Fair Trade Coffee

Second only to oil, coffee is the world’s most traded commodity. For many smaller countries, coffee is the main source of foreign trade, and to millions of families, coffee is their main source of livelihood.

Throughout the world, a fair amount of coffee is grown by farmers who make their entire living from the farming of a few coffee trees. The money they earn from selling their coffee is just enough to buy the necessities, like food, clothing, and tools.

The journey from the farmers’ trees to the grocery store is long and costly. The money that goes to the farmer is quite small compared to the going market rate in the coffee-consuming countries.

Most of the money that is spent on consuming coffee doesn’t make it to the farmers that grow it. Given this situation, some conscientious people started thinking up ways to change it. Market forces provided them with a solution.

The rise in the popularity of specialty coffees provided the opportunity to make a change. These people figured that by niche-marketing coffee, it could be used as a tool to get some of these farmers out of poverty. They soon started developing systems where farmers could grow coffee, and this coffee would be marketed as coffee that gives farmers a fair price. This niche-marketing idea gave birth to fair trade coffee.

Fair Trade Coffee: Supporting the Cause of Poor Farmers

Fair trade coffee is coffee that is produced on democratically-run cooperatives whose members have been guaranteed a fair price for their coffee. The fair price is determined by an internationally-determined formula. The coffee is certified by an international body to certify that is actually produced by member farmers.

Most fair trade coffees are organically grown, and many are shade-grown. Environmentally conscious coffee drinkers prefer fair trade coffee for this reason.

Criticisms of Fair Trade Coffee

The main argument against fair trade coffee runs like this:

Fair trade coffee places social values above coffee quality.

Since farmers are guaranteed a certain price for their coffee, they won’t care about the quality of the coffee that they grow.

A second argument against fair trade coffee is that the selection of the coffee is too limited, unlike regular coffee which has a large selection from all over the world.

Both arguments have merit, but each one has its flaws. Most buyers of coffee agree that fair trade coffee is no better or worse than regular coffee. Therefore, the argument that the quality of the coffee is somehow less than that of regular coffee does not hold water.

The second argument is more of an observation than a criticism. Since most fair trade coffee is grown in Central and South America with only a handful grown in East Africa and the Pacific, the claim that the selection is limited is true. As the movement grows among farmers, however, the selection of these coffees is sure to increase.