Talking about the weather in Mexico

8 Jan 2009

It´s a day off for me here in Jacaltenango, Guatemala; it´s Sunday which is market day, which is colourful for sure, but there's not much else going down. I´m happy for the change of pace and for having nothing in particular to do, having been moving almost continuously for the past week. Six days ago I flew with Rene, an enthusiastic fair trade coffee roaster from Wellington, into Mexico, and since then we´ve been very much on the go visiting different groups who work within a coffee co-operative named ISMAM in Chiapas, southern Mexico. Work days visiting coffee farmers out in their villages have involved six to eight hours driving per day on top of time spent with the farmers, and even yesterday when we were simply transferring the 150km or so across the border from Mexico to here it still took us eight hours. So no travel today is OK by me.

I often have to remind people who think that my Trade Aid work-related international travel is romantic and fun that this is not always the case! The groups of coffee farmers we met with this week are the most desperate that I have ever seen; just about everyone in Chiapas seems to have grim stories relating to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Stan which passed through in 2005, and farmers certainly have their share. Coffee farmers lost trees, equipment, houses and in some cases even their lives. With no government assistance, no home and contents insurance, and no life insurance to be had a hurricane here is a disastrous set-back for a farming family. I do find it hard to listen on as men and women recount the tale of their houses being washed away before politely asking me if they might perhaps be paid a little more for their coffee.

Even in the big city, things were bad after the hurricane. In Tapachula, where the co-op we were visiting is based, bridges were out for weeks, roads took up to a year to get repaired, and the train simply doesn´t run anymore. Laura, our translator, recounted a story of watching on as a woman and the two sons she was carrying across a bridge-less river were all swept away by the current.

One of the groups we visited also had fresh bad news to share; high winds and unusual rain patterns this past year have destroyed almost all of their coffee crop. Farmers who usually harvest around 100 sacks of coffee this year might have picked eight, or nine sacks. They would normally still be picking coffee well into February but this year their harvest is already over. What does this mean for them? They're not going to starve to death, but times will be very hard for them. They freely spoke of the upcoming misery and suffering that they expect to face, with very little to eat, no money for anything beyond essential food items, and certainly no spare cash to reinvest into their farms to help ensure a more healthy crop next year or to put more kids through school. Hearing their stories, it's easy for me to understand why so many hundreds of thousands of farmers have abandoned their crops down here in recent years. The farmers we met cannot afford a repeat of this year's harvest again next year.. so their hopes are high for better rain this year. It must be said, their options for alternative income are extremely limited.

I always hope, on these trips I make, that I might hear reassuring stories telling me that by being organised together into co-operatives, that farmers are enjoying some benefits of a better trading system. But fair trade or no fair trade, life is still marginal for many producers around the planet when bad weather strikes.