The Real Impact of Fair Trade

Report from Nicaragua and Ethiopia

(Courtesy of DeansBeans.com)

Let’s face it. The world coffee market stinks. Prices paid to coffee farmers are based on a host of irrelevant factors, from predictions of frost on large Brazilian, to NY commodity speculators who’ve never been to a coffee village, to a market glutting flood of cheap Vietnamese coffee promoted by the World Bank. It’s a nightmare. As a result, coffee prices are the lowest in recorded history, and growers are receiving far less than it costs to produce their crop. Economists sipping their three dollar mochaccinos hold to the theory that the market works efficiently, that all those surplus coffee farmers should just pack their bags and get into something else. Like what? Overcrowded third world cities? Vans sneaking across the Texas border? Sweatshops in maquiladora zones?

Fair Trade provides a floor price when the market price paid to farmers, along with their quality premiums, sinks below $1.26 for conventional coffee and $1.41 for organics (that’s us!). When the price is above those levels, Fair Traders agree to pay an extra nickel per pound above the contract price to keep all the players committed to the system. Equally as important, Fair Trade also requires the importer to provide pre-financing to the farmers. The up-front money allows the farmers to pay for harvesting and processing of their crop without overreliance on local moneylenders or unpredictable banks. In order to participate, farmers must be organized into transparent, democratically-run cooperatives.

It costs us a heck of a lot more to be part a leader in the Fair Trade movement, but recent trips to Ethiopia and Nicaragua demonstrate the real impact of fair trade on the lives of farmers and their families, and reminded me where my values lay.

Fair trade is not the solution to poverty in the coffee world. Nor should it be a marketing gimmick or a feel-good effort by companies that have one or two Fair Trade coffees while they reap record profits on all their low cost coffees.

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Can a cup of coffee build a village? It can, if it's the right cup of coffee.

Every bag of San Francisco Bay Coffee sold helps 'Brew the Right Thing.'
San Francisco Bay Coffee Co. Builds Homes/Foundation For Future For Coffee Farm Families/Children In Latin America

SAN LEANDRO, Calif., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Esmeralda Perez finally has a new home. Not much, really, by American standards. But she's not complaining. After all, she's now got "a room with a view." It doesn't flood every year. And when she cooks, the smoke actually goes out the kitchen. And, as Ms. Perez will tell you, the faucets and roof don't leak. Oh yes, there's clean, drinking water now -- every day. And her house isn't drafty -- unlike the wood and tin structure she called home for years at El Quetzal coffee farm in Nicaragua.

Ms. Perez picks beans -- along with the rest of her family at El Quetzal, one of the coffee farms from which San Francisco Bay Coffee Company buys its beans and one of the many places throughout Latin America where the company is committed to raising the standard of living -- one house, one school, one medical clinic at a time -- for some of the world's poorest people.

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Seattle eatery serves up coffee-flavored steak

Reuters

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The city that spawned America's obsession with strong, dark coffee is giving locals a popular new coffee-flavored steak, even while the mad cow scare that started in Washington state is putting some people off beef.

Rippe's, a local waterfront steak and seafood restaurant, began serving filet mignon steaks dusted with Starbucks Corp.'s dark espresso blend a few weeks ago and now has a runaway hit on its hands.

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Some coffee drinkers pay premium for social conscience

By Bonnie Pfister
Express-News Business Writer

For the connoisseur willing to hand over a wad of folding cash for a single cup of coffee, shade-grown beans and organic blends are old news.

Enter "fair-trade" coffee, the fastest-growing segment of the specialty coffee market, in which roasters willingly buy and sell coffee for a few dollars more per pound to return a livable wage to growers on cooperative farms across Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.

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Dunkin' Donuts Named 'Best Coffee in America' on NBC's Today Show

Dunkin' Donuts Experts Share Tips for Brewing America's Best Coffee at Home

RANDOLPH, Mass., Jan. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Dunkin' Donuts coffee has earned the title "Best Coffee in America" by the Today Show's food editor, Phil Lempert. During a review of the current state of the coffee industry, Lempert emphatically stated to Matt Lauer that Dunkin' Donuts is the "Best coffee in America ... For quality and for price."

Dunkin' Donuts is America's largest retailer of coffee-by-the-cup, serving nearly one billion cups each year in nearly 6,000 stores around the country.

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