Don Carlos was in full stride. ‘We have oranges, limes, lemons, sweet lemons, sour lemons, sweet and sour lemons, mandarins, grapefruit, naranjella, pomelo.’He pointed at the trees shading the coffee bushes. ‘All 60 citrus fruits adapt themselves to grow here. And we’ve got cacao, and twenty five varieties of avocado, all with a unique taste.’Such a wealth of variety is the last thing you expect on a coffee finca. As the sun burnt off the last of the morning mist, we settled down for elevenses ‘ coffee freshly roasted from the farm, sweet bananas, mandarins, limes, avocados, macadamia nuts, churros con queso, little twists of dough with cheese, and pasteles de pollo, chicken filled pastries dusted with sugar. Each time we paused another fruit appeared, picked from the surrounding trees. ‘Try this,’said Don José, owner of the farm. He split open a cocoa pod, revealing thick white beans in a gelatinous liquid. ‘Try it,’he encouraged us, seeing the doubtful look on our faces. The beans were delicious, the jelly sweet, the bean bitter.

Roger José Ampie Quintero is 74, and has lived on the 10 manzana (17 acre) farm nearly all his life. He has owned the farm for over twenty years, slowly developing organic practice. His coffee is grown below the shade of bananas, citrus fruits and a variety of other trees. He walked around his finca with us, explaining his methods.’We want to practice silviculture, growing coffee and trees together. We hope to be able to double our crop using this method.’Don José already gets three coffee harvests a year, but 2004 was not a good one:’We had 800 lbs from each of the manzanas. It was a bad year, but that’s how it is, one year good, one year bad. It’s a natural rhythm.’He pointed enthusiastically at the multitude of leaves sprouting from the coffee bushes. ‘We can see already that the coming year will be exceptional.’The finca practices inter-cropping, wormiculture to produce compost, and a liberal use of nitrogen-fixing plants. Pest control is also organic.’In the 1980s a plague arrived ‘ roya ‘ which stripped the leaves off our coffee plants. On our farm we use nim and papaya for pest control, fermenting it with wood to produce a liquid spray. We also use a lot of mulch to keep down the weeds.’When the coffee leaves the farm the trouble starts. ‘Some of our coffee goes abroad, sold into the open market,’says Don José. ‘Companies just suck up the coffee. They don’t make any provision for quality. The citrus trees give a special flavour to the coffee, but we don’t get any benefit.’But Don José has even more pressing worries than the vagaries of the world coffee market. ‘Our government has dumped this area as a coffee producing region. It has decided it’s only future is industrialisation.’

Next to the finca the tranquility is broken. Heavy machinery is clearing a plot for Valdidos SA, a Taiwanese clothing manufacturer which sells to the US market. There’s an incessant thump, thump in the corner. It signals the borehole which is being sunk for the water for the maquila, one of the dozens of sweatshops which have sprung up in Nicaragua, indeed throughout Central America. Valdidos was given permission for 2 manzanas, and have taken six. The whole area was previously shade grown coffee. But with the coffee crisis, and the market only just recovering from rock bottom prices, the price tag of $10,000 a manzana has tempted local coffee growers to sell.

‘Only months ago this was all coffee,’says Elvira Blass, a Nicaraguan environmentalist. ‘There were dozens of types of trees in the small area ‘ Chilamate, Guanacaste, Mamey, Cedar, Olive, Fruit trees, Madero Negro and Roble.Elvira has been working on environmental issues at a national level for 15 years, both as a campaigner and journalist. The finca and the maquila are both in Dolores, the smallest municipality in Nicaragua, which lies in the centre of what is know as el Trionglo Oro, the Golden Triangle.The triangle forms part of the department of Carazo, south of Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. Unlike most of the country the triangle has a pleasant climate, a plateau 580 m above sea level. ‘Developers see it as an ideal place for urban activities,’said Elvira, ‘and has evolved into a commuting area for Managua and Masaya.’Just down the road is the home of Nicaragua’s ex-President Arnoldo Aléman, languishing under house arrest for stealing up to $100 million, and earning himself a place on Transparency International’s top ten most corrupt politicians.The Golden Triangle is a critical area. Also known as the Sponge, it recharges aquifers and rivers which serve 200,000 people, as well as some of Nicaragua’s richest agricultural land. Last year, with two companies moving in, one Korean, the other Taiwanese, locals are beginning to find their water supply drying up.’The clearing for the maquilas not only affects the large trees and scrub,’says Elvira. ‘They also take off two metres of top soil, which causes the ground to lose its water retention capacity.’

