Fair Trade Coffee

Fair Trade Coffee

Fair trade is becoming widely recognized these days, and as more and more people are encouraged to help coffee growers and producers of other goods by giving them a fair price instead of the big corporations making all of the profit, then it stands to reason that many of the big coffee names have turned their buying attention to fair trade.

Fair Trade Coffee is now on offer at many of the worlds biggest coffee vendors. Public awareness and pressure really can make a difference in the world, and Wal Mart, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Sam’s Club all offer fair trade coffee, as well as many of the other, smaller independent coffee shops.

Fair Trade Coffee

So what does Fair Trade Coffee actually mean to me and you? The main difference is that it’s bought directly from the coffee growers at a significantly higher price than you would pay for standard coffee. There are many other fair trade certified products available, but we’ll just stick to the coffee. If you’re a coffee farmer and you want to produce fair trade coffee, then you must be a part of a co-operative with the other local growers. The co-ops have the job of deciding how to spend the premiums from the fair trade coffee, with growers being offered a minimum guaranteed price for their goods. If the market price however exceeds this minimum price, then they get more . . .

The whole point of fair trade is to protect these workers with healthier working conditions and more of an economic incentive to produce quality goods. In days gone by we might have thought that we were helping the people from a particular under-developed country simply by buying their produce, but in reality the big corporations were paying extremely low prices at source trapping the workers into an ever decreasing circle of poverty and appalling working conditions, whilst making healthy profits for themselves. Fair trade works tirelessly to prevent anything like that from happening.

Fair Trade Certification

This label allows farmers and their workers to earn a proper living and escape poverty, providing them with the necessary means and skills to compete in the global market place with their products. All farmers who are involved with fair trade coffee will receive a fair, wholesale price for their crops. It’s not only the coffee farmers who benefit from this certification, but the whole community. Fair trade farmers invest their fair trade premiums in community projects like healthcare services and scholarship programs – it’s up to them to decide how it is spent, so that it is used in the areas which are most in need for their community.

Of course, critics of fair trade coffee argue that there is still too much of a gap between the price per pound paid to the coffee farmers, and the price which we, the consumer, pay to companies like Wal Mart, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and I think we can all agree that consumers who do pay that little bit more for fair trade coffee are taking a positive step towards helping many under-developed communities to work their way out of poverty.