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Pueblo a Pueblo Blog

Right from Santiago Atitlán to your computer. Your window into our world. Thanks for reading and comments are welcome! ​

Why We Do What We Do: Eight Reasons Beekeeping Works for Coffee Farmers

10/17/2018

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Beekeeping is the cornerstone of our Sustainable Livelihoods program. The honey produced by our partners at Aj Tikonel Kab’ and bottled as Bee Strong Honey sits on the shelves of our office and in shops throughout Santiago Atitlán. We have celebrated the success of beekeeping partners near and far since the project’s inception in 2013.

So why beekeeping? What has made this such a successful “sustainable livelihood” for our beneficiaries, who already spend busy days caring for homes, children, and coffee plants? Let’s talk about reasons beekeeping is a good choice for coffee farmers.

One: Beekeeping is a low time commitment.

Bees are remarkably self-sufficient, so they don’t require daily check-ins or check-ups. Beekeepers can visit hives when their schedules allow and rest assured that in the meantime, their bees will keep themselves occupied collecting pollen and nectar from nearby flowers and participating in the daily hustle and bustle of the colony. The beekeepers-in-training who make up our partner collectives are already busy people; many of them work several jobs just to make ends meet and participate in beekeeping as a way to earn extra income for their families. So it is important that while the beekeepers also work as weavers, tend coffee plants, and do all of the other things they do, their bees will stay happy and healthy between hive visits.

Two: Beekeeping doesn’t require much space.

Bees aren’t too fussy about where they live, so beekeepers can set up hives just about anywhere that’s convenient, including on land already planted with crops like corn, coffee, or avocado. Bees can and will find pollen just about anywhere there are plants, and they come and go without disturbing crops. Beekeepers don’t need to buy large plots of land or take out large loans to get started, making it easier for farmers to start apiaries without significant financial risk.
Picture
An apiary in Huehuetenango, where beekeepers have placed hives among coffee plants
Three: Bees help plants grow—including coffee!

Bees are responsible for pollination, a vital part of the agricultural process that we humans can’t accomplish on our own. Just by collecting the pollen they need to feed themselves, bees keep natural ecosystems healthy and thriving. They have been shown to improve crop yields as well, which means more income for individual farmers. Many coffee-growing families in the Lake Atitlán region also grow a portion of the maize, beans, and squash that they eat on a daily basis (1), so more bee pollination means more crops in the field and more food on the dinner table.

Four: Beekeeping adds another harvest (or two) to a coffee farmer’s year.

The coffee harvest only comes once a year, and most farmers must sell their crops right away, making them vulnerable when negotiating prices with middlemen (2). Because this pattern often results in only one meager income per year, coffee farming families often endure meses flacos, or “thin months” when harvest earnings run out. Beekeeping adds up to two additional harvests to a family’s year, times when families can earn vital extra income to sustain them when earnings from the coffee harvest run out. Bottled honey is also shelf-stable, so once packaged, it can be sold throughout the year whenever families need extra cash.
Picture
Members of Las Diez Rosas, former Pueblo a Pueblo partner collective, with project staff during last year's harvest
Five: Beekeeping is well-suited to teamwork.

Sharing responsibilities among members of a collective helps beekeepers manage their time both during periods of regular hive maintenance and during the more strenuous harvesting-and-bottling season. This style of collaboration can make beekeeping particularly attractive to coffee farmers busy with various other income-generating activities. Beekeeping in a collective setting also facilitates the transfer of knowledge between older and newer members, creating a growing community of beginner beekeepers who will become experts with time.

Six: Beekeeping helps farmers protect themselves against the risks of their trade.

Coffee crops are under constant threat from pests, drought, and disease, and sharp drops in coffee prices can render a hard-earned harvest near worthless. Farmers who keep bees in addition to tending crops, however, are better-positioned to ride out these fluctuations; when coffee prices drop, income from honey sales can lend some stability to otherwise devastating years (3). Coffee farming is also a good complement to other part-time income-generating activities, like beekeeping, because coffee plants can be left to their own devices when prices drop and harvested again when prices recover.

Seven: Beekeeping gets people thinking green.

Beekeepers focus their energies on the well-being of some of nature’s smallest but most vital creatures. This perspective encourages not only beekeepers, but also their communities, to invest in the health of their local ecosystems and speak out about the importance of environmental stewardship to their agricultural way of life. Some beekeepers here in Guatemala consider beekeeping to be an active way to support the preservation of indigenous plants and flowers. Our newest group of beekeepers-in-training have made this part of their stated mission, and their environmental focus is reflected in the name they have chosen for themselves: the Ecological Beekeepers.

​
Eight: Beekeeping can be passed down like an inheritance.

