In Transition, Part II:
New Co-ops Build Hope for Mexico's Coffee Farmers
by Julie Beals

In the March issue, we brought you the story of the La Trinidad co-op in Oaxaca, Mexico. Five years ago, these coffee farmers broke away from a larger co-op in order to survive in the changing global market, keeping their high-altitude crops from being mixed with lower-grown coffees to earn a more livable wage. The group’s success is a model that others in the region are looking to duplicate.

A young co-op called the 21st of September is one such group. Last year, it too broke away from a larger co-op. Due to the tiny community’s location at the highest elevation in the co-op, it was producing the best coffees, but the farmers were shrouded in anonymity because their crops were being mixed with lower-grown, lower-quality coffees. Now that they are their own co-op, the quality of the coffee here—nine hours from Oaxaca City at 5,800 feet—has proven to be unlike any seen before in the region, namely for its acidity.

The 21st is an organic/fair-trade co-op comprised of 23 coffee producing communities totaling 971 farms of five to seven acres each. Double certification guarantees a certain price for the coffee, but there is still much work to be done. About a year ago, I received a detailed tutorial from Griswold on how coffee growers’ co-ops are adjusting to market trends. “There is increasing demand for micro lots of coffee, and as an industry we are trying to figure out how to best handle this. We all agree that we have to find ways to serve the needs of this new market trend, and in the process save farmers with unique coffees and their producers from extinction.”

A year later, Griswold and I meet again in Oaxaca City, with three of his roaster customers—Mark Inman of Taylor Maid, Christy Thorns of Allegro and Peter Giuliano of Counter Culture—to visit the growers of the 21st, where very few coffee buyers have been in the last decade, according to the farmers. At the 21st’s office in Putla, a few hours from Oaxaca City, co-op president Romualdo Heras Hernándo explains the tough decisions they faced in late 2005, when they were asking for accountability from the larger co-op. “We wanted information on who we were selling to and for how much. In 15 years, we had built no local capital. We were too dependent on [the larger co-op] for survival. We were trying to decide whether to keep growing coffee, whether it was viable at all. We were barely making it at the time.”

The farmers did not intend to defect, but they knew they could not survive on the status quo. They were left with the choice to step out on their own or stop growing coffee altogether. After contacting Sustainable Harvest’s Oaxaca City office, the farmers brought sample after sample of the 2005 harvest out of the mountains, driving five to eight hours to find buyers for their coffees. “They risked a lot,” says Griswold. “They harvested in November 2005 and weren’t paid until mid 2006. It’s amazing that they held out that long, not selling to [the larger co-op] or multinationals.”

The 21st still faces challenges, but that’s what this visit is about. This is the first time many of these farmers have seen buyers, and the three who’ve made the trip are enthusiastic. “I’d heard what others had said about this coffee and had seen opinions on online forums,” says Thorns. “We’re a small group of buyers looking for a certain kind of quality. My ears perked up when I heard about this cooperative—people had been talking about it for two years. When the opportunity to visit the co-op came, I jumped on it.” Inman recalls the surprise of discovering the 21st’s coffee. “I was doing a cupping of samples that Sustainable Harvest had sent me last year, and it jumped off the table,” he says. “It’s been hard for me to find high-quality organics in Mexico. I’m happy to be back here because I think Oaxaca can produce fantastic coffee, I just haven’t been privy to it.” Giuliano works with small lots as much as possible. “This is an opportunity to do the micro-lot work I’m interested in. These coffees are very unique and also controversial—atypical of Oaxacans. There are very different profiles in Oaxaca within small geographic areas. I’m looking forward to introducing my customers to coffees that are grown in close proximity with very different profiles.”

Later that day, we find ourselves nearly 10 hours from Oaxaca City in a town of 2,000 people called Zaragoza, but it feels even smaller than that. A crumbling church and a semi-functional general store are the core of the main street. As we walk through town, the indelible tension between faith and uncertainty are palpable. I’m told that five years ago, the now successful La Trinidad co-op’s village of Los Naranjos, several hundred miles south, also looked something like this.

Homesteads are scattered throughout the mountains here, the heart of September 21’s farming community, where co-op leader Hernándo was born and raised in a “neighborhood” called La Laguna, 45 minutes from the Zaragoza township. P.A. systems repeat community announcements between neighborhoods (essentially from hilltop to hilltop) like modern-day smoke signals; homes are close to each other geographically, but getting to and fro requires long drives due to the steep peaks and valleys between them.

Farms here are diversified, raising cattle, corn and beans. The nearby community of Porvenir once grew nothing but coffee, and it was hardest hit by the market crash of 1989. Hernando says the strength that the 21st can bring to coffee yields and prices will support more diversification for planting bananas and other fruit. With 23 communities, he believes it will take five to 10 years to achieve this.

In addition to diversification, technology is proving key to the region’s survival. As remote as these hills are, they’re wired. The Internet and increased telecommunications—cell phones and two-way radios—are keeping people informed of what’s going on in neighboring communities, including the prices coffee farmers are getting for their crops. “Knowledge is power,” says Griswold. “Farmer co-ops can get better connected now, learning what their neighbors are doing, using that information to bring them out of isolation and giving them something to strive for.”

