Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Just consumption:
Goshen College media team reports from El Salvador on fair trade
coffee issues
View photos from the El Salvador fair trade coffee trip.
GOSHEN, Ind. -- Julio Ascencio Garcia was glad to welcome an interfaith group of Christian North Americans to his community, and relieved to be inside the cool walls of an old hacienda house while taking a break from his duties on the sunny patio where he and his colleagues rake coffee beans still in husks -- café oro -- into piles to dry. In greeting the interfaith delegation arranged by Equal Exchange, the largest fair trade coffee company in the United States, Garcia instinctively linked all Christians as children of God who should share as equals.
"In addition to you feeling at home I want you to feel like we are all part of one family, the family united in Christ," he said. "I pray that God will move the hearts of the rich, the ones that He decided to make rich, so that they would understand our plight. Right now maybe we cannot walk together side by side but perhaps someday we will walk together side by side."
In January, a Goshen College delegation including Associate Professor of Communication Duane Stoltzfus, Director of Public Relations Rachel Lapp and four students -- seniors Mark Gingerich of Iowa City, Iowa, Celeste Kennel-Shank of Washington, D.C., and Anna Newburn and junior Joel Fath, both of Goshen. Focused on peace and justice witness through excellent journalism, the trip was supported by grants from Mennonite Central Committee, MCC-Great Lakes and Goshen College’s Cultivating Authentic Leaders for Life and Plowshares programs.
Stoltzfus said the trip to El Salvador offered "a wonderful opportunity to participate in the best kind of reporting. The mainstream press is often so caught up in providing entertainment rather than news that matters. Here is a subject, the production of coffee, which has global ramifications and also links to nearly every person and congregation in the United States." He would like to see future teams of college journalism students pursuing underreported stories in partnership with MCC and other agencies that sponsor significant grassroots programs around the world.
The group, based in San Salvador, learned about the history, economics, agriculture and political situation in El Salvador and traveled to two small rural coffee cooperatives, El Pinal and Las Colinas. In addition, two students visited La Florida, where Linford Martin and Chloe Grasse and their daughters who are serving in the refugee farming community in working on permaculture projects including organic coffee production.
The Goshen faculty and students stayed overnight with farmers at Las Colinas, a coffee cooperative of more than 100 members located in the northwest department of Sonsonate near the Guatemalan border. Everyone in the community helps out during the harvest season. Grown at medium to high altitudes under shade trees, this is gourmet coffee bound for North America through Equal Exchange. The Las Colinas beans will be roasted and packaged as the Café Salvador blend, which is also used in the Fellowship Blend sold to churches through denominational partnerships with Equal Exchange, including the Mennonite Central Committee-sponsored Coffee Project. By working with Christian denominations, Equal Exchange feels it can offer a way to practice justice -- cup by cup.
Las Colinas cooperative president Pedro Antonio Ascencio's understanding of coffee production and distribution extends thousands of miles into the homes and churches of North Americans and into our mugs and Styrofoam cups. If Las Colinas can sell more gourmet coffee to Equal Exchange at "fair trade" prices, members can earn year-round wages and pay off more of their land debt -- which, with exorbitant interest rates, is significant. While they only sell two-thirds of their annual crop to Equal Exchange, Las Colinas is fortunate: most coffee farmers in El Salvador and other Central American producers are trapped in a commercial system that denies them direct access to world markets and grants them only the smallest profits in a complex economic chain. Fair trade coffee companies pay $1.26 for conventionally grown coffee and $1.41 for organically grown coffee. A five-cent "premium" is paid per pound -- monies democratically designated by the cooperatives for projects, training or services that benefit the community. To qualify as a "fair trade" company, merchants must also make pre-harvest investments and establish long-term relationships with farmers. Unfortunately, fair trade coffee only makes up 2 percent of the U.S. market for coffee -- a globally traded commodity that was once second only to oil.
"Thank you for your international support for our product," Pedro
said, welcoming the ecumenical group to Las Colinas. "We are
continually trying to improve our product." Editors: For
more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at
(574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu. Story
angles: *
This is an education story about journalism education
in practice and a professor encouraging his students to pursue
underreported stories in partnership with grassroots organizations
and programs around the world through multimedia projects. *
This is a religion story about churches partnering
with fair trade coffee organizations to make a difference and put
money behind their beliefs.
* This is a business story about the economic
benefits of fair trade coffee for farmers and how that relates to
the current coffee crisis.
Related
links:
Goshen College and fair trade coffee
https://www.goshen.edu/virtualgc/photoalbum/ElSalvador/
https://www.goshen.edu/fairtradecoffee/blog/
Interfaith coffee program
http://www.mcc.org/us/washington/coffee/
http://equalexchange.com/interfaith/
With stories like that of
the Las Colinas cooperative, and the taste of gourmet coffee to
take home with them, the Goshen College group has been busy turning
the notes, video and photographs they collected into articles and
presentations to churches, schools and organizations. Everblue
Media of Goshen is now working on a video project from the footage
gathered by Gingerich and Newburn.
Said Gingerich, "I felt I
was successful in what I was trying to do as far as combining my
talents and knowledge in videography and an interest in using my
gifts for service in some way. I also learned about myself. I was
again struck by the poverty that surrounded me which pushed me to
consider my lifestyle of consumerism and to push myself to be that
socially conscious person I want to be."
"I think the thing that
struck me most about our interaction [with] coffee growers in El
Salvador was the chasm between our level of awareness about not
only how a bag of coffee comes to rest on the shelf of a store, but
also about U.S. and international trade agreements and how those
policies impacts their country," said Newburn, a communication
major who conducted interviews in El Salvador in Spanish, sharpened
by a college semester in Cuba through Goshen's Study-Service Term.
"In the U.S. we have the ability to live as an island, and many
people don't consider the vast network of lives encountered even
when making such simple purchases like buying a pound of coffee. To
recognize that this interconnectedness exists is to begin demanding
better treatment of each person involved, which can lead to an
expansion of consciousness that promotes better decisions as
consumers," she continued.
Fath is also creating a
Web site focusing on the trip and fair trade coffee issues as part
of a multimedia class, to be launched in April. A Web site photo
album from the trip can be accessed by visiting https://www.goshen.edu/virtualgc/photoalbum/ElSalvador
Goshen College,
established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal
arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The
college's Christ-centered core values -- passionate learning,
global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and
servant-leadership -- prepare students as leaders for the church
and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program,
Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron's Best Buys
in Education, "Colleges of
Distinction," Kaplan's "Most Interesting Colleges" guide and
U.S.News & World Report's "America's Best
Colleges" edition, which named Goshen a "least debt college." Visit
www.goshen.edu.
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