Ian Visits Fairtrade-certified Producers in Ecuador, July 2009
We have been buying Fairtrade coffee from both Ecuador and Peru for many years and I arranged a visit to see for myself the improvements being made by the Fairtrade system. My specific objectives were to see some Rainforest Alliance certified coffee farms and to understand how the Smithsonian Institute Bird Friendly certification works in practice.
The first 2 days of our South American trip were spent in Southern Ecuador. The Loja region is a contrasting area of lowland plains rising to the high mountainous region of the northern Andes.
Our host in Ecuador was Roberto Jimenez, Managing Director of Fapecafes – the central cooperative that controls and processes the coffee supplied by 6 cooperatives spread around Southern Ecuador. He very kindly spent many hours showing us some of the 1600 farms that feed into the cooperative.
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