Java Justice: Church Aid Groups Working Together For Nicaragua's Coffee Farmers

Baltimore, October 17, 2003 — Three Baltimore-based international relief and development organizations including Lutheran World Relief are banding together to make sure your next cup of coffee really will be good to the last drop.

LWR, Catholic Relief Services and World Relief today signed a pact with the U.S. Agency for International Development to work together to ease the poverty faced by thousands of small coffee farmers in Nicaragua. Their method will be two-fold: offering U.S. Catholics, Lutherans and Evangelicals coffee purchased at prices that allow farmers to earn a living wage; and helping the farmers in Nicaragua diversify their crops and meet quality standards for coffee.

The program will be underwritten by an expected $1 million-plus grant from USAID. The project reflects Bush Administration efforts to provide more funding to U.S. faith-based organizations that work in innovative and effective ways to meet the needs of the poor and marginalized.

A major goal is to increase U.S. demand for fair trade coffee — the kind already used by some 3,000 Lutheran parishes in the LWR Coffee Project. Concurrent with the Nicaragua program, LWR is inviting parishes to join a "90 Ton Challenge" that would double their purchases of fairly traded coffee this year from last year.

Together the three church aid organizations have the potential to increase fair-trade coffee sales among the 110 million Catholics, Lutherans and Evangelicals in the U.S.

As part of the new USAID-supported program, LWR's fair trade partner in the U.S., Equal Exchange, will buy Nicaraguan coffee on fair trade terms and assist Nicaraguan farmers to improve their production. Equal Exchange and Catholic Relief Services are also launching a coffee project for Catholic parishes this fall, based in part on the success of the LWR project.

In Nicaragua and other coffee producing countries, coffee farmers face the worst crisis in 30 years due to sustained, record-low prices on the conventional coffee market. Fair trade coffee, however, an alternative business model that puts the farmer first, is helping to keep thousands of small growers in business.