Consultancy service for organic coffee small-farmer cooperatives in Guatemala

Van Hall Larenstein is providing training and consultancy services to Manos Campesinas, a medium-sized international fair trade organisation for organic coffee, formed by seven small coffee grower co-operatives with some 350 members in Guatemala. During twice yearly missions, training is provided to improve the communication skills of the technical staff of Manos Campesinas and to help staff and farmers apply tools for production system analysis. By improving the farmers' and technical staff understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the coffee growing business, both will be able to develop better solutions for their problems.

The main problems encountered were the understanding of and communication about supposed non-logical farmer behaviour and the complex and ever-changing rules and regulations of the international fair-trade in organic coffee.

So far a partly visual analysis method has been developed to stimulate the self-analysis of farming systems by (semi-literate) farmers.

In a participatory process improvements have been developed to come up with understandable and applicable procedures and instruments for the process of fair-trade organic certification control.

The project started in 2003 and so far 5 missions have been carried out, financed by CMC with PSO funding. This program of consultancy activities was severely interrupted by the heavy losses caused by the disastrous storm Stan, losses not just in human lives but also in living conditions, productive fields and capacity of the members of the co-operative involved.

For more information, please contact our office at 0031 26 3695640, email: