Archive for October 27th, 2009
The theory behind fair trade coffee is that professional traders – basically middlemen – take the bulk of the profits from growers. In effect, this removes some of the incentive for farmers to grow coffee in the first place. Fair trade certification aims to bypass the trader and ensure a decent wage for producers. The intent is not to make these farm owners and laborers rich, but merely to secure enough for them to sustain a livelihood.
But the benefits of fair trade go well beyond providing compensation to farmers; in fact, it works in your advantage as a consumer as well. Imagine that some Colombian coffee beans are traded to Brazil, then another trader sends them to an island in the Caribbean. Only then does a final trader convince a large retail chain in the United States pull the trigger and bring them to the American market and eventually to our espresso machines.
Although the above scenario is just a hypothetical one, you’ve probably begun to question the quality and freshness of the beans after all that international travel. How were they handled? Have they been floating around South and Central America for more than two weeks? As previously discussed in this blog, coffee tastes best when the beans are fresh and newly ground. What if those beans were shipped directly from Colombia?