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Building Communities with Fair Trade Coffee
The "Fair Trade" label is a reassuring beacon that a purchase is part of something bigger than itself. With between 50 and 70% of the world's coffee grown by small family farmers, they are often subject to a loss of profit in a long chain of middlemen, exporters, brokers, importers, roasters, distributors and retailers. This conventional trade route from bean to cup is feed extensively by crop grown on large estates and coffee plantations that make up the remaining percentage of coffee farmers. The estates often employee migrant workers at poverty level wages as owners hoard the already small profits. When an indigenous people can maintain a small family farm they traditionally held no control of the bean once an industrialized processing mill buys the crop. The farmers got only 2% - 4% of the final retail price that as www.transfairusa.org indicates, "Trap farmers in a cycle of poverty and debt." The family farmers traditionally lacked transportation and agro-technology relying on often corrupt Middlemen and Exporters reinforcing this cycle and forcing estates to pay workers less. Farmers' children often left school early to work to make ends meet. Cut short of fundamental literacy and mathematics it became an uneducated struggle to manage a family business. Paid only $0.25 per pound, it takes 4,000 beans handpicked by farmers to make one pound of coffee. "Coyotes", as middlemen are known in Latin America, paid the farmers less than what the beans cost to grow. This is where Fair Trade comes in, eliminating the middleman and exporters, making certified importers guarantee to pay at least $1.26 per pound. Fair Trade importers put the money consumers pay for coffee directly into the hands of the farmers. The Fair Trade route starts with the 800,000 producers of between 20 - 25 million farmers and plantation workers growing coffee beans according to the FairTrade Labeling Organization (FLO). Specifically, under the FLO the TransFair USA umbrella organization covers close to 550,000 farmers organized into 300 cooperatives across Africa, Asia and Latin America. As coffee roasters and distributors caught on it lead to what TransFair USA reported as 7,000 retail locations carrying the Fair Trade logo in 2002. As of 2005 their logo is seen in more than 33,000 locations in stores such as Albertsons, Harris Teeter, Publix, Safeway, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and hundreds of cafes. As consumer demand grows, the profit funneled directly to farmers enables them to invest in transportation and agro-technology. Many farms have taken on organic growing practices boosting the price they are paid to $1.41 per pound. TransFair USA estimates that these farms earn 3 to 5 times more then their days of muddling through corruption and exploitation. Read more of this article on Fair Trade Coffee, the website Fair Trade Coffee News encourages inquiring minds, saying,
"An excellent explanation by Jason Cangialosi. If you ever get confused by the process of fair trade...who does what, where the money goes and how etc, read this article by Jason Cangialosi. I found it to be one of the best pieces I have read for anyone who is interested in fair trade coffee, but is having trouble finding a clear explanation as to how it all works." Links provided below.
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Contributor's Note
When the past meets future for Jason, the moment is fueled by a creative background in music, writing, film and philosophy providing a nexus of the complex world to come. He is currently a freelance writer and ghostwriter of books, articles and screenplays
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Fair Trade Coffee Can Build Communities
| Java Justice: Fair Trade Coffee
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