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by Tim King
 What
do Fair Trade and organic coffee have to do with
sustainable development and what has that got to do with
social capital? And what is social capital, exactly?
Maria
Elena Martinez-Torres elegantly connects the four concepts
in her book Organic Coffee: Sustainable Development by
Mayan Farmers. Martinez-Torres' small book of big
ideas examines these questions in her study of the Mayan
coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. What makes this book
particularly relevant for Peace Coffee drinkers is that
her studies include past and present Peace Coffee
suppliers such as the Mut Vitz, La Selva, and UCIRI
cooperatives.
Coffee
was alternative development in Chiapas and Central America
in the mid to late-nineteenth century, Martinez-Torres
explains in her brief but fascinating history of coffee.
But it wasn't initially grown on small farms.
"Coffee,
like other export crops, was cultivated exclusively on
large plantations, on which workers were severely
mistreated, until 1910, when the Mexican revolution marked
the start of a gradual process of the breakup of the large
estates," she writes.
However,
throughout the 20th century coffee became an increasingly
import source of cash for small, and often poor countries,
and small, and often poor, farm families.
Coffee,
like oil, cannot be separated from the politics, history,
or destiny of those countries and peoples who produce it.
Countries such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda,
where fifty to eighty percent of export earnings come from
coffee are, in a sense, ruled by coffee. The same can be
said for the families in those countries, or in smaller
places such as the mountains of Chiapas, who rely on
coffee sales as their principal source of cash.
"There
are almost three hundred thousand coffee farms in Mexico
which occupy approximately eight hundred thousand hectares
and employ some two million people. For rural Mexicans,
coffee is their second most important source of income,
following the remittances that expatriate migrant workers
send to their families," Martinez-Torres writes.
 Martinez-Torres'
careful, highly readable chapters on the history of coffee
in the world, Mexico, and finally Chiapas are followed by
fascinating and highly readable chapters on "How
Coffee is Produced", "The International Coffee
Market", and a third chapter on the relationship to
rural development to the State and broader society in
Chiapas. All this makes for good reading for those of us
who enjoy our coffee and take its origins seriously. Her
prose is supplemented by relevant and easy to understand
graphs, such as the one that shows the coffee price crash
that both devastated the industry and created the
opportunity to restructure it in a manner favorable to
Fair Trade and organically produced coffee.
These
chapters are, however, merely a carefully crafted
foundation for Martinez-Torres' following chapters on
Building Social and Natural Capital, The Economic Benefits
of Organic Farming, and finally, The Ecological Benefits
of Organic Farming. To reach her conclusions in these
chapter she interviewed cooperative member from five
coffee producing cooperatives. She points out that the Mut
Vitz and La Selva cooperatives are both closely associated
with the Zapatistas. These coffee producers then are
indigenous people who have been oppressed, and actively in
resistance, for some 400 years. As a result, given the
opportunity to see beyond today's malnourished children,
their dreams of a better world differ from the dominant
culture's vision of success.
Here's
a paragraph discussing some of the thinking that went into
the formation of the ISMAM cooperative in the western part
of Chiapas:
"Towards
the end of 1985 the Sierra Forania organized a coffee
producers meeting in which a subgroup was named to look
into the best way to start a production and marketing
organization. The group, accompanied by Father Reyna, went
to Oaxaca and established contact with UCIRI, a union
which was already producing certified organic coffee. It
began experimenting with compost, and had a general
meeting in mid-1986 to elect representatives and leaders
by region. It defined itself as an organization "of
service not business" and decided to use only
biological agriculture methods to produce a better quality
product and to protect the environment and it's member's
health. ISMAM was one of the organizations that promoted
the Organized Communal Labor (TCO) program, in which
producers organized themselves in groups to exchange
labor. This was a revitalization of tequio in Mexico. TCO
implied extra work, little credit, a lot of meetings, and
heavy service requirements. Many farmers were unwilling to
accept this burden and, of the 250 producers that
originally met, only 99 decided to continue in ISMAM."
The
visionaries who stayed with ISMAM to build an organization
"of service not business" worked hard to build
the web of relationships that form a successful
cooperative. Martinez-Torres would say they increased
their social capital. And, using organic practices, they
worked hard to improve the web of relationships between
themselves the soil, the water, and the creatures of their
coffee gardens. Martinez-Torres would say the ISMAM
members increased their natural capital by doing so. As a
result they also improved their financial well being.
According to Martinez-Torres ISMAM sales of certified
organic coffee grew from $900,000 in 1990 to $4.8 million
four years later. Individual family's income increased, as
a result, as did cooperative membership.
Sustainable
development needs three components to be truly
sustainable; a healthy natural environment, adequate
financial resources, and a healthy social environment. The
members of ISMAM, by the mid-90s, had established all
three.
The
ISMAM story is one of the parables that Martinez-Torres
tells so well in her book. What my telling of it lacks is
the drawing in of the relationships beyond the communities
of rural people of Chiapas that allow for their delicious
high quality coffee to be poured into your cup. I
encourage you to indeed pour yourself a cup of Peace
Coffee, sit down, and read Maria Elena Martinez-Torres
Organic Coffee. It is a wonderful intellectual achievement
that will improve your enjoyment of each cup fairly of
traded and organically produced coffee.
The
book is available for $15.99 on the Peace Coffee website
at:
www.peacecoffee.com/order/order.php?category=3.
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About
the author:
Organic Coffee is an extension of Maria Elena
Martinez-Torres' Ph.D. work at the University of
California at Berkeley. But she is Chiapaneca, and
campesina, at heart. She dedicates Organic Coffee, in
Spanish, to "the Indian campesinas and campesinos
that with their lives and deaths are the source of
struggle, resistance, and hope". She is also
well-grounded in activism and academia in Mexico's most
southern, and most culturally diverse, state.
Martinez-Torres is on the faculty of the Environment and
Society Program of the Center for Research and Advanced
Studies in Social Anthropology. She also directs Desarollo
Alternativo; a Mexican NGO devoted to research, analysis,
and outreach concerning alternative development.
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