From Hooked - Students for Trade Justice

Contents 1 Stories of Fairtrade Coffee in Papua New Guinea 1.1 Video from PNG 1.2 Brief Talk 1.3 Question time

[edit] Stories of Fairtrade Coffee in Papua New Guinea

Daniel Kinne & Henry Ame, 6\5\6

[edit] Video from PNG

Showed a video following coffee from production in the village to tasting in Melbourne, including interviews with a number of the villagers.

[edit] Brief Talk

• The organic coffee growers in PNG are getting 30% more for their coffee.
• And an additional 5 cents per pound goes to the co-op, and is used for community development: school textbooks, exercise books, desks.
• From our town into Morocca is about 92 km; some parts impassable by 4WD. Some of the money going to fixing up the road.—What you see in the film is representative of the whole of the road; we didn’t just show you the worst parts in the film!
• Also money is being put to health services in the village. Wooden beds in the wards (instead of on the ground). We saw needs we needed to address; and so we addressed that.
• There’s a lot of things we can do in the community; but these are the very important, the basic services we think we should address first.
• When these services are all right; we will move on to doing more things in the community.
• Started in Germany; took 18 months to get certified.
• So please continue in what you’re doing! If you want to do something good for people in third world countries; buy fair trade! Thankyou very much!

[edit] Question time

Putting money into the community…who decides where the money goes?

• FLO (the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation) requires us to be democratic. I became the chairman because I’m a grower myself (this is a requirement) and I was voted to join the committee by my village.
• When my 3 years is up, they will vote again.

How’d you come to be involved with Fairtrade?

• We were in the States on a Speciality convention, and the Central Americans were into Fairtrade already. We saw the benefits they reaped. Came back and tried it out; got certified, and found it’s really helping! It really works, and we’re really happy about how Fairtrade helps us.

Are the benefits mostly for society (e.g. the mattresses [at medical clinic]) or more than that?

• They also get an extra bit of money. This really helps: clothes, bedding, kids’ school fees, enjoying life a bit.

Are other communities noticing your success, and thinking of moving to Fairtrade also?

• Yes, they’re noticing the difference in the style of life, and the Fairtrade pricing. We only started two years ago; and as demand grows in the market, we will spread out more.

Are most farmers growing many crops, or are they mostly focused on growing coffee? Do they continue to grow food crops?

• Yes, they grow crops for subsistence. Otherwise where will they get their food from?

You mentioned the certification took 18 months. Was there much change in the production process of the coffee, compared to before Fairtrade certification?

• The money they have now is enough to send their kids to school, and the standard of living is higher.

Is it difficult for more communities to get certified?

• Yes, got to contact the German certifier; make lots of changes, contact them again.
• We had to get advance payments from them, but now we’ve paid it back, and we’re able to move forward.

Do you get support if your crop fails?

• We have the certificate, but if we’ve got nothing to sell, we get nothing!

As more people grow coffee, what if there's oversupply? Is there a quota on the number of bags of coffee sold by each person? Can people with large farms get much more money?

• At the moment; we’ve got a company in America that wants to buy all the coffee we produce; and one in Australia; and one in Germany all wanting everything we can produce.

Do you care who consumes the coffee you’ve produced? E.g. McDonald’s

• We want everyone to taste our coffee! From the producer end, we just want everyone to be able to taste our coffee.

Was anyone in your community against going Fairtrade?

• Fairtrade is a program that helps our community. When a program helps a community, everyone wants to accept it.

Were you afraid you mightn’t be able to sell your product?

• Fairtrade is also about connecting farmers to markets.

Are you happy with your standard of living? Do you like your jobs?

• Yes, I like my job. I get to contribute to my community. Live with my family, live in my village. I feel I’m obliged to my community. I feel like I can go back and do something for my community, so yes, I like my job!

Did it take a big change to meet the standards to become organic certified?

• We were doing organic already. So we registered, and got ID cards. We were registered as organic. So we didn’t have difficulty getting people together in this program.

Do other farmers benefit from this program; ones who aren’t participating?

• Farmers who aren’t certified can’t sell through us, but yes, they all benefit through the community program.

Farmers who don’t produce coffee, are they angry that there’s no Fairtrade program for their crop?

• Yes, they sell their coffee for lower prices and they're not happy, but we have only just started and already have 3000 members, we can’t expand just yet.

Is there any conflict or violence between growers who are and aren’t certified?

• No. When we started, we invited everyone to become part of it. Those who joined us are lucky now. Some said they’d wait and see how it was. They’ve missed out! It was an open invitation. No point in arguing with me. Later we can join you, but not at the moment.

How educated must or should Fairtrade farmers be, to enter the program? You guys speak English—does everyone?

• Well-enough educated to grow their coffee well. They don't speak English, we speak to our farmers in Tok Pidgin—“which is broken English.”