Get to Know: Las Colinas
Photo By: Cheryl Mrazik/CRS
This Fair Trade Month, we are running a campaign called #YouAreKnown. The goal of this campaign is to get to know the folks involved in fair trade - from the farmer who grows your coffee on down to the Catholic who drinks it.
Fair Trade Month is also Hispanic Heritage Month (and Respect Life Month), so we thought a good first profile would be the farmers of Las Colinas in El Salvador. Las Colinas was founded after land reforms in 1980, when farmers purchased the land with no credit and no training - just a strong desire to own a piece of Creation and to make a living for their families. They became a fair trade cooperative, and in 1996 began selling to CRS’ partner Equal Exchange. They have a long-term relationship, with Equal buying 86% of their coffee each year and renegotiating the best price each season. CRS staff (pictured above) had a chance to witness this relationship in action on a recent delegation.
Pedro Ascencio, one of the cooperative managers, reflects on what a fair trade relationship like this means for the farmers:
Las Colinas has faced many obstacles, including 4 hurricanes since 1982, debt rescheduling, a major coffee price crash, and credit cutoff to their small farmers. They also experienced crippling flooding in 2011 that washed away food and coffee crops and destroyed the road to market.
Despite these setbacks, the farmers of Las Colinas have continued to move forward and work to bring high-quality coffee to fair traders in the U.S. From 2008-2011, CRS worked with Las Colinas on the Cafe Livelihoods project, aimed at creating cleaner and more efficient coffee processing systems. The new systems also protect the drinking water of folks living downstream of the cooperative and allow the farmers to better care for God’s creation.
Being fair trade means Las Colinas members are paid fairly for their work, are able to send their kids to school, and that they have safe working conditions. When you purchase fair trade coffee from Equal Exchange, you’re not only supporting theses farmers, but thousands of others like them from Central and South America. To all of these farmers we say, #YouAreKnown.
