In a Mexican War Zone, Indians Fight to Harvest Organic Coffee Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit In a Mexican War Zone, Indians Fight to Harvest Organic Coffee By SUSAN FERRISS (c) 1999 Cox News Service TAKIUKUM, Mexico, May 30, 1999 -- In an obscure village in southern Mexico, Manuel Gomez proudly shows guests horse manure spread beneath a tangle of vines on his modest coffee farm. Manure, ironically, is offering a healthier and more prosperous life to this Mayan Indian farmer, who uses it to fertilize organic coffee he grows for consumers tens of thousands of miles from his home. In Takiukum and other isolated hamlets nestled in the hills of politically-troubled Chiapas state, more and more subsistence farmers are growing organic coffee for export, which provides them with about 80 percent of their cash income. Helped by foreign buyers who deal directly with them instead of middlemen, the Indians are tapping into the taste buds of voracious American coffee drinkers and receiving a much better price for their gourmet crop than prevailing world market rates. The farmers' organic coffee is ending up as brew or beans found in American and European cafes, health food stores, grocery chains and specialty shops from Germany to Atlanta, Ga., from Italy to Austin, Texas. Gomez and about 1,300 other Indian farmers belong to Union Majomut (pronounced, "Ma-ho-MOOT''), a cooperative whose name means "place of birds'' in a Mayan dialect. "Our dream is to make our members self-sufficient, with all their crops organic,'' said Gilberto Aguilar, an agronomist who has been working with Union Majomut for years in this lushly beautiful but desperately poor part of Mexico. This quiet revolution is facing difficult challenges, however. Union Majomut's growers live in the middle of a virtual war zone, where Zapatista Indian rebels and the Mexican military have been locked in an uneasy truce since an armed uprising in 1994. All travelers in this area are stopped at military roadblocks and divided Indian communities teeter on the edge of political violence. In December 1997, anti-Zapatista vigilantes massacred 45 people -- including children in a church -- in the village of Acteal, one of Union Majomut's member towns. Acteal's producers lost their entire crop that year because they fled the village or were terrified to venture into their parcels to harvest beans. The conflict still hinders production. Last year it cost the union more than 50 percent of its anticipated yield, Aguilar said. But the union continues to convert members by staying neutral and working with farmers on both sides of the political divide. In 1991, 80 members were organic growers. Today, 700 out of 1,300 are growing coffee by certified organic means. The remaining 600 members are making the transition, Aguilar said, which requires not applying chemicals and complying with other norms for at least three years before certification. Although this area is remote and many Indians speak limited Spanish, pesticide companies advertise heavily here, threatening Union Majomut's investment, Aguilar added. "We also had a serious problem with the International Red Cross after the Acteal massacre,'' he said. "They arrived here and passed out free packages of agro-chemicals, putting in jeopardy all our years of hard work. We had to meet with them and ask them not to do that.'' During the early 1980s, the Mexican government was pushing pesticides here, Aguilar said, and Indians who couldn't read instructions were poisoning themselves. Aguilar and other agronomists worked village by village to win the Indians' confidence and persuade them to try organic methods. They also teamed up with international partners who want to give the Indians a fair price for their labor, Aguilar said. One such buyer is Equal Exchange, a Canton, Mass.-based business that buys coffee only from growers who farm small plots of about two acres in Central America and Mexico. "Because of the turmoil in Chiapas, we wanted to find a way to work with communities in need there,'' said Equal Exchange marketing director Erbin Crowell. Coffee growers are always on the brink of disaster because coffee prices fluctuate wildly. This year they've swung between $1 and $1.20 a pound, but Equal Exchange pays a guaranteed price of $1.26 a pound, plus 15 cents for an organic premium. After the Acteal massacre, Equal Exchange raised $13,000 for victims' families and refugees and gave it to Union Majomut to distribute. The company also offers growers up to 60 percent credit in advance on its contracts, something Mexican banks won't do. Equal Exchange roasts coffee from its Mexican buyers and sells it under the brands Organic Cafe Mexico, Organic Mind, Body and Soul, and other names. Union Majomut's coffee can be found, among other places, at Shaw's Supermarket chain in New England, Rainbow Grocery stores in California, the Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin, Texas, and the Ten Thousand Villages shop in Atlanta, Ga. Churches, too, buy the coffee. No one knows how much organic coffee is produced currently in Mexico, said Roberto Giesemann, president of High Quality Coffees of Mexico. The organic yield could still be as low as 1 percent of Mexico's total coffee production. But there is room for growth in Chiapas, where the Mayan Indians' culture lends itself to organizing cooperatives that can police growing methods and produce bulk quantities, Giesemann said. It is critical, however, that the Indians maintain contact with foreign companies willing to pay premiums and offer credit, Giesemann added. In broken Spanish, Manuel Gomez explains how the organic coffee he's grown since 1991 has helped his family, which lives in a simple wood house with no running water 26 miles from San Cristobal de las Casas, the nearest city. Gomez's coffee plants are hard to spot on a slope behind his house because they are tucked under trees producing avocados, oranges and exotic fruits he can only identify in his Mayan dialect. Vegetables the family relies on grow under a canopy of trees alive with the song of birds. The trees provide the coffee plants the right amount of shade they need to produce robust, flavorful beans of a higher quality than those produced by rows of unprotected plants often seen on large plantations. Careful terracing prevents soil erosion in this hilly area during pounding summer rains. Because farmers like can't use chemicals and are required to mix in other trees and plants among the coffee, these farms provide another benefit: they are refuges for birds that are fast losing habitat as Mexican forest is cut down, said Russell Greenberg, president of the Smithsonian Institution Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C. "The farms in Chiapas have the second highest diversity of birds in that area,'' Greenberg said, "second only to natural tropical forest.'' Gomez used to migrate to pick coffee on Chiapas' large coffee plantations, where he earned pennies after weeks of hard work. He's still poor, but now he can afford to buy a watch, tennis shoes, saddles and tools while growing enough food for his family. "Producers like Manuel,'' said Aguilar, "have fruits to show for the investment they've been given.'' ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.02.99-06:42:13-21302