Plight of Oaxaca coffee growers leads to 'organic' ministry

IRVINE, CA (ANS) -- In the verdant reaches of southern Mexico's mountainous coffee growing region, indigenous Mixe and Zapotec Indians have grown coffee for over 200 years. Due to low coffee prices worldwide, many are forced to leave their families and endure the arduous trek north to U.S. street corners, seeking work in restaurants, fields and factories of the U.S. economy. But one ministry with a heart of compassion to improve their condition is reversing that trend.

"In a $3 mocha the farmer receives less than five cents," says Dave Day, founder of Growers First, a ministry doing the work of the gospel among small family coffee farmers in Oaxaca through multi-faceted Christian aid projects. "Fifteen months ago coffee reached a 100-year low in price, affecting 25 million small coffee farmers around the world," he says. "They are all in the equatorial belt, mostly unreached people, the poorest of the poor, subsistence farmers."

Day was in the coffee business for over 10 years, buying his coffee through brokers, before he made his first trip to the remote villages in Oaxaca where coffee is cultivated. "I was introduced to these farmers by a missionary," Day says. One of the real "epiphanies" for Day occurred one evening at a dinner prepared for his group by one of the local farmers, who also happened to be a pastor.

"It was sunset and we were sitting around in the candlelight," Day recalls. "Outside the adobe room where we were eating the pastor's wife was cleaning up next to a wood-burning stove," he says. "Next to her was a chicken coop with only three chickens left in it." Day's group, which included seven Americans, had just consumed half their supply of chickens. The pastor turned to Day and asked, "Tell me, what kind of people drink our coffee back home that we pray for?"

Enormous pressure

"I thought to myself, 'Most jump into a $20,000 or $30,000 SUV or sedan. On our way to work we buy a mocha and a bagel and spend as much as these "farmers make all day in the field. We go into an air-conditioned office and have lunch out. Then we come home to houses that are opulent by global standards.' Day glanced at his host's cupboard shelves, mostly empty except for one small sack of sugar, then he replied, 'Many have full cupboards but empty tables. I know your cupboards are empty but your table is full of hospitality.'

"I had no idea how diligently the coffee was prayed over by some of these Christian coffee farmers who were first reached by Wycliffe Bible Translators in the early 1950s and early '60s," Day says. "To see these men leave their villages and their wives of many years was heartbreaking," he says. "These men were farming their father's and grandfather's land."

In the coffee growing region there are more than 40 other villages like the one Day visited spread over 400 square miles, with about 10,000 coffee-growing families descended from indigenous Indians. Due to low coffee prices worldwide, most of these families will make less than $300 for a year's work. This causes enormous pressure on the young men to leave their families and travel north, seeking economic opportunity.

When Day returned home, he and his wife, Dallas, began to dream of a way they could help coffee farmers improve their lives economically and spiritually. "We thought if we could add value to their coffee in the general marketplace, we could keep their families intact, so the men wouldn't have to come up to a street corner in Any Town, USA," he says. "Many leave wives and kids behind. In a lot of cases these kids end up becoming economic orphans."

"The border is full of these economic orphans, and that's an atrocity we need to wake up to," he adds.

Dave and his wife went out on a limb and mortgaged their house so they could buy a one-year supply of coffee at an elevated price from a few of the Oaxaca farmers, while they embarked on an ambitious program to add value to the farmers' coffee crop.

"The solution we created is to work alongside the farmers with a tropical agricultural engineer and an agronimist and we got the farmers organic certification," Day says. "It gave the coffee an added dollar value in the global marketplace that we could pass along to the farmers to give them economic sustainability," he says. Day was able to nearly triple each family's income--to almost $900 per year.

Day and his advisors also started a crop diversification program and a beehive program, which increased crop yields six to eight percent. "We integrated honey into their diets instead of raw sugar," Day says. "We also started a program for the women to hand silk-screen and paint coffee bags to create jobs for those who don't have farms," he says. "We also started a chicken-raising and breeding program for eggs. We buy chickens in bulk and take them up to the mountains."

A hand up

Grower's First would like to expand the program to other areas. "We just added 37 new communities in another part of Oaxaca," Day says. "Our goal is to branch out to three new countries in Africa and Indonesia," he says.

One of Day's favorite coffee farmers is Pastor Asiscio Dominguez, who has planted 23 churches in the area. "His monthly pastor's stipend is the equivalent of $3 per month, so he has to live off coffee farming to sustain his family," Day says. "If he lived in Southern California he would be the pastor of a major church or the CEO of a corporation--he's that gifted an individual.

The mountains are filled with people like that who are not formally educated," Day adds. "There were no full-time pastors because they couldn't afford to be."

To address the need for pastoral training, Day helped to start a Bible scbool at the base of the mountains called Rancho Soledad. "Our first student to graduate was on his way to the U.S. from Honduras to be a day laborer," Day reports. "Our director talked to him and led him to Christ. Now he wants to return and preach the Word of God in his village."

Day also started an annual pastors conference drawing other coffee growing pastors and their families from the mountains and surrounding areas. The conference has doubled in size every year, and this year, 700 camped together on a sprawling cattle ranch. "It's a three-day conference that is nothing but blessing and enriching these pastors," Day says. "We empower them with sound Biblical teaching," he says.

"There is still a need for the Body of Christ to be involved," Day says. "We're looking for churches to adopt each of these villages and to make a commitment to visiting twice a year for long-term ongoing relationship," he says.

Often when teams go down to Oaxaca to visit, they will take medical and other relief supplies. "Because we have a trucking company set up to bring the coffee out, we can use the same network to bring supplies in," Day says. Recently "Free Wheelchair Mission" donated 550 wheelchairs to Growers First for distribution among the mountain villages where Growers First is active.

The wheelchairs were stuck in port due to some bureaucratic red tape, which led Oaxaca Governor Jose Murat to intervene, and led to a personal meeting with Day. There was an opportunity to give the governor a Spanish language copy of "The Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren as well as "The Jesus Film."

"Growers First is about a hand up rather than a handout," Day says. "We try to give them tools to fish rather than handing them a fish," he says. Day likes to recall that Jesus' first miracles were meeting people's basic needs, even when He told His disciples where to cast their nets for a greater catch of fish. "If this was just about subsidies, that's not what God has called me to do. It's about real sustainability."

Day believes many Christian aid projects have been shortsighted in addressing economic sustainability. "Most mission projects are one sided coins," he says. "This coffee is a two-sided coin. It's been a phenomenal opportunity to share the love of Christ."

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