New mobile medical clinic keeps Guatemalan farmers connected to Iowa co-op

COBAN, Guatemala — When a farmer member of an Iowa co-op needs medical care, they drive to the nearest clinic or provider. But when your farmers are in a rural part of a developing country, high-quality roads, transportation and affordability are barriers to a service taken for granted by many American farmers.

When most of your crop is grown in countries like Guatemala, new solutions are needed for a sustainable supply chain. With an $80,000 commitment, Frontier Co-op in Norway, Iowa, is demonstrating the vital role that co-ops play in feeding the world.

Earlier this year, Frontier launched a new project with their longtime Guatemalan sourcing partner FEDECOVERA, committing capital expenses to fund a new mobile clinic that will provide accessible, low-cost medical and dental care to co-op farmers who serve as a significant source of the Iowa company’s cardamom, turmeric and allspice.

FEDECOVERA, a sourcing partner for Frontier since 2007, is a group comprising 42 smaller cooperatives that support about 100,000 farmers, mostly Indigenous Mayan farming families. Over the course of their partnership, Frontier has contributed more than $376,000 to business and community building projects with them.

It started with a 2015 brick-and-mortar dental clinic in Coban.

“They came to us in 2015 and said business is going well, and we have good medical care for farming families, but we need dental,” said Tony Bedard, CEO of Frontier Co-op. “We were having really good success, but it’s a really rural community.”

About three to four hours from Guatemala City by car, the mountainous region’s farmers often need four-wheel-drive transportation and a significant amount of time to reach medical care providers in other areas.

“For people to leave farms and take off work for preventive care, we weren’t getting return visits (to the brick-and-mortar clinic built,)” Bedard said. “People weren’t getting the care they needed.”

The new mobile clinic project, chosen as an extension of their longtime partnership with the group of co-ops, isn’t considered a charity or even or a business investment — it’s a community-building project.

Alongside business-building projects that help modernize Guatemala’s farming and processing capabilities, community projects play a key role in keeping a population on the map and giving them access to international markets they might not otherwise be able to reach.

The investments make a difference not only in terms of preventive medical care, but also in improving the quality of life of rural Guatemalan communities nearby, said Gabriela Delgado, logistics and marketing manager for FEDECOVERA.

“Having this kind of investment is a great impact for decentralization of high-quality services that commonly can be found (in) the consuming countries (but) not the producing ones,” she said. “This is a step forward to continue adding value to the products that our co-op partners … produce to access better markets …”

In a globalized economy, that type of partnership is critical for thinking beyond the scope of one country or another.

But what’s more is that the ongoing partnership between a farming state and a country where 49 percent of the population lives in rural areas shows that good business sense and being socially responsible are not mutually exclusive — taking human needs into account is part of an astute business acumen.

“Our co-ops in general have much more stable platforms,” Bedard said. “It’s a full recognition you can do things the right way and get much more out of it. … We're just trying to make sure our farming friends in Guatemala are there for us in the future, that they can be healthy and happy.”

Beyond a good supply chain, the project has ripple effects abroad and at home in Iowa.

Abroad, Bedard said the holistic business practices help Guatemalans care for themselves with meaningful work, reducing the need to immigrate thousands of miles from Central America’s Northern Triangle to make a living that will provide for their families.

In that sense, farming around the world isn’t much different to farming in Iowa — farmers and their children have to be able to make a living on their land. On small tracts of land with little mechanization, labor intensive spice croppers in Guatemala walk a finer line to remain profitable.

More than 12 percent of the world’s population is employed by co-ops like FEDECOVERA and Frontier.

“To go into that community in the mountains and see most families walk their way in, wait in line for the clinic … it’s a small part of making their lives better,” Bedard said.

But even at home, where folks drive comparatively short distances for medical care, it gives employees at Frontier purpose in a landscape where businesses face more challenges than ever to attract and retain employees.

“It helps us, as a company, live out our purpose. We find this purpose driven work to be a great retention and attraction tool,” the CEO said. “Everyone wants good pay and benefits. But at the end of the day, our employees go out knowing they dug wells and helped with dentistry or education.”

“That, to me, is a huge part of the ripple effect,” he said.

Comments: (319) 398-8340; elijah.decious@thegazette.com