Tree replanting project: Nicaragua

Cinco de Junio

New coffee seedlings take about 3 years to start producing coffee cherries

2012-2013 Harvest season

2012-2013 Harvest season 

Cinco de Junio is a small cooperative of 146 members in a sleepy hamlet of Las Sabanas in the department of Madriz, Nicaragua. These farmers have worked hard for years to make their coffee into a  high quality, Fair Trade Organic bean. 

However, with 80% of their coffee trees approaching 20 years of age (15 is the average lifespan for high volume production) - the members are watching annual incomes decrease as the volume of production decreases. 

From the Ground Up is partnering with Fabretto Foundation to replenish 4,000 coffee trees and revitalize the land. Since education and empowerment are the keys to sustainability, we will be distributing micro-loans to individual farmers which will be designated for tree-replanting and then repaid to the Cinco de Junio community fund. 

To support this cause, all you need to do is purchase and enjoy the coffee straight from the farmers... 100% of the profits from Cinco de Junio coffee go to the tree replanting project! 

BUY COFFEE HERE.

Four African Women Who are Changing the Face of Coffee

Photo by Karen Castillo Farfan/NPR

If you're a coffee drinker, chances are the cup of java you drank this morning was made from beans that were produced or harvested by women. Women's handprints can be found at every point in coffee production.

In fact, on family-owned coffee farms in Africa, about 70 percent of maintenance and harvesting work is done by women, according to an analysis by the International Trade Centre, but only rarely do women own the land or have financial control.

The International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA) is trying to change that by giving them access to training and networking, and the opportunity to develop new trade relationships.

We sat down recently with four African women on the cusp of change who were on a trip to Washington, D.C., sponsored jointly by the IWCA and the International Trade Centre's Women in Coffee Project. Here are their stories, in brief.

Angele Ciza of Burundi is ahead of her time; she owns the land she farms on. Her 10-hectare (24.7 acre) coffee plantation in the northern part of the country has some 26,000 trees producing Arabica coffee, and she's also purchased seven washing stations (part of the coffee processing procedure). She's employing about 100 women, and she also helps pay school fees for the children of her employees.

"We work very, very hard," says Ciza. Her vision for lifting more people out of poverty in her region is clear. "If you want to develop Burundi, you develop the women," she says.

Read the rest of this article on NPR