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Jairo Restrepo says he’s 110 years old, he laughs loudly, in fact, he has to calculate it, he’s 58. Recently, a mule fell on top of him. He was loading the mule with sacks of coffee from his farm, when the mule slipped on the steep incline of the mountain and got stuck on top of him with its legs in the air. “It could have killed me, but it gave me a hernia. It’s serious, Ave Maria! the pain is terrible.” He’s waiting for an operation to fix it. With the Fairtrade Premium the Andes Coop now makes regular contributions to the BEPS pension system for him, and additionally, when he sells coffee, the coop makes further contributions of 3% of the sales. “It’s better like this, when I sell the coffee, to make my contribution then, because I can’t make monthly contributions, my income is not monthly, it’s just when I get a harvest”. Aging coffee farmers, until now, have had poor health care, and no pension to look forward to. This is hard on the farmers, hard on their families, and it makes farming unattractive for young farmers. Coop administrators talk in worried terms about problems of 'generational takeover’ as young people abandon farming in large numbers. The BEPS system gives farmers better access to health care, such as hernia operations, and will provide a bi-monthly income to retired farmers. Don Jairo reflects: “man, coffee farming is tough. Sometimes I’m completely skint, sometimes we have long spells when we don’t eat three times a day, we don’t eat properly. Sometimes my clothes are torn, and my clothes stay torn, I can’t even afford a second-hand shirt. And, I tell you, I’ve worked like a bull all my life, I’ve had no Sundays, no bank holidays, no holidays. I have to go up the mountain, every day, that’s what I’ve had to do, that’s what I’ve got to do now, hacking a living out of the mountain. And what have I got now?” he laughs “a hernia!”. “What can I tell you, a pension makes a big difference for us, i

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© Sean Hawkey
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Colombia: Fairtrade coffee
Jairo Restrepo says he’s 110 years old, he laughs loudly, in fact, he has to calculate it, he’s 58. Recently, a mule fell on top of him. He was loading the mule with sacks of coffee from his farm, when the mule slipped on the steep incline of the mountain and got stuck on top of him with its legs in the air. “It could have killed me, but it gave me a hernia. It’s serious, Ave Maria! the pain is terrible.” He’s waiting for an operation to fix it. With the Fairtrade Premium the Andes Coop now makes regular contributions to the BEPS pension system for him, and additionally, when he sells coffee, the coop makes further contributions of 3% of the sales. “It’s better like this, when I sell the coffee, to make my contribution then, because I can’t make monthly contributions, my income is not monthly, it’s just when I get a harvest”. Aging coffee farmers, until now, have had poor health care, and no pension to look forward to. This is hard on the farmers, hard on their families, and it makes farming unattractive for young farmers. Coop administrators talk in worried terms about problems of 'generational takeover’ as young people abandon farming in large numbers. The BEPS system gives farmers better access to health care, such as hernia operations, and will provide a bi-monthly income to retired farmers. Don Jairo reflects: “man, coffee farming is tough. Sometimes I’m completely skint, sometimes we have long spells when we don’t eat three times a day, we don’t eat properly. Sometimes my clothes are torn, and my clothes stay torn, I can’t even afford a second-hand shirt. And, I tell you, I’ve worked like a bull all my life, I’ve had no Sundays, no bank holidays, no holidays. I have to go up the mountain, every day, that’s what I’ve had to do, that’s what I’ve got to do now, hacking a living out of the mountain. And what have I got now?” he laughs “a hernia!”. “What can I tell you, a pension makes a big difference for us, i