The loss of ground cover also makes the local communities more vulnerable to the effects of the gases from the Masaya volcano. When the companies were given permission by the municipalities to set up in the Triangle, a local Defence Committee was formed. It includes student bodies, NGOs, the Consumers Defence Network and residents from different towns. Elvira got involved, living in the area, and having previously researched the environmental devastation caused by Managua’s maquilas. The Committee has organised sit-ins outside the municipalities, blocked traffic, organised letter writing campaigns and used international networks and the media. In November new politicians were elected, all four local authorities changing to the Sandinistas. The Committee now sees the way forward as impressing on the municipal authorities the agricultural importance of the Triangle.

Elvira wants to see a local law which will halt the invasion of maquilas. ‘In 1998 a national law was passed for maquilas, which exonerated them from taxes, import and export duty, even exonerated them from environmental impact studies,’she said. The next six months will be crucial for their campaign.

Don Carlos offer us another avocado. ‘The indigenous name ‘ agucate ‘ comes from the Nahual word for testicles. It’s a wonderful aphrodisiac!’Whilst not expounding on the delights of avocado, Carlos Mendez Palacios co-ordinates the economic agriculture course in the University of Carazo. A busy man, he also is the Environment Co-ordinator of the Dept of Carazo, and has his own finca, where he lovingly tends his coffee, bananas, citrus fruits and, of course, his avocados. He has just finished a study on the environmental impact of land clearing in the area, and has been working with small producers on a local development plan.’The plan has three main aims,’says Carlos. ‘The recovery of traditional coffee growing; small husbandry; and eco-tourism.’The mix is all around us. The coffee is grown as part of silviculture, agriculture with trees for shade, fruit and firewood. In the yard are chickens, and traditionally goats, sheep and garrobas, a type of iguana, are also raised. The area is also ideal for small scale tourism, one of the few areas in Nicaragua where its pleasant to walk, away from the blistering sun.’What we need is technical development,’says Carlos. ‘Most people have some elements in place already. We are currently working with 120 producers as a pilot.’Carlos, like Don José, also emphasises the taste of the coffee, or ‘sweet’ coffee as he calls it. ‘These softer coffees are of high quality. Part of the problem is the Starbucks of this world have imposed their idea of quality ‘ coffee coming from the highlands, above 1000m. This is an invention, and there is no difference for quality coffees.’

Another important part of their plan is to obtain organic certification, and work within the fair trade system. ‘Our model is based on permaculture, which considers the social impacts, the use of energy, the production of compost, and environmental education.’Don José interrupts him, pulls out a knife, and removes a sliver of bark from the nearest tree. ‘Try this,’he says, enthusiastically. ‘Canola!’The cinnamon tastes sweet, and the encroaching maquilas are temporarily forgotten.

Ben Gregory is Secretary of the Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and author of ‘Afar I see the day is coming: Wales, Nicaragua and the future of internationalism’. Ben is also a community worker and lives in rural north Wales. He can be contacted at benica@gn.apc.org

David McKnight is a community development worker and member of Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. He is Co-Producer of ‘Black Star Green: a film about Ghana & the World Trade Organisation’. David can be contacted at david@milwr.freeserve.co.uk

Ben and David are currently producing an educational film focussing on Nicaraguas’ experience of globalisation.

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