Our club took a mini road-trip to Burlington,VT to visit the Ben & Jerry's Factory. We had a tour of the factory and learned about all the Fair Trade love that both the company and our club share. Following the tour we traveled to the city of Burlington and had the amazing opportunity to listen to Vandana Shiva speak about Vermont becoming the first state to make it mandatory to label GMO's on all products!
Just around Halloween our club was fortunate enough to table at two events. It was Food Day on October 24th so we participated in the Monadnock Food Co-op's celebration! Later in the weekend we tabled at the Ecology Club's annual Harvest Festival.
Last weekend, 9 members from the Fair Trade Club attended the Northeast Regional Gathering hosted by Fair Trade USA Campaigns with students, organizers, professionals and professors from all over New England. At the next following meeting, students talked about their favorite parts about the day:
The effects of climate change on the globe are reaching subjects far and wide. Unfortunately for the world of coffee, farmers are being impacted most. Roya, otherwise known as "Coffee Rust" is caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix. Ideal conditions for the spread of Roya are cooler temperatures, rain and wind. It is spread from the leaves of one plant to the next. Once the leaf of the plant is infected, lesions infest the leaves and kill the entire plant. The shift of seasons have become more and more confusing over the last decade which has created conditions which make the spread of Roya easier (unusually longer wet and windy seasons). In my experience traveling through Nicaragua this Spring 2013, I saw the effects first-hand. I noticed the copper tone on every single coffee plant I came in contact with. In one community in the northern region outside of Matagalpa, I spoke to a farmer who's community relies on their farm as a source of income. He lost 30% of his crop in just one year to the fungus. That was a very common story to many that I spoke to. I also spoke to the owner (also happened to be a Keene "Stater" and exbrattloboro native) of the coffee shop, Gato Negro located in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua who noticed Roya within his farm in the region of Esteli in Northern Nicaragua. He made sure to purchase enough coffee bean this year to carry on his business in case of a shortage next year. Removing Roya from a farm is financially impossible for small scale family or community farms. Options are either harmful expensive chemicals, isolation or removal. Once Roya has infected one plant, the probability of infecting all of the others is very high. In order to replant, farmers have to purchase seeds or pregrown plants. It takes three years for maturity to grow a proper coffee bean- three year investment into a plant that might develop roya before it matures. Farmers in Central America and around the world are in a giant crisis and not receiving enough attention for something that will probably only grow into a larger problem. South American countries have made some effort in turning the issue around but for smaller, less economically developed countries like Nicaragua and Honduras, they are only at the beginning. (I will be presenting more on this issue at the COPLAC NE Regional Undergraduate Research Conference this Fall!) Paz y amor, Kelsey Bumsted http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/intropp/lessons/fungi/Basidiomycetes/Pages/CoffeeRust.aspx |
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November 2014
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