Climate Action Mexico Project #39754

Helping 200 beekepers adapt to climate change

by Fundacion El Buen Socio Te Apoya, A.C.

Project Report | Oct 8, 2019
56.4 tons of honey waiting to be sold...

By Maria Luisa Chavez | Project Leader

The situation of our beekeepers hasn't improved much. One of the coops' located in Veracruz even had their 50 tons of honey returned from their initial buyer and are standing still in there warehouse.

From El Buen Socio, we have helped another one of our coops' sell 1.2 tons to a local buyer in Mexico City. This buyer paid $25 mexican pesos per kilo, that is a total of $30K pesos. The whole transaction -due to the remoteness of their community's location, the scarcity of transportation methods, and the lack of means to negotiate (language, honey analysis, cash, multiplicity of clientes, etc)- cost around $20K mexican pesos. Nevertheless, these costs were absorbed by El Buen Socio so the producers wouldn't have to bear these expenses.

We are still looking for new buyers. Ethical buyers. Honest buyers. And we are implementing everything we know about improving the apiaries management and strenghtening the beehives and bees for next season.

If you of somebody looking to buy some honey, remember we have 56.4 tons wainting to be sold....

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Jul 10, 2019
Low harvests and low market prices for 2019

By Maria Luisa | Project Leader

We are sad to report to you that our beekeepers have had one of the worst seasons this year. Not only they have faced climate change's consequences almost as heavy as they did two years ago (2016 was one of the lowest honey production season in the last decade), but what is worse, market prices have reached low records as well.

Normally, when the production volume is low, the prices in the market go up (considering the scarcity of the offer and the evergowing demand). Nevertheless, this year a lot of factors have wronged the law of supply and demand:

Surplus in the honey production in other latin american countries like Argentina and Brazil.
Lower prices for lower quality honey overflowing the international markets, coming mainly from China.
Fake 'organic honey' being sold from many corners of the world, disrespecting quality requirements and wrongly inflating market prices for a while, but now dropping them to the ground and making it more and more difficult to have access to european fairtrade markets.

In 2018, a honey producer received $54 pesos per kilogram of organic honey; in 2019 they received $31 pesos pero kilo. For our beekeepers the problem is simple: no matter how much effort and investments and hard work they put into their beehives and making them more resilient to climate inclemencies, there are external factors that have direct effects on their income and livelihoods, and global warming is not helping.

Thus, we are stengthening our efforts in improving the handling of their apiaries in order for them to be prepared for next season, and we are helping them sell the remaining honey to more conscious buyers, and bottled for the consumer. You will be hearing from that soon so you can purchase your honey!

We need your help more than ever! To support us is to assure that we will be able to provide the technical assistance and skill development our beekeepers need.

Thank you for your help!

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