Turkish Coffee | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

If you’ve stopped in your local Starbucks lately, you may (or may not have) seen a poster advertising the company’s stance on Fair Trade Coffee.

Thanks to their size, Starbucks is the largest purchasers of Fair Trade Coffee in the world.

According to their website:

Starbucks began purchasing Fair Trade Certified coffee in 2000, helping grow the market for Fair Trade Certified coffee in the U.S. And in 2009, we increased our purchases to 40 million pounds – making us the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Certified coffee in the world.

And yet, Starbucks only advertises one blend of coffee that’s Fair Trade Certified — Cafe Estima.

I always make certain I request Cafe Estima, but rarely do they have any brewing and only rarely will they offer to make me a fresh brewed mug via their French press. The majority of the time they just shrug their shoulders and say, “Sorry.”

It’s frustrating.

So why does Fair Trade coffee matter?

It today’s economy, nearly 25-million people make their living growing coffee. And to these people, coffee is more than just some hipster drink to sip in a cafe with friends — it’s their livelihood.

A little history lesson

Prior to the 1960′s, coffee prices were like a roller-coaster, with wild price swings that varied from year to year and season to season.

However, after World War II, with the Cold War in the minds of many, in 1963 the United Nations adopted the International Coffee Agreement and the International Coffee Organization to help maintain supply and costs of the precious commodity.

The ideas was that if prices could be maintained and farmers could earn a decent wage, communism could be kept at bay in many largely countries who based their economy around the crop.

However, with the end of the Cold War in the late 80′s the United States abandoned the pact and it lost much of it’s value and importance.

And as the 90′s came, so did a mad rush of hipsters buying more coffee than ever before. Countries around the world were encouraged to produce more and more coffee to keep up with the demand — which of course resulted in a huge surplus of coffee.

The huge surplus and the loss of the governmental protection (the International Coffee Agreement) sent prices plummeting.

So while farmers busted their tails to produce the coffee, they were seeing little to no return on their annual crop — not nearly enough to feed, house and educate their family.

Some farmers were even locked into growing more coffee because of the land they lived on or through government mandates. They were left with very few options.

And in 2001, after years of falling prices, the global price of coffee hit an all time low.

And yet, while farmers were seeing pennies for their hard work — coffee drinkers everywhere saw no reduction in price — but the coffee distributors saw record profits.

Our addiction was now pushing others further and further and further into poverty.

In her book, Everyday Justice, Julie Clawson writes about one Ugandan farmer who says, he wishes that every Western coffee consumer understood that “the drink they are enjoying is the cause of all our problems. We grow it with our sweat and sell it for nothing.”

And as the cycle continues, farmers are either forced off their land when they can’t pay their bills or forced to give up with a lack of hope.

The typical first resort is for farmers to move to already overcrowded cities, in hopes of finding work.

In Mexico, these scenario plays out even more dramatically as farmers have seen their livelihoods ruined by “free trade” and the influx of tariff-free goods from the United States (NAFTA).

After losing their farms, farmers move to the city in hopes of finding work — but of course there are only so many jobs. And as a last resort many farmers turn to well-paying illegal crops or immigrate to the United States in hopes of a better life.

How does Fair Trade help?

Fair Trade Certified products guarantee that farmers and workers received a fair price for their product. Similar to the USDA Organic label for organic foods, the Fair Trade label on products like your daily coffee, means are paid fairly and that they can feed their families and that their children can go to school instead of working in the fields.

Farmers who earn the Fair Trade Certification often make 2-3 times what they would have made on their own in the market.

Fair Trade Certification also empowers farmers and helps lift them out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and helping the farmers develop business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

What can we do?

• Educate yourself on the issue
• Purchase coffee (and other products like tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, sugar, rice, and vanilla) that is Fair Trade Certified from your local stores when possible, or online if there’s none available locally
• Request your local stores to carry more Fair Trade products (especially if they don’t carry any)
• Share the story with others
• Encourage your friends, co-workers, work places and communities of faith to purchase Fair Trade (Imagine if all our communities of faith took “Love your neighbor” seriously on Sunday mornings and only purchased coffee that was ethically grown!)

When we begin to realize that the purchases we make impact the lives of others around the world, we can all learn to be better citizens of the global community and learn how to truly love our neighbors in new and exciting ways.

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