What do you want to know about your local coffee shops?

3 Responses to “What do you want to know about your local coffee shops?”

1. H on April 25th, 2008 7:23 pm

   I would like to know whether local shops carry fairtrade, or better yet, direct trade coffee. I’ve heard a few local shop owners say that going fairtrade is simply “political”. I want to make sure that I’m not supporting that ignorant mentality or the slave labor it enables on coffee plantations in developing nations.

2. Sandy on April 28th, 2008 8:38 pm

   First, not supplying Fair Trade coffee makes no one ignorant.

   Fair trade is a practice that is over-all partial to only small farms. Anyone who follows the Fair Trade policy manual per se (tries to pay their employees a higher wage) yet has a farm above a specified hectare size cannot participate.

   What more and more roasters and wholesalers are doing is what some call “relationship coffee” marketing, where they actually visit an area and work with a growers (both large and small) and base their buying decisions based on the growers practices of (1) cultivation, (2) picking (picking just he good cherries and not stripping the plant at each harvest just to sell more pounds of green coffee), and then (3) how they process the cherries. That can either be wet or dry process. Wet processing is faster and cheaper while dry processing is more time consuming but results in a more aromatic product.

   Coffee is a very expensive product to produce and at the commodity level ranks higher than oil in world trade.

   So to suggest that anyone who doesn’t sell Fair Trade coffee is ignorant or supports slave labor is a comment that says more about a lack of factual knowledge about what the practice of Fair Trade really is. Yes it is a good idea and concept, but the practice is not evenly distributed among all of the coffee growers in any good region.

3. H on May 2nd, 2008 5:16 pm

   The point you are making is why I reference direct trade as a better option. I understand the constricts of a fair trade policy (after all, fair trade standards are set by a capitalist government that vehemently supports free trade) . However, I am aware of the injustice endured by coffee growing peoples who deal within the conventional free trade market. The disservice that this form of trade does to people and their livelihoods cannot be minimized or overlooked. In the end, fair trade is not nearly enough but it is a step away from the trade practice that did/does, in fact, benefit from underpaying or not paying the growers.

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