Dean’s Beans, a Massachusettes-based organic coffee company, has partnered with non-profit, indigenous rights organization, Cultural Survival, to present a weekly radio program for Guatemalan coffee farmers.

"Coffee Talk" will include information on global market prices, growing and processing techniques, and the benefits of organic crop certification. Dean’s Beans founder, Dean Cycon, wanted to reach out to rural, farming co-operatives with limited access to television, print media and internet and give them information and tools they can use to improve their livelihoods through knowledge of the international coffee market.

The program is in association with Cultural Survival’s newly launched the Guatemala Radio Project as part of their efforts to protect Maya peoples access to media. Cultural Survival is working with seven Guatemalan based organizations and 150 community radio stations to improve quality and effectiveness of the programming, to upgrade broadcasting equipment, and to help make these stations financially viable.

Helping farmers understand the fairtrade process (and their rights within that process) is important, but the information isn’t always readily available or disseminated, even by fair trade organizations like the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO), TransFair, and Fair Trade Federation (FTF). According to a Cultural Survival publication:

To many small growers, however, “fair trade” means nothing more than that they receive a “fair price”—or more than the price they would get from the coyotes who buy the ceresa (the unprocessed fruit that contains the coffee beans) from them on the street. Many growers do not recognize the term “fair trade” or understand how the system works. Even farmers who belong to a cooperative sometimes don’t fully understand the system—something that hits home when the world market price for coffee rises above the fair trade price, and growers’ coops struggle to deliver the quantities they have promised to their buyers.

To succeed in fair trade, coffee farmers need to know as much about the production and supply chain as the brokers, roasters, and labeling organizations. TransFair and FLO are heading in this direction. These organizations held workshops this year in Guatemala to help cooperative members better understand contracts, market fluctuation, and internal marketing so managers can better communicate with farmers. This education is essential to the success of the system; without it, the educational and resource disparities that marginalize indigenous peoples and small coffee farmers will be reinforced by fair trade.

"Coffee Talk" is another avenue of getting this information to farmers.

Via CSRwire.com; Dean’s Beans; Cultural Survival