Farmers outside of Cobán, Guatemala hold a basket of freshly-harvested cardamom pods.
Frontier Co-op CEO Tony Bedard, and VP of Marketing Laura Kuykendall celebrate our recent projects with long-time sourcing partner, FEDECOVERA.
FEDECOVERA farmer waters his seedlings.
COOPERATION AMONG CO-OPS: FEDECOVERA
A Long-Term Partnership FEDECOVERA has been a Frontier Co-op supplier since 2007. As an established “second level” cooperative, FEDECOVERA aggregates organic cardamom, allspice, and turmeric, among other crops, from its 42 “first level” member cooperatives in the surrounding communities. These smaller co-ops are made up of 120 organized small-scale growers’ groups representing nearly 100,000 indigenous Mayans from the Q’eqchi’ and Poqomchi ethnicities. The support services FEDECOVERA provides to their cooperative members are free of charge, utilizing the co-op’s profits, and include health, education, financial, legal, agricultural, and other social and technical services. Over our 15-year partnership, Frontier Co-op has contributed more than $376,000 to business-building and community-building projects with FEDECOVERA, including the introduction of organic turmeric to their farmers as an additional high-demand premium crop, investing in infrastructure and process improvements, and helping address community needs including a lack of dental and general medicine resources in their rural farming villages.
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