Monday, February 23, 2009
Coffee Kids Board Member, Bill Mares, recently traveled to Mexico to work with Coffee Kids partners to learn about their efforts in beekeeping and share a few tips. Mares is president of the Vermont Beekeeper’s Association. Thanks to Bill for taking time to share his knowledge with our partners!
I just spent two weeks in southern Mexico working on a project to teach coffee farmers how to keep bees with help from Jose Luis Zarate and Jose Carlos Vargas in Coffee Kids’ Oaxaca office. The beekeeping project has grown parallel to and been partially integrated into Coffee Kids work.
For three years I have been picking at the idea of visiting Coffee Kids partners CECOCAFEN in Nicaragua, CAMPO and FomCafe in Oaxaca, as well as other cooperatives in Chiapas. This year Professor Dewey Caron, a leading beekeeping scientist with 40 years of teaching experience in the United States and Latin America, came along. Among his books is one on killer bees.
Dewey and I are building a three-part manual of best practices in beekeeping for coffee cooperatives that already produce honey or are thinking about it.
After a long tradition as a natural sweetener in Central America, honey production went into steep decline when killer bees swept through the region in the 1980’s destroying all traditional beekeeping methods. In the last 15-20 years pent-up demand and a readiness to adopt modern methods have brought honey back, partly as a popular local sweetener, but more importantly as a source of supplemental income for those dependent upon coffee’s wildly fluctuating world prices.
The manual we created has three parts in a Q-and-A format. Part one deals with technical matters, such as production of one’s own equipment or handling queen bees. The second section covers organizational matters, such as cooperative governance, the role of the executive director and the distribution of money among members. The final section treats the marketing of the honey. For example, how does the cooperative “brand” its products? How do they spread their efforts between local, national and international markets?
In our discussions with managers and farmers we confirmed several of our pre-conceptions and made several counter-intuitive discoveries. In the first category, none of the beekeepers was a “hobbyist” as is widely the case in U.S; all wanted to produce honey for additional income. In the second, some cooperatives chose not to try to sell honey for the highest (Fair Trade, organic) prices, because they were able to sell everything they produced at the local level.
One of the beekeeping heroes of our work is Alfredo Contreras, a second-generation beekeeper with CAMPO. With an extraordinary “hive-side manner,” he is passionate about teaching and about including women, long marginalized from primary economic activities.
What made this project particularly fulfilling to us was that we were not two gringos bringing tablets of wisdom and experience from afar, but rather gatherers of information learning and sharing knowledge with other experience beekeepers. Like collectors of folk music we “recorded” what we found and then let others share the results.
Posted by site admin on 02/23 at 12:59 PM
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Friday, February 20, 2009
InterAmerican Coffee is the sponsor of the Coffee Kids Reception at the 21st Annual Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) Exposition in Atlanta, Ga. The event will be held on Friday, April 17 from 5-7pm, in Room 302A at the Georgia World Congress Center. 
“We’re very excited to have InterAmerican Coffee join us in presenting this fun event,” said Carolyn Fairman, executive director of Coffee Kids. “It will be a great opportunity to learn more about Coffee Kids and network with a number of coffee professionals interested in sustainability.”
InterAmerican Coffee is a strong supporter of Coffee Kids’ mission to help coffee-farming families improve their quality of life. The company is an importer and distributor of high-quality green coffee.
At the reception, Executive Director Carolyn Fairman, Board President Rob Stephen and other special guests will present a brief program about Coffee Kids initiatives. Food and beverages will be served.
Friday, February 13, 2009
In February, Coffee Kids Program Department staff went to Peru to meet with Coffee Kids partner COCLA and visit with other cooperatives and organizations working to improve the lives of coffee-farming families.
Although some sectors of the Peruvian economy have not been affected by the world economic crisis in a visible way due to government subsidies, the reality of the global financial crunch is evident in rural areas.
During our stay, we met with various cooperatives in the provinces of San Igancio and Jaen, in the northern department of Cajamarca. According to national and UN statistics poverty in these areas affects 75% of the population.
In the communities of Tamborapa Pueblo, Tabaconas and Rodeopampa, we met with coffee producers and their families. Most of the families depend largely on coffee as their main source of income. One of the families we met told us that a family of five needs at least 50 dollars a week for food, which doesn’t seem like much to many of the people reading this. But to families living below the poverty line, this is up to 60% of their weekly income.
On our visit, we saw how people are confronting these problems. In Tamborapa Pueblo, Carmen Rivera, a mother of four, has created a small organic garden to produce vegetables for her family. She guided us through her small parcel with great excitement and showed us the radishes, lettuce, peppers, beans, peaches and other vegetables that she uses to feed her family and make extra income selling the surplus. Several women in the community have followed her example creating their own gardens.
People in these communities understand that sometimes the earnings from the coffee harvest are not enough and they occasionally have to rely on other sources of income such as raising chickens or guinea pigs. Many people also work on other coffee parcels to earn money for their families.
The coffee cooperatives know that coffee is not enough. Though coffee exports are growing in Peru, international markets are uncertain and higher prices for quality coffee still don’t cover all of their needs.
The cooperatives in this region are working to implement grassroots programs that provide health, education, and commercial opportunities to their members. Our visit gave us an intimate understanding of the reality of coffee in Peru and reinforced the belief that families in these communities have the tools to confront their challenges on their own, all they need is support and resources.
Posted by Jose Luis Zarate on 02/13 at 04:41 PM
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Monday, February 09, 2009
Last Friday, February 6, I had the honor of presenting at the El Pomar Leadership Summit in Colorado Springs, Colo. The El Pomar Foundation holds the leadership summit each year for young and upcoming leaders from ten universities throughout Colorado. This year’s theme was, “Leaders Wanted: Uniting to End Poverty.” Jess Arnsteen, founder of Buywell Coffee of Colorado Springs, and I presented “Rural Poverty and Your Cup of Joe.” 
The presentation focused on the causes of poverty in coffee-growing communities and the conditions confronted by families there. We then covered a variety of market-based initiatives, such as fair trade and Rainforest Alliance, and discussed the positive and negative aspects of these efforts in reducing poverty. I talked about the role Coffee Kids plays in coffee-farming communities promoting diverse economies and an improved quality of life and how we can fill some of the gaps left by market-based efforts.
Special thanks to El Pomar Foundation for the invitation and the opportunity to share.
Posted by site admin on 02/09 at 03:26 PM
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Thursday, February 05, 2009
Coffee Kids open house on Thursday, January 29, was a rousing success with nearly 100 people from the Santa Fe area in attendance. Coffee, chai and cider from Java Joe’s of Santa Fe was much appreciated and we shared information about our work with a great group of people.
Kimberly Kiel of of Horizons Sustainable Financial Services, won the drawing for a print from Photographer Dorie Hagler’s series, “Behind Every Cup.” To see the whole series, visit www.behindeverycup.com. Hagler donates 10% of every print sold to Coffee Kids.
We also have a few more images from the event posted on our Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/coffeekids.
Posted by site admin on 02/05 at 10:50 AM
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