Archive for October 26th, 2009
In the United States, small, family farms have been giving way to large agricultural conglomerates for many years. Some would call that the nature of competition in a market economy, where the party that offers high-demand goods at a lower price prospers. In the case of large factory farms, that product is the food we eat. Luckily here at home there are plenty of other lines of work a farmer can get into after his agricultural enterprise has proven unsuccessful. Not so in many developing countries.
Farmers in coffee-growing countries such as Colombia, Ethiopia, Costa Rica and many other tropical nations are constantly struggling to get a fair price for their product. These operators of family farms lack much in the way of capital or resources, so they are susceptible to middlemen who come into the picture and offer unreasonable prices to buy up the crops.
It’s incredible that these farmers – who are providing many parts of the Western world with the fuel that gets us through the day – barely make enough money to subsist. By filling your Solis espresso machines with fair trade coffee, you help ensure that coffee farmers can enjoy the fruits of their own labor. We’ll discuss the origins of the fair trade movement in tomorrow’s post.