Our Own Farmer Organization

This is a guest post by my colleague Paul Alvarez.  Paul has been supporting independent smallholder farmers in Peru to achieve Fair Trade certification.  He wrote this post after his latest visit to Peru. “Yes, other certifications are good, but we also want Fair Trade. Yes, we have other certifications but we like Fair Trade

A first step towards farmer organizations

During my visit to Honduras, last month, I visited the Cruz Alta community in Santa Rosa de Copan. I visited Efigio at his farm where the other farmers in his Fair Trade group were already meeting. Efigio is a young independent smallholder that grows coffee just as his parents and his older brother do. He

A win-win-win for consumers, farmers and the environment

In my last post I wrote about my visit to Honduras where I met independent smallholders preparing to join Fair Trade.  One of the farmers, Faustino, told me how preparing for Fair Trade helped him and his community to save water and reduce pollution, while improving the quality of coffee. As Faustino mentions in the

“Things are changing” – Farmers in Honduras prepare for Fair Trade

Last week, I visited smallholder coffee farmers in the Department of Copan in Honduras, one of the most beautiful regions in the country.  We are working with more than 100 farmers in Copan who want to join Fair Trade but who are not part of a cooperative or other farmer organization who could get Fair

Farm workers in Nicaragua prepare for Fair Trade

Last week I visited a farm in Nicaragua participating in our coffee pilots to bring the benefits of Fair Trade to coffee pickers and other farm workers.  As part of the new standards we are testing in this pilot, the farm workers have democratically elected a Fair Trade committee.  The committee in this farm includes

I met Eliover in July when I visited the farm where he works in Colombia. He has worked in coffee since he was a kid picking coffee during the harvest, cleaning weeds, and recently guiding other workers in this farm during harvest time. When we met we talked about the idea of Fair Trade with

ensuring we create significant impact for workers and farmers

Damiao, farm worker in Fair Trade pilot farm in Brazil, talks about Fair Trade Making sure that whatever you do is actually creating the effects you are looking for is vital for any development initiative.  In my case, I am trying to create a system that brings the benefits of Fair Trade to coffee workers

working with independent small farmers in Colombia

“It is excellent. We learn from them, they learn from us, and we solve our questions together” Nancy Garces, a leader of the Las Aradas community and part of the Fair Trade small-scale farmer committee in Nariño, on her experience working with the other communities Close to the Doña Juana volcano in Nariño, Colombia, 100 small-scale