Fairtrade needs a review of the standards to support Amazonian collectors

From '91-'96 I lived in Bolivia and was involved in the development of the first co-op in Riberalta for Amazonian nuts. The objective was to demolish the oligargy of a few existing processing units in the area that were setting the prices and the conditions for the whole sector.
The co-op organised collectors that went into the forest for months and started to trade their own nuts. At first they started toll-processing but after a while, with major support of the development industry, they started their own processing plant, "beneficiadora" and started trading kernels. First at the Alternative Trade market but later they introduced the organic amazonian nut as wel and got for both certification; organic and FLO.

When I left Bolivia they had a great future ahead with a variety of buyers in a range of countries. A couple of weeks ago I was back in the area after 15 years and visit the major actors in the Amazonian nut industry.

The changes where huge; instead of a limited number of 'beneficiadoras', there were 22 facilities. Three major ones not originated from the area with a clear business approach and with vision for investment in the region. Next to that there were a range of 19 other small and medium sized facilities. Competition is clearly around.

On the ground, the old baracca system, a system of modern slavery in which collectors left the season most of the time in debt to their buyers/suppliers had been almost demolished. The large consessions are split now and the land was given back to the communities. However, it is obvious the total setting is still in a transition and a variety of models occur currently.
Next to that there is no solution yet who is taking over the investment parts of the the owners of the baracas, the baraqueros, who were also keeping the roads open and did the maintenance of the bridges in the area.

In this setting the co-ops should have grown enormously. Unfortunately it became clear the growth of the co-op had come to a complete standstill. The only co-op with a beneficiadora had still only 150 members and had closed down their facility. Even with all the support coming from outside, with a specialized captive market, they were not able to survive.
Running a trading co-op is one, running business wise a processing facility turned out to be too complex in this moment.
The small other co-ops had to buy their stock and had to look for toll-processing. However they have to negotiate with the processors on prices and timing. The first is not too complex in a setting where there is enough capacity, the second however a serious bottleneck.
Processors would like to process their own nuts first for finance reasons, so the co-ops are always at the end of the line; which is increasing finance costs and harming reliability on delivery dates.

Currently far less than 1% of the production is ending up on the FT market where as the demand in the market is far higher. Private processors are interested but cannot play an active role in the setting due to the current FLO standards.

If the FLO standards would be open for 'farmgate' prices; 'farmers' co-ops could focus on organizing trade and link with professional processors that could supply at the agreed time and costs would diminish.

This would create more opportunities for more producers and that's what it should be all about. But the rules have to be changed first....