Relationship Coffees and "Fair Trade"

 

Coffee is the second-highest traded commodity in the world and fifty percent of it is grown on small family farms. In America alone, 2.3 billion pounds of coffee are consumed each year, and for every daily coffee drinker there is a worker that depends on the crop for his or her livelihood. But the majority of small family farmers are living in poverty. They don’t have the money or the means necessary to transport their crop from their mountain-growing communities to their local market. They must rely on local middlemen to buy their crop from them. Forced to sell at rock-bottom prices with no other means of income and no other option to exhaust, the small coffee farmer gets stuck in a cycle of dependency that becomes impossible to break.

Fair trade gives farmers another way to sell their coffee and companies a better way to buy their coffee. It seeks to shorten the trade route from farmer to roaster by cutting out unnecessary channels. Instead of importers buying their coffee through brokers, exporters, and middlemen, they can purchase directly from small farm co-operatives. These democratic organizations are made up of small coffee farmers whose farms have been Fair Trade Certified. Their coffee is sold through these co-operatives and the money is funneled back through to them. So the farmer is guaranteed to make a profit, and companies are guaranteed that the price they are paying is going back to the communities in which their coffee is grown. And, paying our farmers fair wages does not necessarily mean the products cost the consumer more. Since Fair Trade Organizations bypass exploitative middlemen and work directly with producers, they are able to cut costs and return a greater percentage of the retail price to the producers.

It is a great idea and it is working to raise living standards in many parts of the world.

However, “Fair Trade” does not help everyone. Transfair (the certifying organization behind Fair Trade) only certifies democratically run farming co-ops. Private coffee estates are not able to be certified because they are not part of a co-op. Many of these estates are already well versed in specialty coffee and are not terribly eager to join a co-op and have a North American certification agency telling them what to do. Developing a direct relationship with these estates provides a good alternative. Fair wages and quality standards can be established by those who are directly buying, roasting and selling their coffee.

There is also the issue of certification costs. It has been unfortunate that as the popularity of Fair Trade goods have grown, the bureaucracy around Fair Trade certification has also grown bringing multiple costs and fees that don’t necessarily benefit the producing farmers or the consumer. Farmers have to pay to be Fair Trade certified. Roasters have to pay to be Fair Trade certified. The movement that purposed to cut out middlemen has now begun to create their own set of middlemen.

Mark’s Brothers is still committed to Fair Trade principles, however. Providing an excellent product for our consumers in such a way that benefits the living standards of our producing farmers is a governing philosophy that got us into the coffee business in the first place. While all of our coffees were purchased at or above Fair Trade prices, only a few are certified “Fair Trade”. And because we have not, as of yet, pursued certification as a Fair Trade roastery you will not find any certification stamp on any of our bags. We are instead pursuing direct relationships with producing partners.

Our desire at Mark’s Brothers Big World Coffee is to create a personal connection between you (the consumer) and our producers. We want to expand your world by introducing you to the people who carefully grew your coffee and harvested and processed your coffee by hand.