Worldwide, one in six people experience hunger and poverty. This is especially true in rural areas in developing countries where coffee is grown, and is a hardship faced by millions of coffee farmers and their families.
Emilia
Most coffee farmers depend almost exclusively on income from their coffee harvest. This dependency on one crop has created a crisis. Farmers are extremely vulnerable to coffee price fluctuations, and have nothing to fall back on if prices drop, or crops fail. As a result, millions of coffee farmers and their families cannot put enough food on the table for months at a time – year after year.
Food 4 Farmers works with coffee communities in Latin America to address the problem of chronic seasonal hunger in coffee-growing communities. Because much of the coffee we consume in the U.S. and Canada is produced in Latin America, it makes sense that our work begins there.
“Even producers who receive fair trade premiums suffer a period of food insecurity ranging from one to seven months of the year – every year.”CIAT, on behalf of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters