{"id":913,"date":"2017-12-23T15:23:13","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T15:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/?p=913"},"modified":"2017-12-26T21:11:37","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T21:11:37","slug":"lwr-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/lwr-update\/","title":{"rendered":"LWR Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s fight poverty together.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his 69 years, Jos\u00e9 Martinez has lived through a lot.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, war in Nicaragua forced his family to leave their hometown and move to San Isabel.\u00a0 He and his wife have 10 children \u2014 five sons and five daughters.<\/p>\n

By the 1980s,\u00a0Jos\u00e9 had begun growing a small amount of coffee as a part of a cooperative\u00a0that he compares to the army, because he was told what to do on his farm and wasn\u2019t allowed to\u00a0manage himself.\u00a0In 1986, through\u00a0land reforms,\u00a0Jos\u00e9 received a parcel of land of about 7 hectares (about 17 acres), and immediately gave\u00a0a small piece of land to each of his children and they, too, began to grow coffee.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 says that before he became a member of the SOPPEXCCA cooperative \u2014 LWR\u2019s long-time partner in Nicaragua \u2014 he experienced many unfair practices in the coffee business. He\u2019d lost money with other cooperatives, and at times had to sell his coffee to middlemen who did not pay good prices. As a member of SOPPEXCCA, he says, he manages his own farm. He\u2019s his own boss. That\u2019s important to him because, he says, \u201cwhen you go and work for someone \u2014 if you\u2019re sick, you\u2019ll need to take sick time, and you won\u2019t have enough money, but if you work your own land, you can produce your own food for your own table.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he does, indeed, produce food for his table \u2014 and a great variety of it! Jos\u00e9 now grows coffee, cocoa, plantains, and yucca. Some of his crops support his family\u2019s needs and the surplus he sells for income.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 is proud of his coffee, and very committed to quality. He boasts that he only sends the highest quality, ripest coffee to SOPPEXCCA. This is the coffee you have the opportunity to taste through the LWR Farmers Market, a new line of coffee sourced directly from farmers participating in Lutheran World Relief projects.\u00a0 Every delicious cup helps transform poor communities that depend on their coffee crop to feed their families. Farmers, like Jos\u00e9 are given a stable, predictable, and higher price upfront for their beans and are partners in the coffee business.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 is deeply invested in his family and community. But if you ask him what he is\u00a0most<\/em>\u00a0proud of, it\u2019s the legacy he\u2019s leaving to his children, through the land he\u2019s given them. \u201cThey can harvest it themselves, because they own it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Taste the care and hard work Jos\u00e9, and the farmers of SOPPEXCCA, put into every coffee bean included in LWR Farmers Market Coffee.<\/p>\n

Visit lwrfarmersmarket.org<\/a> to make an LWR Farmers Market Coffee purchase and support farmers like Jos\u00e9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s fight poverty together. In his 69 years, Jos\u00e9 Martinez has lived through a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,15],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Jose-Martinez-LWR-Farmers-Market-Coffee-Producer-Smaller.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missions.nalcnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}