Archives: Cooperatives

Founded in 2004, CAC Ubiriki is a Peruvian cooperative of small coffee-growing families, located in the Junín region, in the central rainforest area of the country. The cooperative has Fair Trade and organic certification for its coffee. It was born out of a pilot project called "Proyecto Café Sostenible" (Sustainable Coffee Project), implementing a modern methodology of adult education in three Agricultural Field Schools called ECAs. From the trust generated among the farmers participating in the ECAs, it was decided to form this cooperative.

Junín is a region with many coffee plantations and a climate conducive to high quality beans. In general, the local population is poorly educated, the region's infrastructure is precarious and there are high levels of malnutrition, so many people have left the region in search of economic opportunities in the city. The cooperative is working to reverse this trend by improving the production and marketing of quality and sustainable coffee, negotiating favourable conditions and improving the income of its members and associates.

Its aim is to work in a united and organised way to produce environmentally responsible speciality coffees and to access the international market to improve the standard of living of its members and the community.

The Federación Comercializadora de Café Especial de Guatemala (FECCEG) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2006, with the purpose of supporting coffee producers to overcome two major challenges: price fluctuations and the risks of the international coffee market. Today, as a federation, it brings together 15 producers' organisations, associations and cooperatives, which include 1150 men and 350 women, all of them small-scale farmers, engaged in the organic production of speciality coffees, honey, panela and cocoa. The members are distributed in the Altiplano of Guatemala, in the departments of Chimaltenango, Huehuetenango, Quiché, Sololá, San Marcos and Quetzaltenango. This is a land known for its majestic mountains, dotted with volcanoes, and a diversity of microclimates that imprint unique characteristics on high quality coffees.

FECCEG Civil Society works in cooperation with other organisations to create capacity building synergies in the communities where the farmers associated with each FECCEG organisation live and work.

Fair Gift is a Fair Trade organisation that was founded in 2013 in Chennai, capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Fair Gift collaborates with 15 different groups of local producer families to which more than 700 craftsmen and craftswomen belong.

Each producer group offers work opportunities to artisans in rural villages and guarantees them paid holidays, accident insurance, medical care and, in some cases, zero-rate micro-credits for domestic needs. In this way, their lives and those of their families are stabilised, with a positive effect on the whole community to which they belong, in economic, health and educational terms.

Fair Gift products are manufactured according to all Fair Trade standards, but also preserving traditions and culture in local production.

Organisation of cocoa producers of special qualities, located in the Central Huallaga Valley, San Martín region, Peru. Distributed in 4 provinces: Mariscal Cáceres, Huallaga, Bellavista and Picota, with more than 2,000 members, whose main activity is the promotion of cocoa cultivation: planting, maintenance, harvesting and export of organic cocoa beans.

The new teas come from a region of India called Kerala. It is a cooperative that brings together more than 200 families who take care of everything from picking the tea to packing it.
The Small Farmer Tea Project is the first cooperative that, in addition to being Fairtrade and organic, works only with small family farmers, rather than using pesticides and genetically modified organisms on large tracts of land.

This cooperative was founded in 2009 and consists of about 100 people, who have been working in rooibos production since 1998. A turning point for the cooperative came when it achieved Fairtrade certification at the beginning of 2010. The members work as a team and support each other in the development of the cooperative, their skills and improvements in production.

Fairtrade guarantees a minimum price for the purchase of rooibos, which is much higher than the conventional market price. This means a drastic improvement in the incomes of small farmers, and represents a great opportunity for producer organisations to benefit from their work and to invest in their own development. After the hard struggle to break free from the colonialist plantation model, from apartheid and to end the structured racism, inequality and exploitation of farmers, being able to benefit from their work has been a big change for them.

Banyankole Kweterana Co-operative UnionBKCU was founded by 350 coffee cooperatives. Banyankole Kweterana means "The people of the Ankole region working together".

Its base is the women coffee producers of the cooperatives in the 10 districts of the Ankole region of Uganda. Currently, BKCU's operational activities are local sales and export of Robusta and Arabica coffee, especially for Fairtrade markets.

They work with the objective of increasing coffee purchases and exports within Fair Trade channels, with the aim of improving the living conditions of grassroots cooperatives. They provide the necessary infrastructure for the reactivation of the cooperatives, propose training to improve their capacities and the environmental and social awareness of farmers, primary societies, the Union Administration and the Board of Directors.

The Uganda Coffee Producers' Cooperative Union ACPCU brings together more than 17 coffee cooperatives, with more than 6,000 multi-ethnic people from different communities, spread across the mountains of south-western Uganda, from the fertile Bushenyi slopes to the heights of Bunyaruguru. Although they speak different languages, they share a common voice: to work together with vision in the coffee trade and to improve their livelihoods.

ACPCU LTD is directly involved in improving the quality of life of its members, who are the producers. Through the Fairtrade Premium fund they have been able to build ponds and bridges and create schools for students in Nyakahita and Katenga in the Mitooma district.

ACPCU LTD offers its members technical training in coffee production and marketing, timely supervision (according to members' needs), training of farmers in best agricultural practices and record keeping.

In Tanzania, coffee production, processing and marketing is managed by a system of "Primary Societies" (or Village Cooperatives), which are joined by small producers who, in turn, are associated in (regional) Cooperative Unions, present in each of the 5 coffee-producing regions.

Two of these regional cooperatives, KCU and KNCU, market more than half of all coffee in the country. KCU has 96 primary societies with some 60,000 members. The management of KCU is in the hands of a 12-person board of directors, and the different areas of work are covered by 400 employees.

KCU was born in 1950 with 48 primary (village-based) societies. In 1976 it was dissolved by the government (along with other cooperatives) and replaced by a state agency that took over its sale and transformation. The cooperative unions were re-established in 1984, but their assets were never returned, leaving them in a state of extreme poverty. In 1991 the government gave full autonomy to the cooperatives, as well as freedom of association. KCU made its first Fair Trade export soon after, while Alternativa3 made its first import into our country in 1999.

KCU is a second-tier or secondary cooperative. Its main activity is the marketing of coffee and other agricultural products from 178 primary or grassroots cooperatives. They are located in villages in the Kagera region, specifically in the Bukoba and Muleba districts, representing about 100,000 women workers who, together with their families, account for about 300,000 people. KCU also provides training and technical and financial support to women farmers. They become members of the grassroots cooperatives by acquiring 5 shares in the societies for about 1500 Tanzanian shillings.

Coopvama, a cooperative in the Marañón Valley, is a competitive organisation in the organic and speciality coffee market. Its strength is based on constant improvement, based on the training of its members (with the aim of satisfying the requests and demands of its clientele), contributing to the human development of coffee-growing families with economic, social and environmental responsibility, with the following principles: gender equality, continuous improvement and diversification of business lines.

COOPVAMA's raison d'être is to provide services in technical assistance, collection and export, promoting productivity, competitiveness and self-employment. They also promote a culture of peace and harmony with the environment. All this contributes to human development in an equitable way and to the continuous improvement of the quality of life of the members and, therefore, the satisfaction of the clientele, also taking advantage of the opportunities of the environment in the generation of new businesses.