What is Fair Trade Coffee?

What does the term ‘Fair Trade’ mean and what products are offered?
Fair Trade is a movement designed to help producers of goods in developing countries get a fair price so they can earn a living that makes what they do sustainable and help increase stability in a volatile market. Fair Trade products include coffee, fruit and spices as well as clothing and jewelry.

With Fair Trade coffee, farmers are paid a minimum Fair Trade price of $1.35 per pound of conventionally grown coffee ($1.55 for certified organically grown coffee). The hope is that with the increased prices, coffee producers can use the additional income to not only earn a fair living, but to also invest in their future and develop increased quality control procedures, typically (but not always) resulting in higher quality coffee to consumers.

How much have Fair Trade sales increased over the past several years?
The most abundantly available Fair Trade product on the market today is coffee. Demand for Fair Trade coffee in the US has grown at an average of 26% since 2004, growing by 56% in 2007 alone. Coffee roasters who have carried Fair Trade coffee since 2000 have also experienced an average yearly growth of 125%, so it benefits roasters to appeal to the movement and offer Fair Trade coffee to consumers. The amount of Fair Trade coffee purchased in the US has increased from 2 million pounds in 1999 to 70 million in 2008.

Any other insights on Fair Trade coffee in general?
The increased funds provided by Fair Trade allow producers the opportunity to improve their coffee by making the move to cultivating shade-grown coffee plants, which earn higher prices and is a more environmentally-friendly coffee plant variety. Most non-Fair Trade producers cultivate sun-grown coffee plants which are less environmentally-friendly as they can lead to deforestation and typically require more fertilizers and pesticides that contribute to polluting the environment.

It’s important to note that Fair Trade isn’t a type of coffee, but rather a label that can be placed on any coffee that is purchased at the minimum price designated as being “fair”, regardless of quality or method of cultivation. In fact, the very same coffee that goes unsold being labeled as Fair Trade typically ends up being sold some time later for lower prices without the Fair Trade label. This is one of the inherent flaws with Fair Trade.

Still, the Fair Trade label does increase the likelihood that the coffee was grown under environmentally-friendly conditions (approximately 80% of Fair Trade coffee is shade-grown) and is of higher quality, although this is not a guarantee.

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Ken