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.
“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
After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands
“After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands” has won the Biodiversity Award at Festival delle Terre, a film festival sponsored by the Italian non-profit, Crocevia. The judges gave the award “for the sustainable solutions proposed by the film, which enhance the diversification of cultures…”
“After the Harvest” focuses on the three to eight months of the year when small-scale coffee farmers in Mexico and Nicaragua are unable to maintain their normal diet. These are “los meses flacos,” or the thin months, when families make ends meet by eating less, eating less expensive foods, or borrowing against their future earnings from coffee. The film explores creative solutions to seasonal hunger such as crop diversification, grain storage, and family gardens.
Narrated by actress Susan Sarandon, the film was funded with a grant from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.