CECOCAFEN

Cecocafen is an association of coffee producers organized in unions and multi-service cooperatives from the states of Matagalpa, Jinotega, Nueva Segovia, and the North Atlantic Autonomous Region. The coffee unions and cooperatives that make up Cecocafen’s membership represent over 3,000 small coffee producers. The main economic activity of Cecocafen is to market the coffee produced by its members. To do so it created its dry processing plant SOLCAFE.

WCCN supports Cecocafen in its goal of creating equitable markets for its producers and its promotion of fair trade practices. Its slogan Empresarial en su forma, social en su fin or Businesslike in structure, social in purpose is indicative of the social enterprise it operates. It is committed to just relationships with its members, the preservation of the environment, and active participation of women.

Although Cecocafen is not a microfinance institution, it provides credit to its membership in order to finance the production, harvesting and marketing of coffee. In 2007, WCCN began a lending relationship with Cecoocafen to help finance these activities. Likewise, Cecocafen is implementing a broad cooperative, rural development-oriented program. This initiative provides technical assistance, training and organizational support to the individual members and communities of Cecocafen’s member unions and cooperatives.

La FEM

Since 2005, WCCN has worked with the Fundación Entre Mujeres or La FEM through its women’s empowerment initiatives. However, in 2006 our work with La FEM ventured into fair trade when we helped facilitate a relationship between the Madison-based coffee roaster Just Coffee and the feminist coffee cooperatives with which La FEM works. As part of its mission of empowering of poor rural women, La FEM promotes the organization of small-scale producers into women’s cooperatives. These cooperatives are made up of over 130 female coffee producers committed to protecting the environment through the production of fair trade organic coffee. Just Coffee supports small coffee cooperatives, such as the La FEM cooperatives, around the world by working with “grower cooperatives in true partnership…We recognize fair trade as one strategy for change within a larger movement for global social justice.”

WCCN encourages you to buy La FEM coffee under the labels Las Diosas, Nicaragua, or El Corazon (a blend of dark roasted Rwandan Abakangukiyekawa and medium roasted Nicaraguan La FEM coffees). If you can’t find it at your local grocer or coffee retailer, it is also available online through Just Coffee.

RAOS

RAOS (Cooperativa Regional Mixta de Agricultores Orgánicos de la Sierra) was founded in 1997 by organic coffee producers in Marcala in the department of La Paz in Honduras.  In the region of Marcala, coffee dominates and is renown internationally as a high quality producing region in Central America.

The RAOS cooperative is located in southwestern Honduras, one of the poorest regions in the country.  RAOS’ aim is to not only produce high quality coffee but to improve the living conditions of its members by producing, processing and trading organic products coffee and other products as well. 

RAOS has helped build an extensive network of buyers for Marcala coffee both nationally and internationally.  By aiding in the gathering, processing, exportation and commercialization of coffee, RAOS has helped farmers meet the objectives of fair trade, organic and conventional regulation.  Cooperative members, in addition to technical assistance, also receive financial assistance in the way of obtaining good prices for their crop and financial services. 

By the end of 2009, the cooperative had 180 members.  Women’s participation in the growing coop is also gradually increasing as there are currently four female members on RAOS’ board of directors. 

COMSA    

COMSA is a Honduran private company founded in December 2001 by FUNDER, a very prestigious agricultural development Honduran NGO.

COMSA grew out of the idea of its affiliates. These small coffee farmers were in search of a business model that successfully enabled them to benefit from the high quality coffee they were growing versus the traditional subsistence paradigm that exploited their labor and the vast economic potential of the high-quality coffee grown by them.

COMSA was created at a moment when coffee prices were low to reduce the intermediation chain, obtain higher negotiation power through scale, reduce the contamination of the environment caused by conventional (non-organic) coffee production, and improve the life of the affiliates and their families.

COMSA generates a value-added margin on coffee purchased by processing and storing before selling it at a higher price to reputable international buyers. Approximately 75% of sales this season will be through the fair trade market.

Currently, the majority of the 245 affiliates are Lenca people, a Central American indigenous group, who reside in the southwestern region of the country which is the poorest zone of Honduras.

APAVAM

Asociación de Productores Agropecuarios del Valle Alto Mayo/The Association of Farmers from the Alto Mayo Valley (APAVAM).  APAVAM is a coffee cooperative providing training and access to international fair trade markets for 518 families living and farming organically in the Alto Mayo Valley, part of the remote eastern Andean region.

The Alto Mayo is a national protected forest with beautiful landscapes, spectacular geological formations, and distinct flora and fauna, primarily orchids and butterflies.  A local highway constructed in 1985 exposed the forest and people to exploitation and the area was overrun with narcotics trafficking, guerrillas, and indiscriminate destruction of the virgin rain forest.  Many local farmers replaced their coffee fields with coca crops.

Members of APAVAM live in remote areas of the forest, farming an average of just seven acres.  After they handpick their coffee they haul it by mule to the co-op’s collection center.  Risk of robbery and assault is high during this trip.  After the co-op collects and dries all the individual members’ coffee, it hires a truck to haul the coffee 17 hours away to the town of Piura for dry milling and exportation.

One of the toughest obstacle APAVAM faces is the ability to purchase its members’ coffee at harvest.  Without access to financing, members are forced to wait months for the co-op to process, sell, and export their coffee before receiving payment. This wait causes undue hardship on small-scale, subsistence farmers and they may resort to selling outside the co-op for a much lower price, potentially making coffee production an untenable crop compared to coca.  WCCN is supporting APAVAM by providing a $150,000 loan to be used to purchase their members’ coffee at the time of harvest. 

CASIL

In 2001, 38 young farmers in the remote Peruvian/Ecuadorian boarder took charge of their future and reorganized the dormant coffee cooperative Cooperative Agraria Cafetalera/The Agrarian Coffee Cooperative (CASIL).  Thanks to their initiative 180 small-scale farming families have access to international fair trade and organic coffee markets, agriculture training, and information about the global coffee market.

CASIL has a cooperative-wide plan for sustainable management of their members coffee fields. Seven agronomists, employed by the co-op, visit each co-op member’s coffee fields and provide training on sustainable pest control, ecological practices and productivity to ensure that all CASIL coffee is quality coffee.   

WCCN is supporting CASIL with a $375,000 loan to be used to purchase their members’ coffee at the time of harvest.

FAPECAFES

FAPECAFES mission is to improve the life quality of its affiliated families through the efficient storage, processing and marketing of mainly organic and gourmet coffee on the fair trade market. Environmental conservation and sustainable community development are the other strategic objectives of FAPECAFES. This federation has a great system of technical training and organizational strengthening of the local associations and their individual members.

The coffee cooperatives leaders work closely with certifiers of FLO and BCS and Rain Forest Alliance to make sure that their affiliates meet a series of social and agricultural practices. Some of these local leaders are also members of the board of directors or members of the oversight committee and the like.

FAPECAFES has 1,654 families affiliated. Women headed around 30% of these families.

Just Coffee Cooperative

    Just Coffee Cooperative is a worker-owned