Conscious Consumer - Bringing It Home

I encourage people to make environmentally conscious choices because we all have to solve this climate crisis. Albert Arnold Gore, Jr, American Politican

Why Buy Fair Trade?

As we drink our morning cup of coffee, the people involved in growing that coffee bean are far from our thoughts. As consumers, our purchasing has profound impact on the lives of the close to 20 million people who are involved in coffee production.

Many of the foods that we consume every day- such as coffee, tea, bananas and sugar- come from farmers in the Third World. Unfortunately, many of these products are produced and traded in such a way that very little of the price we pay in our stores reaches the people who actually did the work.

Many of the nearly 20 million workers involved in coffee production live in extreme poverty in some of the poorest countries of the world, such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru and Tanzania. From picking to roasting, coffee farmers must put the coffee through a variety of stages including depulping, fermenting, cleaning, drying and storing. These labor-intensive processes require much skill, dedication and hard work on the part of the workers.

At the heart of the problem is control of production. Coffee originates from either plantations and estates or small farms. Plantations are traditionally run and owned by wealthy landowners. Many people are forced to work on these plantations for very low wages. Small farmers who are lucky enough to own their own farms frequently live in isolated communities and are forced to sell their coffee to middlemen at very low prices.

The coffee chain can be a long one- farmer, middlemen, processor, tax agencies, exporter, broker, roaster, wholesaler, retailer and finally, to you, the consumer. Typically, there may be eight different links in the chain, all taking a piece of the monetary pie. Because farmers are cut off from the marketplace, profits go to businessmen and large landowners who control land, capital and access. The end result being that the original small farmer realizes little profit while doing most of the hardest work.

Fair trading practices create an economy of scale, access to markets and hope for a better future that traditionally have not existed for small farmers. According to Rosario Castellon of PRODECOOP, "the gap between the few who are in power and the poor is large. Fair trade gives more opportunities to move ahead."

Why Shade Grown Coffee?

Shade grown coffee is harvested from coffee shrubs grown under an over-story of trees. Shade trees mixed with coffee shrubs support twice the number and diversity of birds than sun-grown coffee fields. Not only are there more birds, there are more insects (food for insectivores), orchids, reptiles and many other organisms inhabiting this supportive environment.

Coffee grown in full sunlight provides higher yields resulting in higher profits for coffee farmers. Full-sun coffee growers use pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers to pump up those yields even further. Many coffee farmers are being pressured to switch from traditional growing methods so they can be more profitable. Full-sun coffee fields, which resemble row-planted cornfields, are fully mechanized and eliminate jobs for hundreds of indigenous workers that have relied on picking coffee for generations.

Smithsonian researchers have found that 40% of Latin American coffee growers have converted to full-sun coffee. This involves the removal of trees through clear-cutting practices and has substantially decreased forest habitat that birds have depended on for thousands of years.

Coffee shrubs grown under shade trees have to be harvested by hand, requiring the sensitive skills of native workers taught from generation to generation, rather than the impersonal and potentially damaging process of machine harvesting. Ecologically responsible hand-harvesting can also yield various other products such as firewood, lumber and medicinal plants.

Coffee beans grown under the shade of trees mature more slowly and are recognized by coffee experts to have a superior flavor compared with direct sunlight grown coffee. Most shade-coffee growers also use traditional methods to dry and process the beans which intensify the flavor even more. So not only do you get great tasting coffee, you help the birds, their environment, the family-owned farms and those doing the harvesting!

 

 

OP