The skills and resources that make a successful beekeeping operation are easily passed among people invested in working together for their mutual benefit. Beekeeping can therefore be passed down through generations of a family; it is a valuable type of wealth in the form of hives, relationships, and knowledge that will be available to a beekeeper's children and grandchildren for many years to come.
Picture
Francisca, a member of the Ecological Beekeepers, holds her granddaughter during a training


1, 2, 3 Fischer and Victor, “High-End Coffee and Smallholding Growers in Guatemala.” Latin American Research Review, 2014.

*This post is loosely based on a list included in the Food and Agriculture Organization’s “Beekeeping and Sustainable Livelihoods” Diversification Booklet (Hilmi, Bradbear, and Mejia 2011).
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A Conversation with Genaro: Coffee, Farming, and Coffee Farming

10/17/2018

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​Genaro Simalaj is Pueblo a Pueblo’s Organic School Gardens and Beekeeping Senior Project Technician. He is also a coffee farmer. In this conversation, Genaro speaks with Pueblo a Pueblo Communications Coordinator Tatiana Dalton about coffee cultivation and the ways it has shaped his community.
Picture
Genaro leads a workshop with one of our beekeeping project's partner groups
How long have you been growing coffee?
Coffee has existed in our region, in the Lake Atitlán basin, for more than 125 years. The majority of the people who live here grow coffee. Personally, I am 43 years old and for me coffee has always been a resource to live off of, something to make a little bit of income from. I have worked in coffee since I was young, since I was ten years old.

Where is the land that you cultivate?
Before, around 60 years ago, the majority of the farmers in my community worked on a large farm as day laborers. It was on that kind of farm that coffee was first introduced into the Lake Atitlán basin. But after some conflict between my parents and some of the other workers and the farm owner, the owner had to distribute a portion of land to each worker. So the majority of people around here are coffee farmers: my grandparents, my godparents, my father, my aunts and uncles were all coffee farmers, and they grew their coffee, as I do, right here in the Lake Atitlán basin, on the south side of the lake in the town of San Lucas Tolimán.

What type of coffee do you grow, and why?
Well, I am a farmer who likes to drink coffee and I have tried all kinds, and the types that I have liked best are bourbon, arabigo, and a smaller variety called pache, for their high quality and their flavor…. They are varieties that produce strictly hard bean coffee—that’s what we call it, but it’s better known as very bitter coffee. Bitter doesn’t mean that it is winey or acidic, but it is bitter. It’s best known as “strictly high grown” coffee, from the Lake Atitlán basin, and it is some of the best coffee there is.

Do you cultivate your land alone? Do you have help?
I work with the help of my family. Now that I have a family of my own, my oldest son goes with me, and my daughters always go out to harvest the coffee, to pick the biggest and healthiest beans—that’s how we get the best coffee.

Does your family carry out the harvest alone?
Before, I got a few people to help me with the harvest. The idea when you harvest coffee is that you have to take advantage of the right moment, so the beans don’t overripen—that’s why it only takes a week. So I had to speed up the process of collecting the beans. Later, though, I committed myself to organic management methods, and because of that I didn’t produce as much, so I didn’t need extra help to harvest the coffee. At the moment, it’s just my family who  help. And we process it ourselves, from the cherry stage to the packaging stage. But we don’t harvest that much, we get about 150 pounds of coffee once it’s all toasted and processed.

So by using organic management methods, you produce less?
It produces less, but it elevates the quality of the coffee.

It produces less, but you can sell it…
For a little more, yes.

How do you sell your coffee?
Well, since it’s not very much, just 150 pounds or about 70 kilograms, it can be sold locally. We sell it in our home, and if we have visitors we’ll give them a little bit, and that way we go through everything we’ve harvested. We give it to neighbors, to visitors who come from other places, and we’ll send some to friends who live in the capital.

Does it make up a significant portion of your family’s income?
Yes, it does, because a lot of people like local products, and sometimes people exchange products for things from the capital. For example, if someone brings backpacks, notebooks, kids’ clothes, we can exchange it for coffee. And sometimes we sell it in exchange for money if people don’t have other things to offer.

What role has coffee leaf rust [a disease that destroys coffee plants by attacking their leaves] or other diseases played in your time as a coffee farmer?
Coffee rust, well, it has come to invade most farmers’ harvests, including small family farms. We’ve had coffee rust since 1997, if I’m not mistaken, from 1997 until now. And because of it, with time, most farmers stopped cultivating the plants that they used to before; they introduced other disease-resistant varieties that are now what most people use. The plants they grew before—those can survive for up to 50 years, but the new varieties only live for 5 or 6 years and then you have to sow them again. [The new varieties] produce a lot, though, because they are grafted, meaning that they are made of the lower portion of one species and the upper portion of another species.

