The Times They Are A Changing

It seems that specialty coffee is one of the first indulgences to be cut out of the ever shrinking family budget. Starbucks netted a drop of 97% in their last quarter. Surely other chains and independent coffee houses and dealers must be in the same fix. During the past year Starbucks has let employees go and closed some stores in order to stay ahead of the game. That’s not such an easy task for independent coffee businesses who have one or two drive-thrus or coffee houses. But those aren’t the only people affected by our tightened belts where coffee is concerned.

When Starbucks compares themselves with other coffee companies such as Folgers, Nestles or Maxwell house they do quite well as far as their work with “Fair Trade Coffee” distributors. However, when they are compared to other coffee houses, even other coffee house franchises, they are improving, but still hitting the outside mark. So, what is fair trade coffee and why is it preferable to coffee beans that are not?

Much of the coffee beans used in the United States is grown in developing countries (South America, South Africa and South Asia) that demand little if any employment laws of employers. It is not just coffee beans that are considered in fair trade agreements, but handcrafts, cocoa, sugar, tea, cotton, honey, bananas, wine, fresh fruit and flowers.

To explain fair trade coffee beans simply, it has to do with the small farmers in the growing locations. Many times they were swindled because of their lack of recourses to access the world coffee markets. The middlemen who were held accountable for the swindling were dubbed “coyotes” because of their less than scrupulous actions. And then, of course, there were exporters and brokers that all took a piece of the pie. Sounds a lot like our situation in the way we do business in our own country, doesn’t it? Of course, we aren’t thinking about the slave labor that sits at the production’s first level of a product when we purchase it. But, that’s another story. Anyway, small farmers many times would receive less than it cost them to grow the beans. They were then offered loans from the scamming middlemen.

Fair trade encouraged small farmers to ban together forming a co-op that sold directly to the certified fair trade coffee importer, thus cutting out the middlemen. Coffee beans that have been purchased through this system are labeled so on the packaging. Purchasing these products allows the buyer, here in our country, to reach a socially conscious hand back to those small farmers. It’s a good thing.

Now, those small farmers are starting to feel the pinch as our previous habit of specialty coffee indulgence diminishes. It’s not like these people are going to have to go without the most recent tech gadget, they will have less food to feed their family. It’s the necessities that will dwindle and all but disappear in their homes. If you decide to indulge in a specialty coffee or the purchase of coffee beans, make sure they are “Fair Trade Certified.”