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Visit: Cafédirect
Can you give me some examples of how Fairtrade impacts on your producer
communities?
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In Haiti small groups of farmers were fragmented, disorganised and forced to sell
their coffee at the lowest prices. Quality suffered due to low price incentives and
they had little access to information. Farmers were encouraged to re-organise
and 300 disparate producers set up the Recocarno Co-operative in co-ordination
with Oxfam, Twin and a local NGO to become the first farmer-owned exporter of
quality coffee in Haiti. Following a year's training Recocarno achieved Fairtrade
registration with Cafédirect as one of its first customers, which provided them with
the higher income needed to support a new business. The guaranteed 60% pre-
financing on every contract provided essential working capital. Four years later
Recocarno have quadrupled their orders to Cafédirect and ship to other Fairtrade
customers in Holland and Japan. They now plan to reduce their dependency on
Fairtrade and build export volumes in the conventional marketplace.
- One co-operative in Peru has set up five experimental nurseries at differing
altitudes to identify new and more effective crops to make available to their
members - they carry out training, look at disease control, cultivate other crops
and shade trees. The younger farmers are trained to teach other members, and
on-site specialists are employed to assist farmers with quality and organic
production methods. This has brought greater yields, better quality products and
an increase in income for many farmers.
- The Gumutindo Project is a joint undertaking between Twin Trading and
Cafédirect's producer-partner, the Bugisu Co-operative Union (BCU), set up in
1998. Its objectives include ensuring a reliable supply of the very highest quality
Mount Elgon coffee, rewarding farmers directly their extra efforts in producing this
coffee, improving the reputation of Bugisu Arabica on the world market, and getting
a higher proportion of the price back to the farmer. The word Gumutindo means
excellent quality in Lugisu, the local language. In return for producing excellent
coffee, the farmer is paid an additional premium for each kilo of coffee bought by
the project. In March 2002, the first container of organic certified coffee from the
one of the Gumutindo Project's primary societies was approved for import to the
UK.
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