(HOST) Recently, commentator Bill Mares went to Nicaragua to attend a conference concerned with finding solutions to problems of food security – a new euphemism for the painful zone between feast and famine.
(MARES) Far from Vermont’s green hills – far from Copenhagen’s failed agreements and Congress’s stalled energy policy – I recently got a glimpse of how climate change is affecting people who already have very few resources.
In particular, this situation afflicts millions of coffee farmers and their families during the so-called Mesos Flacos, or thin months, when their one-time annual payment for coffee runs out. The conference was sponsored by two coffee companies, one of them Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. The goal was to "train trainers" to go back to their communities and teach several means to supplement their coffee income. The four options were: family gardens, organic composting, growing edible mushrooms, and bee-keeping – my specialty.
Looming over all of our work was a fear about the warming of the planet.
Anecdotal evidence was profuse. Farmers and extension agents pointed out the pests that are moving up in altitude where the better coffee is grown. They described changes in bean and corn cycles and the earlier flowering of coffee plants.
The Center for Sustainable Agriculture showed stark computer models and aerial maps that marked the temperature rising across Nicaragua, the second poorest country in Latin America. Coffee is Nicaragua’s chief crop and foreign exchange earner. The models showed that in the next forty years the areas available to grow coffee will shrink by 80%.
A political activist from Colombia excoriated the industrial powers, especially the United States and China, for their selfish, reckless refusal to limit carbon emissions.
Santiago Dolmus is the technical director for a coffee cooperative with 2700 farmer-family members. In a low but insistent voice, he urged the audience to "…take hold of your fears; don’t be paralyzed. There is a lot to do. Don’t extend coffee into protected forested lands," he said. "Diversify into other crops – like honey, cocoa, small livestock. Develop more local foods."
He urged the farmers to reduce their slash-and-burn tactics, to conserve water. He called for a change in banking practices: alternative credit for alternative products.
Finally, he urged a change in social attitudes. "We’ve got to get more men involved in these programs. The women already get it!"
Rick Peyser of Green Mountain Coffee was pleased with the results. At the end of the four days, a number of farmers gave him strong unsolicited testimonials about the power and value of this "hands-on" training.
For my own part, I wished they could have at least acknowledged the 900-pound gorilla of population pressure sitting in the room. But that was not to be. When I raised the question over dinner, the reactions ranged from hostility to indifference. I suppose that’s a topic for another conference and another commentary.