Fair trade coffee seems to have in the last few years grown in popularity among coffee lovers and if you get to a coffee bar you will realize plenty of them present their logo in order to inform you that selected products are actually 100% ethical. Nevertheless ever thought about just what it’s all about? Does the idea of fair trade coffee really work in reality? Exactly how much of the price you pay for fair trade coffee certainly goes to the farmers and laborers?

What is fair trade coffee?

Coffee beans are the 2nd greatest trading product worldwide, after oil. Based on The Fair Trade Foundation, a fair trade coffee means fair deal, much better working condition and more strong local area. That requires much better terms of trade with farmers and personnel within the developing world. In essence it is actually to guard their own interests coming from corporations carrying out normal buying and selling in which the price will go under selling price. This will hurt the weakest and poorest suppliers. Read the rest of this entry »

Here in the West we are massive consumers of coffee. And many of us think nothing of spending four or five dollars at Starbucks for a gourmet espresso, latte or cappuccino.

What few of us think about as we sip our favorite brew is that coffee is grown by small farmers in developing countries. Most of these farmers are paid less for the coffee beans they grow that it costs for them to produce and pick them.

In other words, for every gourmet coffee you and I enjoy, the grower of the beans used is descending into a deeper and deeper cycle of poverty and desperation. Read the rest of this entry »

The consumption of coffee is rising in the US as it is gaining popularity. We consume a lot of coffee. Some of us cannot even make it through a day without a few cups of coffee. In fact Americans are responsible for one fifth of the world’s coffee consumption. So we are the main economic supporter of the coffee industry.

Most Americans would have little idea how the coffee we drink is produced, harvested and shipped to us. We are just thankful that coffee is readily available over the counter whenever we want it.

The Fair Trade coffee movement aims to change all that. As better informed consumers, we are now told of the exploits of some coffee importers. We now realized that many of these coffee workers or farmers who toil tirelessly in the fields are not getting a fair price for their produce. Read the rest of this entry »