Fair Trade Coffee

I here two things, actually three in the market.

1. "Every body has fair trade coffee now, so I can just buy it at the store."
2. "I want to buy local for environmental reasons."
3. "It doesnt taste any better than store coffee."

And yes there is a problem. Five years ago, fair trade coffee ment remote mountains family farmers who had the best coffee, but following years of revolution and a glut on the coffee market the farmers were taken advantage of by unscrupulus Coyoties. Fair trade ment a fair price to those farmers and a quality, but often rough coffee to the US consumer at a modest price.

Today many less needy producers of of lessor quality coffee, grown in cultivated fields, obtain fair trade certification. This creritfication means less. Fair trade to the farmer means a lower price than his first quality coffe brings on the market, so he tends to sell secondario or a blend as fair trade coffee.

The US importer, faced with a record high commodity price for coffee, tends to accept the fair trade organic certification (fto) and a lessor quality coffee in supplying the fair trade market segment. As a result quality suffers, the consumer gets a mediocer cup of coffee and the remote high mountain Mayan family farmer still faces the challenge of bringing his truely high quality hand picked coffee to market.

A few direct trade quality coffe enterprises still take the high road, buying at a truely premium price the best high mountain coffee whilst monetering the environment and the distribution of funds from the cooperativa to the family farmers and their community. European and Japanees coffee buyers compete for the same high quality product. Their cost runs something like "C" market plus 70 cents per pound plus import costs which have escilated as well. Fair Trade pricing on the otherhand brings in only "C" market plus 20 cents -- 50 cents less than the good stuff.

This Stanford Social Innovation article, linked above, tells it all. If you want truely excellent coffee and tuely help the endigenous farmers, be very careful in your selection of producer/importer. It is probably not local, probably not a brand name, and probably not at the store. SHB Arabica marks the highest quality gradation for Central American coffee. The SHB stands for strictly hard beans, European prep and above 5,000 ft. The quality is in the bean.

Reference: scaa.org
fairtradefederation.org
http://gcqri.org/gcqri-funding-agreement/
http://www.cupofexcellence.org/CountryPrograms/Guatemala/2011Program/WinningFarms/tabid/736/Default.aspx