Inside your copy of CTA's organizing packet, Focus on Sweatshops, is a pamphlet about Fair Trade coffee. TransFair USA does the Fair Trade consumer education and the certification of Fair Trade coffee and tea in the U.S. TransFair had a busy booth at the CTA conference in Los Angeles, and will be there in Philadelphia and in Chicago. TransFair staffer Deborah Hirsh contributed this article.
Small-scale family farmers grow more than half the world's coffee supply. And, while gourmet coffee is booming, the untold story is that small growers are always disadvantaged, for several reasons: 1) Small farmers are many steps removed from the market and lack access to credit. With little or no income in the months between the annual coffee harvest, farmers must accept whatever local middlemen offer - prices far below their production costs. 2) Market price volatility creates steep price drops, exacerbating their already marginal situation, locking them into a cycle of debt and extreme poverty.
Where Fair Trade comes in
Fair Trade isn't charity. It's a consumer-driven, alternative economic model that addresses the root causes of these small growers' poverty: their lack of access to the market and credit. Fair Trade enables family farmers in developing countries who have organized their own export cooperatives to sell directly to importers in North America. Through direct trade, guaranteed fair prices (importers must pay $1.26 a pound to farmer coops) and access to credit, Fair Trade helps farming families improve their nutrition and healthcare, keep their kids in school, and re-invest in their farms.
The current crisis in world coffee prices is devastating coffee growing communities in the Global South. In real terms, prices have dropped to their lowest levels in history. This means that coffee farmers are currently receiving between 20 to 25 cents a pound selling to the conventional market. A farmer's average cost of production is 75 cents/pound. (No cooperative is selling more than 30 percent of its coffee via Fair Trade; the rest is sold under conventional terms.) These low prices make it nearly impossible for farmers to invest in land stewardship or care for their families. Thousands have left their communities in search of other sources of income. The opportunity to sell to the Fair Trade market is the only existing mechanism for helping small farmers to keep their farms this year.
This is a critical moment for TransFair USA and for the coffee farmers who depend upon Fair Trade for their survival. This is why TransFair is requesting our friends in social justice communities to commit to serve only Fair Trade Certified coffee in your parishes, offices and institutions. In doing so, you can help to bring economic justice to thousands of coffee growing families in their time of greatest need. For information about the companies which offer Fair Trade Certifed coffees, call TransFair USA at 510 663-5260 or visit www.transfairusa.org
To know if your coffee is Fair Trade Certified by TransFair USA, look for this seal!
