Stories from Gumutindo

LWR Fair Trade Coordinator Kattie Somerfeld recently traveled to Uganda to visit the farmers of the Gumutindo Coffee Growers’ Federation and learn about how LWR works to help farmers improve crops and increase income. Thanks, Kattie for sharing your thoughts with us!

I visited Uganda to see the work LWR does with the farmers of the Gumutindo coffee growers’ federation, a collective of coffee farmers who grow the coffee used in the Organic Fellowship blend, one of the many offerings of the LWR Coffee Project.

It’s one thing to know intellectually how Fair Trade benefits farmers and their communities. Farmers receive a guaranteed minimum price for their crops. Their cooperatives receive social premiums—additional money to invest in the community often used to build schools and medical clinics, and provide clean water.

It’s another thing to feel it. Visiting their farms, seeing their crops, and hearing them describe the changes in their lives… it touches something deep in your heart and connects you directly to these people whose lives are being changed.

Let me share just two examples of incredibly strong women who have greatly benefitted form Fair Trade and LWR.

The first is Bira Nagwere. Bira has a beautiful farm, growing coffee as her main cash crop and supplementing her diet and income with chickens, cows, fruit and other crops. She manages the entire farm herself, putting in long hours to tend her plants, feed her animals, and take care of her children and grandchildren.

The second is Justine Watalunga (pictured). Justine also sells coffee as her main crop and supplements it with bananas, beans, maize, cocoa yams, sweet potatoes and cassava. She also raises cows and goats for milk and meat, and chickens for eggs and meat. Between taking care of her 6 children and tending to her farm, she also volunteers at a school for children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

Both women struggled to grow coffee before working with LWR and partners. Their trees did not yield much and the quality of the beans did not draw a high price. Both wanted to send their children to school to get an education.

LWR and partners are working with farmers in the area to learn to better care for their coffee trees—to plant and prune them properly, to use manure for fertilizer, and to process their coffee to maximize quality and get a better price.

Both women report that their hard work is paying off—since they began working with the LWR project two years ago, their yields have about quadrupled and their higher quality beans sell for twice the price.

But you get a sense of the real impact when they speak about their children—about how ALL of their children (and all of Bira’s grandchildren) are going to school. Justine is able to send all six of her children to school, which is no easy feat. School fees for her family are about $1,250 a year. Now, with the income she earns, she is able to not only send her children to school, she can also save money to use in case of emergencies

I asked every farmer I spoke with what they would like to tell Lutherans in the U.S. who drink their coffee. Each person expressed profound gratitude and asked Lutherans to continue buying their coffee—but not simply because it benefits their lives and communities. The farmers of Gumutindo take great pride in the work they do, the coffee they produce. One farmer summed it up well by saying, “we work hard to produce the best coffee possible. That is why you should drink our coffee.”