by Morgan Jarema | The Grand Rapids Press Saturday February 14, 2009
Mattie Kropf stands in front of a display of fair trade goods from Mexico, where she went on a trip to meet and learn from coffee farmers in Mexico.LOWELL -- Mattie Kropf wants people to understand what they don't know can hurt others, even when it comes to a cup of coffee.
The Lowell High School junior recently returned from Chiapas, Mexico, where she stayed with families whose livelihoods depend upon the coffee they farm and process. She joined 18 others from congregations across the United States in a delegation that visited small-scale coffee farmers in the country's southern-most state.
The delegation -- sponsored by the United Church of Christ's Jubilee Justice Task Force and U.S. fair-trade food company Equal Exchange -- explored the impact of free-trade policies and U.S. economic policies on Mexican people.
"I can't have seen the stuff I've seen and not do anything," Kropf, 17, said. "As a Christian, you're called to care about everyone. You can't just ignore people just because they're at the bottom of the heirarchy."
Kropf, a member of Lowell's First Congregational United Church of Christ, made the trip with Shannon Hanley, the church's director of Christian education.
Delegates also met with organizations involved with human rights, grass-roots education and economic development, focusing on the struggles of small farmers for land, fair prices for their crops and the rights and support they need to develop their communities.
"We learned that a family that picks and processes coffee earns something like $60 a year," Kropf said. "To buy a 1-pound chicken to feed that family takes about seven hours' worth of wages."
The group also visited farming cooperatives and helped pick and process coffee.
Coffee is picked by hand from trees, many of which grow along steep mountainsides, Kropf said. Once it is picked, the "cherry" coating is removed and the beans are separated, peeled and dried.
"There's an art to it," she said. "You have to be very careful when you're picking because, if you get the stem, it will never grow back."
It was Hanley who pitched to the church's youth group the idea to use fair-trade coffee and sell it and other products at its year-round Global Bazaar store.
Kropf and Hanley are preparing a presentation for their church based on what they learned.
"We want people to think about the great deal they got on that cheap-o product they just bought: There's a real person who made it," Hanley said.
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