8 replies to this topic

[mariaandrea]

I'm drinking a cup of coffee this morning that is a real treat. For one, it comes from a roaster that does an excellent job and this tastes nothing like canned coffee. It's amazing. The best thing about it is that it is Fair Trade coffee. From Wikipedia:

Quote

The Fair Trade Certification label allows farmers and farm workers to escape poverty by providing them the skills and the means to compete in the global market of agriculture products.

Standards for Fair Trade Coffee Certification:
Fair labor conditions: Those who work with Fair Trade farms are able to work with freedom of association, unsafe working conditions, and above fair wages. Child labor is prohibited.
Direct trade: With Fair Trade, importers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, eliminating the middle man and letting the farmer compete in the global market.
Democratic and transparent organizations: Through proof of a democratic market, Fair Trade farmers and farm workers decide how to invest Fair Trade revenues.
Community development: Fair Trade farmers and workers invest Fair Trade premiums in social and business development projects like scholarship programs, healthcare services and quality improvement training.

Do you buy Fair Trade food? Groups like Equal Exchange sell Fair Trade coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas and almonds. It's more expensive than regular goods, but that's sort of the point. When you drink Fair Trade coffee or eat a banana you don't have to ignore the fact that what you're eating might have been grown and harvested by children or exploited labor. Does that matter to you? We like things to be cheap and often need them to be, but we don't often look at what cheap goods for us costs other people around the planet.

[yoder]

We get our coffee from Velasquez Family Coffee.  Local family business with farms in Honduras.  Shade grown and hand picked.

The very best thing is the price (and free local delivery).

[karmaman]

I buy fair trade coffee and chocolate, but I don't know of any other items that I can get locally that are fair trade. I do focus on buying local food as well, especially from farms that use organic practices. We're working on building a big garden next spring that will produce enough food for most of our needs. Our landlord has given us permission to have chickens as well, even though we are renting.

I think that replacing bought foods with ones you grew yourself is a good way to improve labor conditions as well. The less money a company makes that exploits workers, the less successful they become off of the hard work of others.

[makeitmom]

I have bought fair trade chocolate, but I will look into buying fair trade coffee.

I'm not usually a coffee drinker, though I do love my tea while my husband and mom absolutely love coffee.

My mom actually makes her own barley coffee. She roasts dried barley, grinds it, and peculates it just like anyone would peculate regular coffee. Its surprising how good this really is. She got in the habit of making barley coffee since she was a little girl in Sicily. When the island was occupied by enemy solders during ww2and took most of their food supply, this is what they made to supplement for coffee (among other things).

Thanks for sharing this information.

[zararina]

I am not really a coffee drinker but if ever I would buy foods, I prefer the freshest possible since there are near fish pens/fresh market and can be considered fair trade food. Nescafe is the brand of coffee I would consume at home and I think it could be considered as fair trade coffee. As it acquires coffee from local farmers here that means it was direct and no middle man. and their are training held for them. Just not sure of other details like revenue and labors about them.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

zararina, on 08 January 2012 - 09:57 PM, said:

I prefer the freshest possible since there are near fish pens/fresh market and can be considered fair trade food. Nescafe is the brand of coffee I would consume at home and I think it could be considered as fair trade coffee. As it acquires coffee from local farmers here that means it was direct and no middle man. and their are training held for them. Just not sure of other details like revenue and labors about them.

Nescafe is not the best regarding free trade. They have 1 product that is FT, out of the thousands of other products
they sell.
http://peopleandplan...g/news/story540

"Nestlé is accused by experts of unethical business practices such as:

• Promoting infant formula with misleading and harmful strategies that violate the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and put babies at risk (see Baby Milk Action’s Briefing on Nestle Updated July 2010 and the Boycott Nestle – and other action to protect infant health blog);
  
• Using suppliers that violate human rights (e.g purchasing milk from Mugabe, buying cocoa from suppliers that use child slaves) and destroy the environment (e.g. palm oil from rainforest);
  
• Controlling and abusing of water sources in its bottled water operations (e.g. in United States and in Brazil);
  
• Promoting unhealthy food, especially for young children;
  
• Trade union busting activities and denying the rights of workers to collectively bargain;
  
• …and more (see Nestle Critics Portal and Corporate Watch: Nestle SA: Corporate Crimes).

http://crunchydomest...t-boycott-list/

[mmaacupuncture]

Fair trade coffee is also priced really well where I'm at here in california. You can get fair trade coffee for about the same price as your normal stuff in stores. I think anything manufactured by big corps. is going to be made in the worst conditions at the lowest wages.

[mariaandrea]

mmaacupuncture, on 15 January 2012 - 06:29 PM, said:

Fair trade coffee is also priced really well where I'm at here in california. You can get fair trade coffee for about the same price as your normal stuff in stores. I think anything manufactured by big corps. is going to be made in the worst conditions at the lowest wages.

I agree. The whole point of large corporations is to make as much money as possible to keep as many shareholders and investors as possible happy. The welfare of rank and file employees is far under those goals and by the time you get to issues like fair trade and being equitable to people who don't tend to live in your industrialized world, well, those issues are so unimportant they may as well not exist. Those companies only change the way they do business if they see that consumers want something so much that they stop buying your products in favor of someone else's.

Very few large corporations have jumped wholeheartedly on the fair trade bandwagon. It's the smaller companies that are leading the way. And more power to them.

[Mon-Jes]

I don't drink coffee, so that's not an issue for me. I do eat chocolate, but the fair trade chocolate here is rather expensive. At this point in time, I have to go for the cheaper stuff, though I'll try to go for brands like Trader Joe's when I can.