So now, most farmers have adapted to this change, and they are more or less managing the disease, but replacing the plants is an additional cost that some farmers can’t afford. Only the ones who have more money can do it—those who can’t continue on using the same plants that the first coffee farmers used 125 years ago.

There are also some older varieties that resist coffee rust, like bourbon. Bourbon is a plant that resists many diseases because of the texture of its leaves; they’re a little thicker, so diseases like coffee rust can’t penetrate them. But the smaller varieties, like pache? Coffee rust takes them all.

Has coffee rust affected your plants?
Well, it has affected me in terms of the quantity I produce—my yields have decreased. Coffee rust killed off some of the varieties I grow, like the pache and arabigo—those varieties almost can’t be found these days for that reason; because of the delicate texture of their leaves, they are very susceptible to coffee rust. So on my land now I only have bourbon varieties, which are taller and disease-resistant, but unfortunately my harvest has suffered.

Coffee production has been decreasing since the arrival of coffee rust. When it arrived for the first time, it really destroyed all kinds of coffee plants, but now with time it has slowed down some. The bourbon varieties are more resistant, so they still produce a harvest, but the rest don’t produce much any more.
Picture
Genaro visits a Pueblo a Pueblo partner apiary
You are a beekeeper as well as a coffee farmer. Do you consider yourself more one than the other, or both?
The way I live my life, I don’t feel inclined to introduce myself in terms of only one type of work. I like to do a little bit of everything because although agriculture is the work I was born into, I have never been a farmer who grows only one crop—my work is always diversified. I plant milpa [a combination of corn, beans, and squash] and I grow coffee, and I am a beekeeper, and I’ve always been that way.

And I think that today, the most important thing for a farmer is to be diversified. Nowadays most people don’t produce food, they work in offices with paper and ink—few people work to produce food every day. And I think that this has motivated me, because there are always people who need me; if I produce food, I’ll always have a way forward.
​What does coffee mean to people in your community?
Well, when coffee was introduced here it was very valuable to the improvement of the economic situation of farmers in this region, especially right here in the Lake Atitlán basin. And when coffee was introduced, it elevated the quality of life at an economic level, and also in terms of education; lots of people got ahead during that time because coffee really improved the local economy.

But after that period of intense economic development, the farmers of this region started to use synthetic methods—they started to apply chemicals under the soil, subterranean chemicals, and to apply chemicals directly to the leaves of plants in the open air. And this did so much damage to the biodiversity [of the area], to the earth’s diversity of fungi, nematodes, earthworms, and all kinds of insects. The application of chemicals directly to plants in open air created serious problems for pollinator insects. It caused many bees and other insects to emigrate to other places to survive, and so in our region we no longer had good pollination.

As a result, the harvest suffered, and so did the quality of the coffee product in our local economy. Today, I believe that coffee is no longer a product that guarantees farmers’ survival here in the Lake Atitlán basin. I see a lot of people who are planting a lot of land with only coffee, but they operate it as a monoculture, and since people have started to see that coffee is no longer profitable, that it no longer produces much, that they can’t support themselves on coffee—that’s why many farmers, many families in the Lake Atitlán basin are emigrating to other countries. And this is because of the practice of monoculture, because of the use of agrotoxins—these have come to promote emigration. These days, coffee no longer serves to improve the quality of life of Guatemalan families here in the Lake Atitlán basin.

Guatemala has historically seen a lot of internal migrant laborers employed during the coffee harvest—is that still the case?
In 1990 and earlier, in the 80s, in the 70s, many people did, but now that migration doesn’t exist as much. Those who live in the highlands of Quiché and Sololá used to travel to the coast in search of work, to the Bocacosta region, but after that many people started emigrating from the country. Before, the majority of people living in the highlands went to the coast to look for work, but now it is not as many because people these days are always going to Mexico, to the United States, to other countries. They prefer to go away than to look for work locally, to work as day laborers here in Guatemala.

Is there anything I haven’t asked about that you think is important to understanding this situation?
Maybe…to ask what is the best way to survive in this situation—maybe that.

If we don’t analyze things, we can’t improve the situation that we are living today. I could emigrate, but I couldn’t bring my whole family with me. My family could emigrate, but we couldn’t bring our whole community with us.

It’s perhaps better to analyze what we should do and how to introduce new mechanisms, like the work we do here at Pueblo a Pueblo, where we are generating a new system of work that is entrepreneurship. If I am a person who has some money, that shouldn’t stop me from sharing my experiences with others. Sometimes you can’t help someone economically, maybe you can’t give them money, but sometimes that person only needs a little bit of information to pull him or herself up. We have to pass along knowledge, encourage people, so that communities can become entrepreneurial—and if it’s possible to support new small businesses economically, with economic resources or tools, that is wonderful, but if not, there are many ways to support local life. 

Thank you very much for speaking with me. I appreciate your time!
Thank you.
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