B ACKGROUND

The population in the Opatoro area are mainly peasants combining subsistence farming, cash- crop production, and either labour on other people’s farms or by temporal migration. In 1999 the peasants’ organization ADROH initiated, with funding from the Development Fund, a project among its members in the area.

ADROH is organized in farmers committees of around 11 members in each, and the trainings were held in these groups. One leader from each group also assisted in occasional trainings outside the community. The project aimed to improve food security and life quality through trainings in sustainable agricultural techniques; among these the cultivation of organic vegetables. In 2001 the project focus shifted from vegetables to other crops such as organic potatoes, vegetables and coffee (Moya et.al 2006). In order to narrow down the scope of this study, and to make a coherent comparison with the APROCAMP coffee producers, the analysis concentrates on the production and sale of coffee.

The reasons for including organic coffee production in the project were that some of the farmers already had coffee fields that were poorly maintained, and that there was a general interest among the participants to grow coffee. Since coffee is a perennial crop, a coffee producer must have access to the same plot year after year. This excluded the peasants who did not have their own land, and only around 25 of the more than hundred ADROH peasants that were part of the project grow organic coffee. The motivation was not initially focused on

obtaining a prize premium but rather to improve the production and/or introduce the peasants to new crops:

The idea of cultivating coffee came from the peasants because many of them had small, poorly maintained plots and there were some production.

(…)Because of the high cost of conventional fertilizers, the peasants manifested [manifestaron] to initiate demonstrative organic plots with the leaders, and followed up the plots that were already established (…)There were only speculations considering the sales, but we didn’t have any certification, and that is how we started to meet with RAOS, so that they could explain to us how the marketing of organic products work – then, after a study with the producers and the leadership of ADROH, there was an agreement to certify the producers plots¹¹ (ADROH project worker).

The ADROH peasants produce coffee with organic techniques, but do not certify and sell their coffee as organic. After trading their certified organic coffee

through the organic and Fair Trade cooperative RAOS for three years, until the 2005/6 harvest, the coffee producers decided to return to the system which is common in the area, where coffee is sold to the local middlemen. The project funding for the certification and the membership fee to RAOS ran out in May 2006. The lacking motivations to continue the certification and the relation with RAOS was, by most of the farmers, not exclusively due to the lack of funding, equally important was the transportation- and imbursement-related problems

11 La idea del cultivo de café surge de los campesinos ya que muchos de ellos mantenían pequeñas parcelas sin manejo (…) y había producción. Por el alto costo de los insumos convencionales (abonos) los campesinos manifestaron iniciar parcelas demostrativas de manera orgánica con los lideres, darle seguimiento a las parcelas ya establecidas (…)En cuanto a la venta solo habían especulaciones de vender, pero no contábamos con una certificación, fue así que se sostuvo reuniones con Raos para que explicara como funcionaba la compra venta de los productos orgánicos; luego en base a un estudio con los productores y dirigencia de ADROH se llega a la conclusión de certificar las parcelas de los productor

encountered while trading coffee through the cooperative, and their lack of

knowledge of certification and sales of organic and Fair Trade coffee. One reason for this is probably that the marketing process had been decided on as the project developed, and, as we shall see, show signs of improvisation.

In 2002, when the organic coffee production was initiated, ADROH members were offered a small loan (500 HNL, or 26 USD) to buy materials for fencing the coffee plots and preparing the fields – and were offered training in coffee cultivation and organic fertilizer. Some of the peasants had coffee plots with grown trees when the project started, others started to cultivate coffee on their own initiative a few years before the project started; but most of the peasants started to cultivate coffee with project-supported credit (see table 1).

Those who had coffee from before were given the possibility to plant some new coffee trees. Some producers had used to apply inorganic fertilizer to the plots, others produced what in the area is referred to as “natural” coffee; coffee without any fertilization at all.

The plots cleared for coffee farming were forest cover areas. The coffee producers in ADROH have very small plots of coffee, about 5,5 tareas in average (see Appendix 1).According to the registers in ADROH and data collected

through the interviews, 136,5 tareas of coffee are currently cultivated by the ADROH peasants. Some producers gave up on coffee production, because the plants died, others started coffee production and failed, but started over again and succeeded. Other peasants again started with coffee a bit after the other

producers, and their plants are barely reaching the stage of optimum yields.

The following analysis shows in which ways organic techniques so far have been sufficiently beneficial for some peasants to continue applying them, even when labour, knowledge, time and financial resources complicates the organic farming for others. Thereafter it explains how sales on the Fair Trade market resulted futile for the ADROH peasants due to the lacking access to labour, infrastructure and credits, along with the currently low production of coffee.