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Fair Trade Begins to Bear Fruit |
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By Inés Benítez*
Fair
trade is fast becoming an option for thousands of poor farmers in
Guatemala, with thousands leaving behind the distortions of the
international market.
GUATEMALA CITY, Apr 30 (IPS/IFEJ) - The living
and working conditions of thousands of small farmers in Guatemala
have seen much improvement since they joined the "fair trade" system,
which sets new rules of the game in an otherwise difficult global
market.
"Before, we lived in great need. The association helped our town
to export products, and with training," says Francisco Ijón, marketing
assistant of the Chajulense Association, a group that has embraced
the criteria of fair trade for its 1,800 coffee growers in the western
regions of Quiché and Huehuetenango, where the vast majority of
the population is indigenous and poor.
Certified by the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International
(FLO), the Chajulense Association exports coffee to Europe and the
United States, and began to diversify its production, adding honey
and cardamom spice. In 2006 it exported 675,000 kg of organic coffee
-- grown without using agrochemicals.
According to official figures, 56 percent of Guatemala's 12.7 million
inhabitants live in poverty and eight of every 10 poor Guatemalans
live in rural areas. Although the farming sector generates 75 percent
of the country's jobs, it represents just 23 percent of gross domestic
product (GDP).
The rules of fair trade are different from the rules of the dominant
international trade system, and from those championed by defenders
of free trade.
FLO grants a Fairtrade seal after making sure that the farmers'
or production organizations comply with a series of criteria, such
as paying fair wages and providing a safe work environment, respect
for the environment, eradication of child labor, gender equity and
reinvestment in the development of their communities.
One of the benefits was to bring automotive transportation to the
coffee plantations: the work was very hard until the 1990s, when
"farmers who didn't have animals to do it for them had to carry
the coffee beans on their backs and had to do a lot of walking.
Now the vehicles meet them halfway," says Ijón.
Guatemala has 23 groups that export under the Fairtrade seal, most
of them small coffee farmers, and a few honey producers. They are
assured a minimum price that covers their production costs -- a
key aspect for the devalued Central American coffee sector): 1.26
dollars per pound (450 grams) of certified coffee (not organic),
and 1.41 dollars/lb of organic coffee.
There is an additional payment -- five cents of a dollar per pound
for regular coffee and 10 cents for organic coffee -- earmarked
for organization, member and community development, explained Verónica
Pérez, the local communications director for FLO, in an interview
for this article.
The official minimum monthly salary in Guatemala is 178 dollars
for farming and 183 dollars for other sectors. The farmers of the
Chajulense Association earn around 90 dollars per quintal (43.3
kg), and they produce 10 to 25 each month, says Ijón.
"Fair trade opened up the market for the small farmers, something
that doesn't occur with conventional trade," says Baltazar Francisco
Miguel, general manager of the Barrillense Farmers' Association,
made up of 580 organic coffee producers in Huehuetenango and Quiché,
who export to Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States.
According to Miguel, the members can earn 25 to 100 percent more
than in the conventional market, and they also receive credits from
the coffee buyers. Loans are very difficult for small farmers to
obtain in Guatemala's national private banking system.
"The small farmers want compensation for their work. The people
are humble, poor and illiterate, but they produce something called
coffee and they want to earn enough to live decently," says Gerardo
Alberto de León, manager of Fedecocagua, the federation of Guatemalan
coffee cooperatives, with more than 20,000 members, 65 percent of
them participating in the fair trade system.
Fedecocagua became the first organization to export coffee under
a fair trade arrangement. That was in 1973, and the coffee went
to the Netherlands and Germany.
Across the seven countries of the Central American isthmus there
are already 90 organizations certified by FLO that export coffee,
honey, sesame, sugar, bananas, cacao, dried fruit, peanuts or cashews,
says Kieran Durnien, in charge of FLO's operations in the region.
In the opinion of Ron Van Meer, a business consultant for Fairtrade
Original in Latin America, the organization that supplies the Netherlands
with products from the fair trade market, the conventional system
of exchange "distorts the relations between producers and consumers."
"It is not a matter of maximizing earnings, but rather a kind of
trade that takes into account factors like the human being, the
environment, the non-use of child labor; that is, trade with justice,
sustainable over time," Van Meer said in an interview.
Fair trade sales saw a 32-percent increase from 2004 to 2005, according
to data from FLO, which certified 586 organizations in 50 countries
in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In Guatemala, fair trade has developed more in agriculture, but
the system is also applied to artisan groups, where most of the
participants are women.
Mayan Hands involves some 230 indigenous women from 11 communities
in the southern regions of Xela, Sololá, Chimaltenango and Baja
Verapaz, who make handcrafted textile products for export to the
United States.
Annual sales for Mayan Hands reach one million quetzales (131,578
dollars). The group was founded in 1989, under the initiative of
anthropologist Brenda Rosenbaum.
"We pay probably three times more than the conventional market,"
says director Deborah Chandler. Mayan Hands guarantees a job, provides
the materials, and at the beginning of the school year provides
a bag of school supplies for the children of the artisans, who earn
32 to 197 dollars a month, depending on hours worked and the type
of textiles produced.
"The women always say that even more important than the money is
knowing that they are going to have work each month," Chandler adds.
But the situation of the artisan sector is more difficult than that
of the fair trade farmers, because their products are not for daily
consumption, and they face competition from the cheap and abundant
items coming from Asia.
Mayan Hands is a member of the U.S.-based Fair Trade Federation,
and its products are sold by solidarity shops, churches, weavers'
associations, and peace and justice groups.
"We need markets that are guided by other criteria. We don't want
hand-outs, we want fair prices. It's essential to raise the awareness
of consumers," says Harriet Gottlob, a German woman who runs La
Casa del Amaranto, a solidarity shop in downtown Guatemala City.
On the shop's shelves are colorful jars of mango and mandarin marmalades
from Quiché, honey from Petén, and milled amaranth from families
in the high plains, organic coffee, plant-based soaps and shampoo,
and essential oils from the tomillo and pine.
* This story is part of a series of features
on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ -- the International
Federation of Environmental Journalists. |
