When I heard my friend Patrick was involved in coffee + microfinance, I knew he had to do a guest post. Many of us drink coffee regularly, but do we stop to think where it comes from and who grows it?
{Being an Ohio State alum, I suppose I’ll have to overlook the fact that Patrick is a graduate of the University of Michigan}.
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Hey blog readers, my name is Patrick, and I’m the Director of Operations of Unión MicroFinanza, a non-profit organization that works to provide microfinance to the people of La Unión, Honduras in the most innovative and effective ways possible.
Microfinance provides impoverished people with loans that can be used to purchase seeds or fertilizer for crops, tools for a trade, or anything else which will raise income.
The main crop grown in La Unión is coffee, but farmers receive very small wages because they have no transportation and little bargaining power. By eliminating many middlemen, we’re able to buy coffee from farmers at fair prices, sell it to consumers at low prices, and use the proceeds to fund loans in La Unión.
The weather conditions and altitude in La Unión are ideal for coffee growing. Actually, one of the best things about our coffee is that the quality is better than that of a Starbucks grade coffee or something similar that you would find in a supermarket.
Fair trade is by far the most common buzzword used with coffee these days. Fair Trade coffee must meet specifications for working conditions and prices paid to farmers, as well as other regulations. Essentially, the goal of Fair Trade is to be sure that producers and harvesters of coffee are treated fairly.
Our coffee is not actually Fair Trade Certified, a classification more relevant to coffee plantations which employ tens to hundreds of employees and can afford the up-front cost. Because our coffee is grown entirely on small, family owned plots of land, the certification process is currently prohibitively expensive.
However, we buy our coffee through a local cooperative which brings together small family farms, and we buy above the Fair Trade regulated price.
Currently, our coffee is not organic because there is no local demand to justify the added costs of organic fertilizers. This is something which we hope to address in the future, if we can create a large enough demand.
Our organization has many goals, but they all come back to improving the lives of the people of La Unión. We will be working not just with coffee farmers, but with many different types of men and women.
We aim to:
- provide microfinance: will enable the people of La Unión to increase their income and standard of living.
- create or expand markets for the sales of products: the coffee is a perfect example of what we hope to do—a farmer can use a loan from us in order to buy fertilizer, which can increase output by as much as 100%, and then sell the coffee in the United States at an elevated price.
By helping increase supply from farmers and entrepreneurs, as well as creating new demand for their products, we aim to create a cycle of empowerment, as opposed to the cycle of poverty which plagues people in developing countries around the world.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave any questions or comments for me!
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I’d really encourage you to stop and think about the coffee you buy. Do you know if the farmers who grew the coffee beans were paid a fair wage…and is this something that’s important to you?
Giveaway
Three ways to win:
1. Comment in response to this post. What kind of coffee do you buy, and are you interested in better than fair trade coffee?
2. Earn an extra brownie point by mentioning the giveaway on your blog or Tweeting about it and linking back to this post. Then, let me know you did so when you comment.
3. Extra, extra brownie point by becoming a fan of the Unión MicroFinanza Facebook page! Again, let me know you did so when you comment.
Deadline is Wednesday, March 31st at midnight (CST). Multiple winners!
If you’re interested in supporting Unión MicroFinanza by purchasing coffee, you can do so here.
