Definition: Fair Trade is a system
in which coffee farmers trade directly with coffee buyers,
removing a ‘middleman’ to ensure at higher
selling price for their coffee.
 Coffee
prices can go as low as $0.25 to $0.50 per pound on the stock
exchange, so Fair Trade provides an opportunity for coffee
farmers to earn a living wage allowing them to send their
children to school, provide food and healthcare for their
families, and simply keep their coffee farms.
Seventy percent of the world’s coffee is grown by small family
farms (a.k.a. peasant farmers on small plots) and these farmers require
and deserve the living wage of at least $1.26 for Fair Trade coffee and
$1.41 for organic coffees to keep their farms and support their families.
The average daily wage for a coffee farmer is $2-3 per day and that is
not a lot considering that it takes 2000 coffee cherries to produce one
pound of roastable coffee beans.
The direct benefit of Fair Trade to coffee farmers is that they learn
business skills and practices in order to export their product directly,
they are able to keep food on the table and provide health care to their
families, and the children of coffee farmers are able to stay in school
instead of dropping out to join the coffee trade. Children of Fair Trade
families will actually be some of the first to go to high school and
college will be an attainable dream for them.
Fair Trade also benefits the environment by these small scale farmers
using traditional farming practices that were passed down from generation
to generation. Most of these farms grow coffee organically under the
shade of the rain forest canopy protecting delicate ecosystems and providing
refuge for neo-tropical birds and animals. Another advantage to growing
coffee shrubs (a shade loving plant) under the tree canopy is that it
protects the soil from erosion.
There are some negative aspects of Fair Trade however. For example, certain
farmers are excluded from participating in the Fair Trade movement even
though they practice Fair Trade methods due to the size of their farms.
While all farms are not able to participate in the Fair Trade Certified
program, another system, which is unregulated, is when arrangements are
made between individual roasters and groups of peasant growers in which
the roasters return a percentage of the retail price of a coffee directly
back to the growers to support development projects ranging from clinics
and schools to new roads and mills.
Ask your roastmaster or barista what type of coffee they serve.
By black dog Barista, Andrea Clark
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Coffee Plantation
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The Basics
Coffee has been in North America for
the past three hundred years, but coffee actually dates back
to approximately 800 BC. The first coffee plant was discovered
in Africa and spread throughout Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, on through
Europe and South America. Brazil started growing coffee in
1727 and cuttings from these coffee plants were taken to Kona,
Hawaii, which brings me to my story.
It’s not everyday that a coffee shop girl gets to tour a local coffee
farm, in Kona none the less. In case you didn’t know, Kona coffee
is world famous, and for good reason. The six hundred local coffee farms
in Kona must meet high standards to even use the name Kona coffee to ensure
its unique taste. I’ll use some photographs from a photo essay I
did while I was in Hawaii to explain and compare the processes used in
coffee farming around the world.
Sun, Water and Soil
Climate and location play important roles in coffee farming and ideal conditions
include:
• Hot-wet climate or a hot-temperature climates
• Deep, hard, well-drained soils of hillside and mountainside country
This makes Kona, Hawaii prime land for farming with its tropical climate
and dark, volcanic lava rock slopes.
 Species
There are about sixty different species of coffee plants around the world,
but only ten species are cultivated today. The two main species are coffea
arabica and coffea robusta. The coffee plant reaches 30-40 feet in the
wild but on plantations it is trimmed to reach 10-16 feet.
The plant grows leaves in varying shades of green and yellow. The coffee
shrub grows white blossoms that smell like jasmine. The fruit resembles
a cherry, green when unripe and deep red when mature |
