Every day good, hardworking people are forced to make difficult decisions because they aren't being paid fair prices for their coffee. The following are just a few examples of the situations that farmers and their families have to face on a daily basis.

Here we highlight the realities of a Mexican farmer – largely because it is these farmers who are forced to migrate away from their communities due to unfair global economic policies that have real impacts on their daily lives.

Should I leave my community and migrate to the United States or to a local city for work (which also means facing the very real possibility of never coming home)?

A report from the International Coffee Organization on the coffee crisis is recently stated: "Coffee producers from Mexico have died trying to get into the United States illegally after abandoning their farms In general, the situation stimulates emigration to the cities and to industrialized countries."

In a recent report it was noted that 500 families each week left their communities and coffee farms in Chiapas to find work in an unknown city or, in many cases, the United States. Most of these people had no prior work experience other than farming. Just last year 6 coffee farmers in search of work died as they attempted to cross the desert border from Mexico into the United States.

Which, if any, of my children can go to school this year (usually girls, before their brothers, will be chosen to remain in the home)?

In Central America, approximately 200,000 permanent and 400,000 temporary workers employed in the coffee industry had no work. This translates into cutbacks in the family budget and usually the first thing to go is money for education.

What will I feed my children today?

Once a profitable commodity, today coffee brings in one-quarter of the income that was earned in 1960 from the same amount of coffee beans. Most meals of coffee producers in Chiapas consist only of tortillas and beans; rice and eggs are a luxury. Hunger has become commonplace in coffee producing communities with more than seventy-five percent of indigenous children suffering from malnutrition.

If I have a good coffee crop, won't I be able to make a decent living?

In 349 of the 411 municipalities in Mexico where coffee is currently being grown, the farmers themselves continue to live in a state of poverty. Because the coffee processing and exporting infrastructure in Mexico is largely controlled by the government and large foreign companies, farmers are at the mercy of coyotes (middlemen) who purchase their coffee. We work with farmers who have organized into cooperatives and, together, are building systems for processing and exporting.

If major coffee companies are profiting, doesn't that mean that I, as a coffee growers, will benefit as well?

No. In just 10 years, coffee growers have gone from receiving 40% of the wealth generated in the global coffee industry to now only getting 12%, although the coffee industry has grown from $30 billion ten years ago to $50 billion now. As Nestor Osorio, executive director of the International Coffee Organization recently stated, "In the last decade, the major coffee companies' revenues have doubled. During the same time, the earnings of ordinary coffee farmers have been slashed by two-thirds."

Are there any viable alternatives for my family?

Some farmers have turned, many times unwillingly, to growing drugs - a commodity that is always in demand and brings a dignified wage. Coca thrives in the same conditions in which coffee grows. When coffee doesn't pay the bills, many farmers are forced to find something that will. Coffee farmers receive 1% or less of the price of a cup of coffee sold at your local coffee shop. Twenty years ago the profit farmers would receive from green coffee beans - raw coffee - was sixty-four percent of the retail price in the US. Today that number is about eighteen percent.

Information provided by the Organic Consumers Association, International Coffee Organization, Global Exchange, and Oxfam.