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Can't Eat Coffee: By Melinda St. Louis
One important coffee-growing region is in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, where this year a widespread famine forced hungry people to seek refuge and beg for food in the city's parks. "Our children have had to go far to try to find food, eating tiny, unripe bananas or mango peels. Once we couldn't find any more fruit, we were forced to come here to seek help in the city," says Marta Mena, mother of nine and one of hundreds who squatted in Matagalpa's parks. But, driving into Matalgalpa, the region does not look like a place where there should be a famine. The rainy season was not as abundant as usual, but the hillsides are still covered with lush greenery and soil is rich and black. So, why should people be going hungry? According to José Solórzano, president of Union of Agricultural and Cattle Ranchers (UNAG), Nicaragua's role in the world market since 1880 has been that of agroexporter to countries in the north. Coffee accounts for 27% of Nicaragua's exports, and the coffee industry employs 100,000 people in Matagalpa alone.
Farmers like Gomez have had to lay off their workers and let their coffee rot on the vine. Marta Mena is now one of the approximately 13,000 coffee workers who have been out of work for the entire year. "We looked for work everywhere...all the plantations are being repossessed by the banks, and there is no work." Without income, people cannot buy food, and even though the land is fertile, all land has been planted with coffee. But you can't eat coffee.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves, "Who is benefiting from this economic model?" Not Marta Mena or the thousands of starving coffee workers in Nicaragua. Not Israel Gomez, who obediently cultivated coffee for export for years, only to now lose everything. Not U.S. coffee drinkers who continue to pay $2.50 -$3.00 for a cup of coffee. Large, transnational coffee distributors now get to pocket the difference. By participating in Fair Trade Coffee campaigns, consumers don't have to participate in a model which prioritizes profits over the lives of people. Coffee producers in Nicaragua who were part of Fair Trade networks continued received over $120 per 100 pounds of coffee, allowing them to continue to make a profit to feed their families. But unfortunately this market is still very small so few producers benefit. For more information
on how to participate, contact Witness
for Peace or see the webpage http://www.purefood.org/dayofaction.cfm
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Contact
Witness for Peace |
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So
many of us feel like we can't start our day without our cup o' joe. We
drink our coffee every day without a thought of how it arrived into our
cups. But, whether we like it or not, our daily consumption affects people
all over the world. Today, December 8, Fair Trade coffee day, is a day
to think about our connection to the global economy.
But
this year coffee prices on the world market dropped drastically, as they
often do when there is overproduction on a global level. The World Bank,
as part of its structural adjustment plans, has encouraged Asian countries
such as Vietnam to export more and more coffee (as they have encouraged
Nicaragua to do in the past) in order to get money to pay off their debts.
The result of this glut of coffee on the world market has been devastating
for Nicaraguan coffee producers, such as Israel Gomez, who normally contracts
60 people to harvest his coffee. Last year, he sold a hundred pounds of
coffee for $130. This year the price has dropped to $45. And his costs
to produce 100 pounds of coffee is $75. 
"This
widespread hunger that we are seeing could be solved immediately if coffee
producers received financing to rehire our coffee pickers," says
Gomez.