A matter of willingness

Living conditions for many coffee growers in Nicaragua are pretty bad.
They keep growing the coffee because “that is always what we have done”, but the financial result is meager. Prices have gone up quite a lot since the crisis years 2001-2003, but coffee still isn’t very good business for many growers. Paradoxically, coffee is at the same time the world’s second largest commodity, only surpassed by oil.
When visiting a Nicaraguan coffee farm, one can only wonder where all the money generated by coffee has gone. It is most certainly not to be found on the farms.
Together with a colleague, I visited a small-scale, organic farmer in the Northern part of Nicaragua, a couple of weeks ago. Maura Jarquín is her name, and even though we were far away from so-called civilization and way up in the mountains, her analysis was sharp and to the point: “In the end, the consumers in rich countries decide the prices of the coffee.”
She has a point, you know? It is in fact the consumer who decides whether he or she wishes to pay a dollar or two extra for the coffee. Fair trade, it is called, and even though we are experiencing a boom in fair trade commodities in for instance Denmark these years, we still have a long way to go.
I know, I know… the different dealers, buyers and roasters also have to take their part of the responsibility, but I just wish we could move on a bit and stop blaming everybody else except ourselves. We have to power to do the right thing, so quit fiddling around and do the right thing when shopping, ok?
What to see for yourself what I am talking about? Check out this small sound & slideshow at youtube, presenting Maura Jarquín’s point of view. Clic for Spanish or Danish version.

Posted by Christian Korsgaard

Quality junk

Junk is a hot issue these days in Nicaragua.
Not because there is junk at home, in the streets, and on empty lots. That’s nothing new. Nicaraguans have acquired the extremely bad habit of dumping junk wherever they consider it convenient. It is not yet a dirty country… but we are getting there bit by bit. Wonder what a bit of environmental education could do?
Anyway, the junk on the streets is not the issue at debate these days. We’ve sort of gotten used to that. The issue at debate is the blockade of the local junkyard, carried out by some thousand persons literally living on – and living off – the leftovers from the richer parts of Managua. For some weeks, the churequeros have been blocking the garbage trucks’ access to the junkyard, because they are dissatisfied with the quality of the junk dumped at the site. They want quality junk…
So junk is piling up all over Managua, and with an average daytime temperature of some 35 degrees Celsius, you may imagine the consequences. The mayor has found a temporary solution, sending truckloads of junk to nearby junkyards in surrounding suburbs, but everybody agrees that it is an unsustainable situation.
So what to do? The churequeros want recyclable junk like metal, plastic, and paper, but they claim that the city council employees working on the garbage trucks separate the garbage when they collect it, thus impeding that the ‘good’ junk reaches the junkyard. The city council employees maintain silence, their pay is so lousy that they too feel the need to take a peek into the collected junk and grab the best pieces.
So now the wise heads in the city council have come up with a solution. They want to raise the city council employees’ salary, so that they supposedly won’t classify the junk en route and thus assure the churequeros their share of the quality junk. The mayor believes it is a junky solution. First of all, he doesn’t have the money; secondly, everybody knows it won’t happen.
And as we are in Nicaragua, the land of eternal repairs and ad hoc solutions, nobody has asked the reasonable question whether we shouldn’t rather do something to improve the lives of the thousand families living at the junkyard. Get them out of the deplorable situation they are living in, and offer them real, paid jobs. Maybe they could even classify the junk under more humane conditions, paid by the municipality, who knows?
For many reasons I am happy not to be the mayor of Managua these days. The whole case stinks...

Posted by Christian Korsgaard (photo by Erika Brenner)