Coffee Prices & Friends Forging Alternative Markets

Harvesting coffee cherries

Coffee Harvest Season!

January and February are the peak of coffee season, and in rural Chiapas, red coffee cherries color the fields as everyone talks about this year's coffee prices. On the roadside, families discuss with their neighbors how much they are being offered this year. Typically, most households sell their coffee by the kilo to "coyotes" or middlemen who arrive to the communities and purchase coffee. Usually local people don't have much of a say in the negotiation of prices.

This year, the price for coffee has actually gone up significantly. Last year the price was about 35-40 Mexican Pesos ($1.75- $2 USD), and this year the price has risen to 80-100 MXP ($3.90-$4.9 USD) per kilo (2.2 pounds)! This rise in price is significant and many attribute the increase to Brazil's drought this year, which affected their coffee production. However, there are many other factors also impact coffee prices-- financial speculation, an increase in coffee consumption globally, climate change, etc.

Local producers from rural communities are subject to the rise and fall of coffee prices which is a challenge for families because most of their yearly income comes from this coffee. Imagine never knowing what your yearly salary is until pay day! This year the price was much better but no one knows what it will be next year. Nothing is guaranteed, and producers are subject to the whim of global markets.

An Initiative for Coffee Solidarity

A few of my friends started a cooperative & solidarity economy initiative that guarantees fair prices for producers every year so they don't have such uncertainty around their yearly income. Whether the market price is up or down, they will always buy at a fixed price of 90-100 MXP ($4.43-$4.9 USD). We visited a few communities near the Lacandona Jungle during a work visit and bought a few kilos of coffee for the solidarity economy initiative.

As you can see in the pictures below, the community members huddled around the handing scale, pointing flashlights to get a good view and confirm the weight of their coffee.

Weighing coffee to buy for my friend's coffee initiative for a cooperative, solidarity economy

My friend had initially intended to buy the coffee from a community near San Cristobal de Las Casas, but since the prices were better this year, the producers sold it all to the "coyotes" or middlemen. This is something that they will have to discuss and work out with their producing partners in the future to guarantee coffee, even when the market price increase. My friend told me, "Next year if the prices are low, they will want us to buy their coffee. But they have to also guarantee that they won't sell it to middle men when the price rises." Since my friends are just getting started with the project, they are working out the details and communication. This is a problem that many coffee cooperatives run into as well. The cooperatives offer more favorable prices every year, but when the market price rises, the producers sell to middlemen rather than to the cooperative.

We always talk about the importance of food sovereignty, and my friends also take this into account in their coffee initiative. Rural families often consume coffee in their homes, so it's important that they reserve their own supply of coffee for household consumption. When my friends bought the coffee in the rural communities, they made sure that they weren't buying the coffee left for the household. In many coffee-producing communities, the households sell their organic coffee to market and then buy cheap, instant coffees like Nescafé from the store for their own consumption. Through the solidarity coffee market, my friends want to make sure that communities also have access to consume their own quality coffee.

Taking the coffee to an expendio where it was toasted and ground

Processing the Coffee

When we got back to the city of San Cristobal, we took the coffee in big, burlap sacks to a local expendio where they roast and grind the coffee beans. They weighed the coffee on the scale. The results were a bit different than the hanging scale we used in the communities but not a huge difference. Then my friend picked the level of roast. I was impressed that there are 30 different choices! He was quick to choose the level on the middle far left. A few days later they picked up the roasted coffee and put it in the packaging that you can see in the photo above.

I visited my friends' house and tasted a delicious cup of coffee :) They are selling to people in Mexico and in the future will work on increasing their project to reach more customers!