by Keith Tomlinson, Peace Coffee Biodiesel Van Driver

I need to learn two things. I need to learn how to be patient, and how to let things be imperfect. I try to make all of the right decisions, in the purchases I make and do not make, and in the packaging I choose. I try to support local, responsible, sustainable businesses when I can and purchase Fair Trade products when they have to come from somewhere else. But my yogurt containers are plastic, my toothpaste company was just bought by Colgate, and a large portion of my wardrobe still wears the Gap label. Change takes time, and the path is not always clear.

I just learned about the concept of Fair Trade less than one year ago, and I am just now getting to the point where I realize I know very little about it. Partially because it is such a vast and complicated system, and partially because Fair Trade itself is a process in progress, always changing based on the additional information we gather.

Peace Coffee sent me to Guatemala from February 19th - February 26th on what amounted to a perfect introductory trip for someone who had never traveled outside of the United States. While there I visited three very distinct farming cooperatives: Cooperative Nahuala, Santa Anita, and La Voz — each of them at a different stage in their own evolution, each of them growing coffee purchased by and roasted at Peace Coffee.

But first we visited a dry mill in Guatemala City. In a sense, we started the tour at the end. This is the last thing that happens to the coffee before it gets sent overseas. I include this in my story to impart the wisdom of Roberto at Unitrade. He framed my trip in just a few words: Don’t feel sorry for these people.

Cooperative Nahuala, near the city of San Antonio, south of Lake Atitlan, has existed for more than forty years. They have gone from having every family farm in the area being members, to being in danger of disbanding because of too few, to where they are today with about 130 families. That number is about half of what they once had, but their enrollment continues to grow. The numbers dropped as the families realized that they could get more money and direct cash from the coyotes than they could from the coop. A coyote is essentially a middleman who drives around in a truck, picks up all of the farmers coffee (not just the best quality), pays the farmer in cash, and hauls all of the coffee away. While Fair Trade serves to change this, and farmers are guaranteed a higher price, they still do not reserve all of their coffee for the coop. This is true in all of the cooperatives, not just Nahuala. Coop Nahuala has a very sophisticated processing plant that was built in part, but not completed by, the government. There is a joke in Guatemala, where if something was done or is being done by the government, like building new roads, you ask: was/is it election time? This joke is actually not funny. Coop Nahuala also has compost bins with thousands of worms, a hundred easily in each handful of compost. They have vibrant, smiling children who insinuate themselves into business meetings, get bored and then leave. After over four decades of producing coffee, they had their first visit from a purchaser last year. While in our meeting, after all of the introductions, I asked the question: "Do the farmers find organic farming to be more rewarding?” Don Julio, the president, answered that they have always farmed organically, it is just that now they are certified.

If Cooperative Nahuala is in a transition phase, gaining members, using more sophisticated equipment and composting techniques, producing more coffee each year and essentially starting to run with longer strides, then Santa Anita is learning to walk. Metaphors are never truly accurate, but the comparison is what is important here.

Since I have returned, the first thing I have always said about Santa Anita is that they are a group of ex-guerillas. While it would not be prudent to give a history lesson here, a four-decade long civil war ended in 1996 resulting in the return of many refugees and the attempted integration of fighters that came down from the mountains back into Guatemalan society. 

Consisting of over seventy families, and not looking to expand, the Santa Anita coop bought the land they currently reside on from the government and began farming this old abandoned coffee plantation in 1998. They turned the masters house into a hotel, of sorts, for visitors as a part of their eco-tourism project. Many of the coffee trees are thirty years or older, nearing the end of their production. And between that, Hurricane Stan, and bad weather they were not able to produce nearly as much coffee as they had hoped. Now is the time when the relationships formed through Fair Trade become stronger and so much more important than just buying coffee at a higher price.

When they first started, they were farming the land collectively but recently switched to a system where everyone is given three plots of land: one that is producing well, one in transition, and one that needs a lot of work. Everything about coffee production requires a lot of work. The coffee must be harvested by hand, and processed over several days amongst everything else. This new system increases accountability and creates a beneficial sense of competition amongst the farmers. Each farmer has hundreds of coffee seedlings growing in their yards, along with personal gardens and ten chickens. They have built a school, a clinic, a church and a dusty futbol (soccer) field, all of which are enjoyed not just by the members of Santa Anita, but also by families in the surrounding communities. All of which could use much more funding. I wanted to feel sorry for them, but I didn’t. Instead I was in awe of them. Angel, the president, was a very stoic man, and with his Che Guevarra t-shirt and machete often a very intimidating man. Exactly the person I would want to be in charge. While in one of the farmer’s personal gardens, I asked him in my broken Spanish what one of the plants was. Cilantro, he replied, and then smiled.

Compared with Cooperative Nahuala and Santa Anita, La Voz is full on sprinting. 

La Voz is located on Lake Atitlan, and is one of the most sought after coffees in the region. Every coffee bean is accounted for before it is grown. They have several possible coffee tours, all of which conveniently end at their café where women are also selling various back strap weaved textiles, many of which are designed with colors and patterns pleasing to a tourist, but not necessarily the traditional presentation. La Voz was also directly affected by Hurricane Stan, losing a fraction of their crop. They are, though, the perfect picture of a Fair Trade cooperative. Standing on the beach, listening to the tour guide, who is also their president, one begins to see the top of the first step of Fair Trade. So, in my metaphor, maybe La Voz is just now learning to walk. Maybe we all are.

In my analytical, math oriented mind, I would like Fair Trade to be a simple crunching of numbers. You get this much money for this product, it is a living wage, and everything is simple, perfect and immediate. Though, in a way, I am glad it is not. I am glad it is human and organic and complicated and imperfect and slow.

Just the other day I finally got up the nerve to correct a friend of mine, who had, since August, been talking to me about my work in free trade. Also, I explained to my mom why I really thought that she should be buying organic strawberries. I will wait before I tell her why I think she should buy them only in season. The Seward Coop, where I buy my groceries, just started carrying yogurt in glass bottles. But I have no idea where my new toothpaste will be coming from.

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