René Ausecha Chaux is an agricultural engineer and the manager of the Business Cooperative of Southern Cauca (Cosurca), a cooperative of nearly 1,400 families that produces fair trade, organic coffee for the U.S. and European markets. In the 1970s, Ausecha watched farmers pull up their coffee bushes and clear forests to plant coca for cocaine production, then witnessed the resulting clear-cutting, erosion and biodiversity loss. Then in the late 1990s, after co-founding an environmentally oriented agricultural school, he went to work for the National Plan for Alternative Development (Plante), a Colombian government program that helps coca growers switch to alternative crops. There, he developed projects aimed at fruit and sugar production and watershed protection. When he joined Cosurca in 1999, he believed in fair trade’s ability to involve peasant farmers directly in a non-coca, market-based economy and to improve their standard of living while protecting the environment. He spoke with EcoAméricas correspondent Steven Ambrus in Popayán, Colombia. [Log in to read more]

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