person group and the 8 local folks who worked alongside us filled up sack after sack of coffee from trees in an area no bigger than a basketball court. “These tipica trees are incredible productive, what in God’s name did you fertilize with?!” I said to Elias because while the tipicia productes the most complex and flavorful coffee, as an older variety it has less compact fruit clusters and is less disease resistant than more advanced hybrids. Elias responded, “Ah, you noticied. I got this area well with the organic compost, the guano de isla (seagull manure) and phosphorous rock. Now there’s so much coffee. You guys can stay all week and harvest if you want, I need the help!”

The change in this area has been dramatic, and everyone who has supported the Co-op by buying coffee from Equal Exchange or COCLA’s other US roaster customers deserves to be rightly proud. A decade ago, farmer leaders explained to be that the Co-op was finally having some success forcing predatory private buyers from underpaying or cheating small-scale family farmers.

Now, the Co-op’s ability to export strong quantities including lots of coffee to fair trade buyers like Equal Exchange is forcing those private buyers to overpay growers to just get some coffee. Ten years ago, farmers told stories about agents of private companies using force to be the only buyer for an area and then to use a fraudulent scale or lots of free alcohol to underpay growers. “We’re selective to get high quality to the Co-op because we know we have a good price. Now the private buyers are coming by and pay high for whatever we pick,” commented Porfirio Valenzuela.

Additionally, productivity is high and farmers are expanding landholdings. “Of the 320 members of Aguilayoc, I would say 120 have expanded their lands in the last few years. They’ll pass their farm her to someone [bequeath to a relative or sell to another family] and then they’ll homestead further inland,” explained Aguilayoc Co-op staff agronomist Ada Morveli, continuing “They’ll settle 50 acres or so there and grow coffee on 2-4 acres, keeping the rest as forest.”

Those big changes in farming — having a strong co-op to force private buyers to raise purchase prices and increased landholdings — pale in comparison to the biggest change in the region. And what is that, you ask? Stay tuned!