That night in Zaragoza’s town hall, Griswold’s words ring true, as more than 100 people gather to meet him and the coffee roasters. “This is the first time in our history that we’ve been face to face with buyers,” says one Zaragoza farmer. “This is a momentous occasion. I hope you understand how moved we are.”

Griswold talks about the importance of long-term relationships, coffee quality, U.S. market trends and sustainable livelihoods. “Consumers in the states don’t know Zaragoza, but we want them to know that Mexican coffees can be great, and that this is the community it comes from. Your community deserves recognition, and our consumers will respond to the flavor and the community and seek you out.”

After the presentation, one farmer stands up. “We respect that you are here, but we’re not making enough money on organic. We have nothing to give to our children.” One woman with nine children, one of whom is in the States working and sending money home, worries that after she passes, her children won’t be able to live off her small plot of land. “All of us have family in the States; this is a total migration community because we can’t earn enough money to survive by growing coffee.”

Today, no one in Oaxaca can seem to live with or without fair trade. Los Angeles has the second-greatest population density of Oaxacans, and those of the next generation who have not left are showing little interest in growing coffee. And why would they? Gone are the days of Inmecafé, the Mexican government agency that supported coffee farmers from 1959 to 1989 with agronomy analysis, training, fertilizers and other tools. Inmecafé disappeared under the Salinas government, and the coffee market crash of the same year brought further devastation. The price of coffee is often so low that there is not money to plant enough corn or beans to feed a family, which pushes them into paying more for food, further undermining their self-sufficiency.

If it existed today, Inmecafé would be addressing these issues, as similar agencies are doing in countries like Guatemala and Colombia. “Mexico’s farmers have been left to freefall in a global market with no tools, resources or training, many of them with little education, trying to figure out how to compete in the sophisticated and sometimes volatile specialty coffee market,” says Griswold.

In the absence of a state agency, the all-for-one socialist model of a large, statewide co-op might seem like the way to compete with other countries that produce lower-grown coffees. But Mexico’s small farms, different terrains and lack of resources do not make this viable. Brazil, Vietnam and now China are producing far more at lower costs, due to the economy of scale. “Combining Mexico’s premium coffees with others in a region prolongs the inevitable demise of the group, when they should instead continue to grow coffees that fetch higher prices and convert lower elevations to crops that are more suitable there than coffee,” says Griswold.

“There is going to be a shakeout. Diversified farming has to come to lower areas. Mexico can no longer compete in prime washed coffees with the bigger producing countries, and the Mexican government has been eliminating support systems to counteract this trend. You have 300,000 small farmers living in Mexico trying to grow coffee, and you’ll have massive migrations north if it continues to spiral down. The stakes are high.”

Farmers at lower elevations might plant crops such as cacao or vanilla. “In today’s global market, the only farmers who will survive are those who can produce at the higher elevations where they can produce specialty coffees that fetch higher prices,” says Griswold. “For the rest, we need to find support programs that get them into other means of making a living. It’s not unlike when fisheries and forestry industries have adapted to reduced or redistributed resources, when people move and start new lives.” It’s clear that while governments will need to step in and provide resources and direction, input and initiative from the private sector is also needed to save these last remnants of regional coffees that are different from what comes out of Brazil, Vietnam and China. Sustainable Harvest and its green-buyer customers are putting their resources to work to this end. On a visit to one of the 21st’s farms, Inman speaks of going beyond the fair-trade price, something he and other buyers are doing more and more. “We see how these farms are run, how the farmers live, and it’s impossible to have a conversation about lowering price. And these are the kinds of growers you want to work with, who are willing to work with you and separate out micro lots.”

The growers and buyers want the same thing: great coffees that create more income for everyone. “It’s unheard of that the effort to produce this coffee and what it earns is so disproportionate to what it’s being sold for in the U.S.,” says Inman. “We all see the disparity there. We’re just starting to understand how it fits into the big picture. Is it going to be like the finest French wines? We don’t know. Wines that go for $200 a bottle require much less labor than this—and that’s four glasses. But consumers have no concept of what goes into this.”

La Trinidad’s members have also encouraged the 21st to get to know the market. “We had it happen to us, and we know what it’s like. We’re telling them that they have a friend up north [the Sustainable Harvest office in Portland and its farmer training office in Oaxaca City] that is going to help them. It’s going to work.” The 21st of September is a young organization, still finding its way in a difficult market with few financial resources. But the group has already shown its wherewithal, and its members can look to La Trinidad as an example of what can happen in a few short years: funds to build drying patios and refurbish buildings, and for grower education, agronomy and community-based projects.

“These people have amazing will,” says Christy Thorns. “You don’t always see that. They ask great questions, and they want to improve their organics. With people who are passively growing coffee, that’s a concern. But these growers are in it to win it.” Communication with their buyers will ensure all parties get what they need from the partnership. And the importance of these face-to-face encounters, where growers are speaking out, is clear. “It’s a great example of transparency,” says Giuliano. “We walked away from this meeting feeling more connected than ever to this project,” says Griswold. “People were open and honest. Farmers feel they have a new ally in this challenge they face.”

 

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