Alyans Peyizan Kafé D'Ayiti: A Copowerment Model for the Producers and Consumers of Coffee in Haiti

The thesis draws on a literature review and on interviews and focus groups in southeast Haiti in August 2020 with coffee growers and vendors in and around Thiotte, a Rebo Café representative, a retired agronomist, and the National Director for Coffee at INCAH. It reviews the history of coffee from 1734, the independence debt, deforestation, and structural adjustment, and cites Timothy Schwartz's research that local markets pay 2.5 to 5 times the export market in the value chains he studied, including coffee. It reports that the number of coffee exporters fell from 18 in 1998 to no more than four, and that a Rebo Café representative said the company has not exported coffee since at least 2017 because domestic demand exceeds supply.

The proposal is an Alliance of peasant coffee farmers with three functions: encourage domestic sectors, including NGOs and businesses, to buy Haitian coffee; supply fertilizer and coffee saplings with no export condition attached, using Integrated Soil Fertility Management, which mixes a little industrial fertilizer with local organic matter, in place of imported synthetic fertilizer; and support reforestation through shade-grown coffee. Local leaders would be identified with the NOLKINS survey method and the Alliance would follow a Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. The author names the Alliance Alyans to distinguish it from existing associations and cooperatives.

The COOPCAB case study describes a secondary-level cooperative founded in 1999 that markets coffee from nine primary cooperatives around Thiotte. Farmers interviewed said they do not know the export price or when they will receive the ristoun (fair-trade premium), and the INCAH director said the situation results from bad management. The author lists limits: the author is an outsider, farmers did not agree on how best to raise income, and some may favor export projects for the funding they bring.