GUATEMALA:
Waking Up to a Better
Coffee
By Inés Benítez*
GUATEMALA CITY, (IPS/IFEJ)
- "Before, we didn't
know how to market the
coffee, or who would buy
it in other countries,
all we knew about was
planting and
harvesting," says
Guatemalan coffee grower
Pablo Pérez.
He represents an
association of small
farmers in the
northwestern department
of Huehuetenango, a
member of the Café/Caffé
programme, which seeks
to improve product
quality in order to
boost the producers'
incomes.
"The project helps us
with the prices. Before,
the intermediaries kept
most of the profit,"
said Pérez in an
interview.
The programme, launched
Sep. 6, is financed by
the Italian Foreign
Ministry and the
International Coffee
Organisation, which
contribute,
respectively, nearly 1.5
million and 600,000
dollars.
Pérez, one of the 170
small coffee growers in
Guatemala participating
in the project, says
they are paid "a little
bit more, 45 quetzales
per quintal of ripe
beans," in other words,
about six dollars per 46
kilos. "But we earn
little because the
fertiliser is very
expensive.
The usual price is 4.60
to 5.30 dollars per
quintal. Four or five
years ago, it was 2.60
to 3.30 dollars, recalls
Manrique López, local
technical coordinator
for Café/Caffé.
"Our philosophy is to
utilise coffee as an
axis of development,"
says Massimo Battaglia,
in charge of the Italian
Overseas Agronomy
Institute in Florence,
executor of the project.
In two years, Café/Caffé
hopes to help 2,000
small coffee growers in
Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua and Dominican
Republic, by reducing
their socio-economic and
cultural vulnerability,
increasing the
sustainability of their
crops and promoting
rural tourism in
coffee-growing areas.
"Coffee has the
advantage of being grown
in beautiful places. Why
not take advantage of
that?" says Battaglia
about the tourism
potential for
Huehuetenango, a
mountainous area
covering 7,400 square
kilometres with a
variety of climates and
landscapes.
Guatemala has a
population of 13
million, with 75,000
coffee growers,
two-thirds of which are
small-scale, says
Rodolfo González,
general manager of the
National Coffee
Association (Anacafé),
which is collaborating
with the programme and
issuing licenses for the
exportation of coffee.
Lucía Ramírez, of the
Mam indigenous community
of Tuibosh in
Huehuetenango, is the
mother of six children
and has been working in
coffee plantations for
18 years. "Now they pay
better because the
coffee is of better
quality," she says.
The coffee growers
received training in
better harvesting,
processing and drying
techniques; preserving
traditional systems of
production; as well as
ways of recycling the
byproducts to turn them
into another source of
revenue.
Furthermore, promoting
"the local product is an
effort towards defending
the land," says Luca
Fabbri, Italian
representative of Slow
Food, a foundation that
has been providing
assistance since 2003 to
small coffee growers in
Huehuetenango.
Some of the coffee,
which is manually
cultivated in the shade
at an altitude of 1,500
to 2,000 metres, is
exported to Italy, where
it is distributed by the
importers Pausa Café,
Mokafe and Eataly to
restaurants and
supermarkets.
The 2006-2007 harvest
saw 1,500 quintales of
coffee exported from
Café Baluarte, in Las
Tierras Altas,
Huehuetenango.
"The small producers can
grow high-quality coffee
while taking care of the
environment," according
to Iliana Martínez,
representative of the
Italian cooperative
Pausa Café.
She says the coffee
growers learn to use the
appropriate fertilisers,
to clean up their
parcels and to recycle
the byproducts, and that
there is a quality and
taste control for each
lot of coffee.
Café/Caffé's López, who
is also general manager
of Baluarte Marketer in
Huehuetenango, which
works with various
associations in the
region, emphasises that
participants in this
project range from
ministries and producers
to buyers and local
government officials.
"Behind every product
there is land and there
are people," he says.
The small farmer should
be a principal part of
the coffee production
chain and receive
economic, social,
technical, commercial
and environmental
benefits, he adds.
Fifty-one percent of the
Guatemalan population
lives in poverty, and 80
percent of the poor are
in rural areas. Although
agriculture generates 75
percent of employment,
it contributes just 23
percent of the gross
domestic product.
(*This story is part of
a series of features on
sustainable development
by IPS-Inter Press
Service and IFEJ-International
Federation of
Environmental
Journalists.) |
