Skip to content Skip to navigation
Sections
Personal tools
You are here: Home → What We Do → Producers
Document Actions

Trading Partners

Cooperative Coffees currently works with 18 small farmer organizations in 11 distinct, coffee producing countries. Our trade partners are farmer cooperatives — local organizations founded and democratically governed by the farmers themselves. Fair Trade helps build pride, independence and empowerment for small farmers, their families and their communities.

Read more about our trading partners in Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, East Timor,  El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru,  Rwanda, Sumatra (Indonesia).

Bolivia

Bol dmap

Our newest trading partner is FECAFEB.

Bolivia, named after independence fighter Simon BOLIVAR, broke away from Spanish rule in 1825; much of its subsequent history has consisted of a series of nearly 200 coups and countercoups. Comparatively democratic civilian rule was established in 1982, but leaders have faced difficult problems of deep-seated poverty, social unrest, and illegal drug production.  Read more.


Colombia

Col map

Our trading partners are Fondo Paez and Tayrona Indigenous Federation.

In textbook fashion, the gulf of wealth between the rich minority and the poor majority together with the lack of peaceful alternatives in Colombia, led to a leftist insurgency in the 1960’s. The other end of the political spectrum defended its position by organizing paramilitary groups to target social activists, human rights workers and peasants suspected of helping the guerrillas. Since then, the brutal conflict between the state’s army and paramilitary .. read more....

Dominican Republic

DR mapWe work with the farmer cooperative FEDECARES.

The Dominican Republic was the first European settlement in the New World and became the first point of colonisation in the Americas from explorers from Europe.  A legacy of unsettled, mostly non-representative rule lasted for much of the 20th century; the move towards representative democracy has improved vastly since the death of military dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in 1961.  Read more

East Timor

East Timor mapWe work with the national cooperative, Cafe Timor.

East Timor is still reeling from its recent struggle for independence from Indonesia and decades of neglect by the international community. When the new left-wing Portuguese government relinquished all its colonies in 1975, East Timor enjoyed (literally) a few days of independence. When East Timor declared its independence on November 28, 1975, Suharto’s Indonesia responded by invading the country nine days later.  Read more

El Salvador

el salvadormapWe work with the cooperative ACOES

El Salvador or “The Saviour” is the smallest country of Central America with an area size slightly smaller than the state of Massachusetts. However tiny, it is the most densely populated state of the Americas with approximately 340 inhabitant/sq km. It declared its independence from Spain in 1821 and ratified its constitution on December 20th. Read more

Ethiopia

Eth map

We work with the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union(OCFCU)

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and yet one of the poorest countries in the world. Coffee farmers live a very traditional lifestyle. Farming less than 5 acres and living in stick houses - electricity, running water and indoor plumbing are rare in rural areas. Late in 2003, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank deemed Ethiopia eligible for an additional US$700 million of “Topping Up” debt relief. To be eligible for this relief, Ethiopia has met with the tough economic restructuring conditions imposed through the IMF and the World Bank over a five-year qualifying process.  Read more.

Guatemala

Guat map

We work with five farmer cooperatives:  Apecaform, Chajul,  Nahuala, Rio Azul, and Santa Anita .

Guatemala's modern experiment with democracy and land reform ended fifty some years ago (June 1954) when the U.S. Eisenhower administration authorized the CIA coup that condemned Guatemala to decades of repressive military dictatorships. The signing of Peace Accords in 1996 formally ended 32 years of civil war and have allowed Guatemalans to experience increasing access to information and participate in an internal discussion about important national issues. Nevertheless, a half-century of bad habits die hard.  Read more

Mexico

Mex map

We work with four farmer partners in Mexico: Maya Vinic, Michiza, Selva Negra, and Yachil.

There is a popular saying in Mexico, “So far from God and so close to the United States." Thanks to U.S. advice and friendly pressure, Mexico's "economic restructuring" has resulted in a classic economical portrait of our times. At the same time that it has benefited the financial elite, it has squeezed a once thriving middle class and has had a devastating impact on Mexico's poor. Chiapas is one of the most marginalized states in all of Mexico, infamous for being one of the states richest in natural resources, yet with one of the poorest populations in all of Mexico. Read more.

Nicaragua

Nicaragua mapWe work with Cecocafen and La FEM.

Nicaragua, though Costa Rica’s neighbor, shows a dramatically different picture. It is the second poorest country in the Americas (Haiti is the poorest.) The income distribution is so unbalanced that 45% of all wealth is owned by 10% of the population.  Meanwhile, millions live in poverty, with neither potable water nor electricity supplied to their homes. Some 831,000 live in a situation of extreme poverty. Such inequity is not built up overnight, nor have the proud Nicaraguan people simply accepted this reality passively.Read more

Peru

Peru mapWe work with two farmer cooperatives, CEPICAFE and Pangoa.

Peru, once part of the great Incan empire, has been a land of ongoing struggle and revolution dating back to the Spanish Conquest. Finally in 1945, Peru emerged from decades of dictatorship with the inauguration of President José Luis Bustamente y Rivero. But Bustamonte y Rivero served for only three years before beginning a rapid succession of political turnover. Still, Peru's fragile democracy survived. In 1985, Belaúnde Terry was the first elected president to turn over power to a constitutionally elected successor since 1945.  Then came Alberto Fujimori. Read more

Rwanda

Rwanda map

Our newest trading partners are the Misozi Cooperative Union  and COOPAC.

The 1994 genocide killed 800,000 people, deeply traumatised Rwanda’s population, broke its social structures and brought its economy to a halt. Regional insecurity in the Great Lakes added to refugee flows, security concerns in border areas and lost economic opportunities. More than 50,000 Rwandans are still refugees in other countries of Africa and are only slowly returning. Broken families, a large number of women-headed households and orphans created an important group of vulnerable people. Malnutrition and HIV/AIDS further aggravate the situation. Read more.



Sumatra (Indonesia)

Sumatra mapWe work with the farmer cooperative, PPKGO and KBQB.

Indonesia is as diverse as it is enormous. Hundreds of languages are spoken on the 17,000 islands that make up the world’s largest archipelago and Muslim country. This resource rich (including oil) nation gained its independence from the Netherlands following WWII and named Sukarno as it’s first independent President. President Sukarno, a nationalist embattled leader, was eventually replaced by the much more pro-Western General Suharto. Suharto’s coming to power in 1965 was accompanied by the massacre of between 250,000 (CIA estimates) to 1 million (Amnesty International estimates) citizens.  Read more