A while ago, I went to my colleague’s family farm for a day out, and great day out we indeed had. I met her sister in law, and brother, and her small niece…
She was blowing raspberries when I was taking the picture...
I only discovered afterwards that Flora is a member of Sopexxca (aforementioned coffee union… keep up) and very recently have discovered she is on the Peet’s Coffee website
http://www.peets.com/who_we_are/community_hermanas.asp
as a shining example of the marvellousness of well-priced coffee, as there is another certification called Las Hermanas that is sold in
Their life – even with this extra income from tourism – is still pretty basic. A wood burning stove for cooking, a car battery for some radio entertainment, and a half hour walk to the main road. Buses into Jinotega take about an hour and come about every hour. Fairly standard for these parts. But when you walk between their and their neighbours’ fields you can see the difference between organic practices and non, and it would have been hard to implement these changes without the support of their ‘middle man’, Soppexxca. And in contrast to city dwellers, they have good land producing a large quanitity of what they’ll need: corn for tortillas, beans, milk for cheese, and of course coffee. Always coffee. Hmmmmm.
Cut to Soppexca’s offices in Jinotega. In comparison, pretty plush. It’s easy to see what some people mean when they say that the social premiums and higher payments get lost in the wages of the new middle men. They’ve even got a website (at the side of the blog in my groovee little links section!)
But when you think of the work they’re doing on certification, education, negotiating with buyers, even stuff that should be the government’s job like repairing roads and financing schools, that’s not something one small farmer can tackle. So you’re glad of a few middle men, even if they have got better clothes than you and electricity in the office.
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