Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491365
36 STiR tea & coffee industry international iguel Zamora visited cooperatives in Indonesia six months after STiR Tea & Coffee covered Fair Trade USA's at- tempts to conduct a pilot project there. These "coffee innovation programs" began shortly after Fair Trade USA separated from Fairtrade Interna- tional and aimed to include millions more in the fair trade certification system. Specifically, and at the time controversially, Fair Trade USA aimed to adapt the system to include farm workers and independent small holders in addition to farmers organized under cooperative systems as had been traditionally the case. Two years later, the final report on that effort is nearly complete. Of the 15 pilot projects, includ- ing Indonesia, 12 made it all the way through the process to become certified and therefore able to sell fair trade certified coffee in Fair Trade USA Ever Elusive Economic Stability Smallholders Say No to Fair Trade Certification Zamora with smallholders in Mariah Dolok, Simalungun, North Sumatra M Mariah Dolok, Simalungun, North Sumatra markets. STiR caught up with Zamora at the Spe- cialty Coffee Association of America convention in Seattle to find out more about his experience working with smallholders in Indonesia and else- where. Post-colonial coffee complexity In STiR's May-June issue, Frank Miller reported on the history of how smallholdings proliferated when colonization ended in Indonesia in 1945. The "transmigration" of that period relocated millions of poor families to areas where their de- scendants still work plots of five hectares or less. Unscrupulous "tookays" (lizards) are one ob- stacle that has thwarted stability of fair trade certi- fication efforts in this island nation. Miller reported that some large coffee cooper- atives in Aceh, the northernmost coffee-growing region on Sumatra, are having some success elimi- nating these middlemen agents. Zamora's experi- ence with farmer groups in a region a bit further south on that same island suggests that the smaller farmer groups which operate there still rely on the advice of such go-betweens. Zamora was part of a contingent that visited farmers in Dolok and Seribudolok in Simalungun, North Sumatra. Farmer groups in these areas are not of the same scale as those in Aceh that Miller made reference to. According to Zamora, "Farm- ers in this region are not organized in cooperatives. Rather, there are very small farmer groups (10-20 farmers) who are organized to work with the gov- ernment on different projects. Each farmer group represents a village." By Jenny Neill