Just a quick update to let you all know that we’re back in Canada, recuperating from the two weeks of what were usually 12-16 hour days of traveling, interviewing, filming, planning, and more. In the next few weeks we’re going to be collecting our thoughts, reviewing and editing the tapes (14 hours of footage to go through to try to create something useful), and trying to put together our ideas for where we go next with this. Many thanks to all of you who made this trip possible. It was incredibly worthwhile for our understanding of the coffee industry and the implications the industry has for its workers and surrounding communities.

 Michael Headford did an amazing job with the filming, and our hired guide/translator Alvaro Rodriguez was a great asset to our team with his knowledge of the local area and his services in helping us communicate despite language barriers. We received help and hospitality from many kind people while we were in Nicaragua, which in the end allowed us to finish the trip with just a few dollars to spare in our budget. Everything seemed to just fall into place perfectly during this trip. We’ll be releasing a more complete update in the days to come. 

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We started out our trip by visiting mills and exporters, and trying to get knowledge on how the supply chain of the coffee industry works, and what issues exist there. A lot of what we learned was really eye-opening, but it’s been in the last few days that what we’ve experienced has gone beyond just eye-opening, and instead can only be described as totally heart-breaking.

We rented a 4×4 and headed further up into the mountains. Travelling from farm to farm down backroads, we eventually came upon a typical coffee farm vacant of an owner and only an unintentive supervisor. We continued by foot into the coffee fields and began conversing with the labourers of the farm. As we continued there was a consistent response that the farmer had not paid their employees for more than a month, and while providing one meal a day of a small bowl of low quality rice and beans, while drawing a consensus that the food caused diarrhea and stomach problems for the workers. All the women we had interviewed had children at home unintended, and where humiliated to inform us that they were not only able to feed their children, and that their children were malnourished, but their children had one or more of diarrhea, bronchitis, flu, cough, anemia, parasites, stomach aches, fevers, and other diseases and health problems. The issue being these mothers had no extra income to buy medicines, as the farmer provided no access to health care. One woman came up to us with an 8 month old baby that has had pneumonia for the last 2 months, and the medicine for the pneumonia only costs $7 for a full treatment. Almost everyone had various illnesses that could easily and cheaply be treated.

We only came intending to interview workers (something that’s usually pretty hard to do), but this farm was worse than anything we’d seen yet. We went back to the closest town, bought medicines for the individuals we had interviewed, some bread and coffee (yes, ironically these coffee pickers have no access to coffee, and want it badly for the cold mountain mornings) and came back to the farm. Upon return, Alvaro attempted to administer the medication to the individuals we had spoken with, roughly for twenty five families, however creating a line of thirty to thirty five people, creating an understanding of the destitute position of the laborers on one individual farm.

Visiting farms and talking to people, we’ve realized that the vast majority of conventional coffee farms are using what an exporter we had interviewed called “traditional practices” (70% of farms in his estimation). These “traditional practices” mean that worker conditions or local community or environmental impact are not concerns. On larger farms, even with relatively high prices on the stock market for coffee right now, most workers are starving, many without basic access to medicines or even elementary education for their children.

In fact the hardest hit on these farms, it seems, are the children. Their parents get some food from the owners of the farms so that they can work, but most people don’t even have enough at the end of the day to buy the cheapest food for the children. Food prices have doubled for their local staples in the last year, while already incredibly low wages have stayed the same.

Hello Everybody, We are in the coffee region of Matagalpa. Yesterday we had a six hour meeting with a family owner by the name of Mario who managed a Christ directed coffee mill, that sets up shelters to feed and house the homeless in Nicaragua, and provided temporary loans to small scale farmers. He detailed the hardships of the industry and the levels of competition and demands by international corporations including direct buyers of his coffee such as ´Starbucks´ and issues surrounding ´Fair Trade´ certification. At the mill we linked up with another farmer who will  be bringing us into the heart of the coffee region of Jinotingo. Over diner, Gustavo invited us to take us through the poverty stricken coffee regions, where laborors can´t afford to properly nourish their children as their wages are so low.  Gustavo will be picking us up tomorrow at seven.Today, we will be establishing our complete itenary for the remainder of time with mills, producers, the local population and government.   Things are going GREAT.

Just a quick update to let you all know that we´re now in Nicaragua, staying the night in Granada until we can get our luggage tomorrow morning. We´re busy orienting ourselves and setting up our itinerary, making appointments with coffee growers and cooperatives. More updates will come!

If you’re wondering what exactly we’re trying to do with the Christian Trade Mission, (at a more indepth level than the pages linked in our site header) we’ve actually got a PDF that’s an overview of our goals and direction, which was sent around to a lot of people earlier on the general goals and ideas behind this project. If you have any questions or comments on it, please send them our way, either via this website’s commenting system, or by contacting us via email or phone.Our main focus right now is that we’re going next week to Nicaragua in collaboration with the Innerkip Church’s “Mission of Hope” group. We’re going to Nicaragua to educate ourselves on the coffee industry and the issues of poverty and oppression associated with it, and to film material to do a promotional/educational video for the Christian Trade Mission, and a little further down the line a small documentary about injustice in the coffee industry in Nicaragua. As well, we’ll be looking for coffee growers and potential missions project locations while there. 

We’re leaving in just 5 days for Nicaragua, and the anticipation is building! We’ve gotten our tickets secured, for those who haven’t heard that - including the ticket for our cameraman, Michael Headford. We were really wondering if this trip was meant to happen with the place our personal finances are at and the lack of outside support we were getting, but the folks from Innerkip Presbyterian have been such a great help to us, as well as many family and friends who have given towards making this project happen - it has just been unbelievable to us to see things come together in the last week!