Supporting farmers in Mexico

CAFOD-funded Fomento helps coffee farmers like Nacho Hernandez Perez to face the threat of falling prices [Marcella Haddad]

Fomento Cultural y Educativo (Cultural and Educational Promotion) is a Jesuit organisation working with indigenous communities, providing training on human rights, health and agriculture

In the south of the country, it provides training on human rights, health and agriculture, helping farming families improve their standard of living and strengthen their sense of pride in their indigenous identity.

Further north, in some of Mexico’s largest cities, Fomento works with indigenous migrants, providing education on labour rights and helping people to press for improvements in their working conditions.

In recent years Fomento has:

• helped 6,100 farming families legally register 40,000 hectares of land
• trained more than 250 health workers in rural communities without medical attention
• reforested 500 plots of land in 45 villages
• improved corn, bean and coffee farming with organic fertiliser.

Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Hernández Pérez is an indigenous farmer in Chiapas, southern Mexico. Here, it has become much harder for farmers to make a living from the land.

The fall in world coffee prices means coffee farmers like Nacho get less for their crop. Maize farmers are also affected, as they are undercut by maize imported from the US, where farmers receive an average of $20,000 per year in subsidies.

"I think one factor affecting the low price is, of course, the war in Chiapas," says Nacho. "But the real fault lies with the government.

"We have been struggling for our rights and our lives for so many years. Here we as farmers have no subsidies, but the farmers in the USA are helped by their government.

"Coffee is the most important resource we have to bring in money to buy food and clothes and make ends meet. When the harvest comes and the land is a sea of mud, we have to work so hard to bring in the coffee."

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