What one bean can do: the mystery behind fair trade coffee
By Mary Pritchard
Edited by Lauren Fitch
High in the mountains of Nicaragua, a tiny coffee bean grows on its tree until the sun-tanned hands of a Nicaraguan farmer pluck it from the branches.
The bean then joins hundreds of thousands of other shiny brown coffee beans in a warehouse.
At the co-op roasting plant, the bean is roasted by machines, sorted by hand and tasted by trained coffee connoisseurs.
This roasted, sorted and taste-tested bean is assigned an adjective-laden flavor (“medium bodied, full roasted, light acidic vanilla bean”) and then packaged with other beans from the same area. This gives the coffee a richer, more cohesive flavor.
This little coffee bean ships to buyers directly from the co-op plant and is placed on shelves in stores all over the world.
When that little coffee bean is purchased, taken home and brewed into a steaming mug of joe, it is giving the sun-tanned hands back in Nicaragua a fair portion of its profits.
The family high in the mountains is able to maintain a living because of the journey of that little coffee bean.
From the mountainside to a mug of coffee, that little coffee bean is now a part of something bigger—the fair trade movement.
Several students at Grand Valley State University have joined the fair trade cause by selling fair trade items in the Kirkhof Center on campus.
Their table stood out in the student center, draped in pinks and reds with glitter sprinkled over pyramids of fair-trade chocolate, dusting the petals of fair-trade roses and blending in with the red-wrapped fair trade condoms.
Yes, fair trade condoms.
Safe AND fair The fair trade movement has even spread to condoms, making it one of the few things spread by using a condom. (Courtesy of the french letter main.com)
“It’s the rubber in them that is fairly traded,” said Sarah Sheber, a member of the group that was manning the table. Sheber pointed to a slip of paper that summed up the gist of the fair trade movement.
It read: “Thank you for purchasing a socially responsible Valentine’s Day present for your valentine. Through this purchase, you have helped farmers in developing communities to have sustainable farming practices, provide for their families and communities and make a higher wage.”
She also explained what sparked her support for the cause.
“I wasn’t involved in the fair trade club last year, but after I went to Nicaragua this summer I knew I had to be involved,” Sheber said.
Sheber spent three weeks in Central America with six other students for a class in the psychology department called “psychology of social inequality.”
“Here is this gorgeous country with amazing people that we have treated so badly and yet they are still nice to us. If I were a Nicaraguan I’d have a bone to pick,” Sheber said, speaking of the social injustices the people have endured.
Sheber went on to describe how Nicaraguans don’t have the infrastructure to market their own goods.
So when coyotes, or middle men, offer to sell it for them for a fraction of the cost they should be receiving, they have no choice but to accept.
This is where fair trade comes in to play.
During her time in Nicaragua, Sheber spent a week in the mountains with a family of coffee growers who use a fair trade co-op to sell their beans.
“They didn’t have a lot, but they were still better off than the farmers who don’t work through fair trade,” Sheber said. “They own their own land, and I can’t stress what a big deal that is for them because no one can take that away.”
Being certified as “fair trade” seems like the latest trend in an economy that is already plastering “organic” and “green” labels on a nation of products.
Fair trade is the epitome of sustainability—a quality high prized in all three of these labels, said Brian Cesarotti of the Grand Valley State University Students for Fair Trade organization.
“Fair trade is organic. It is sustainable. Sometimes you don’t equate social justice with environmental issues, even though they are interconnected,” Cesarotti said.
Cesarotti described it as a new level of consciousness the consumer is gaining.
However, he worried the support for the movement may just be a passing phase.
“If the market does trend towards the norm in these directions, then that’s a good thing; but if it’s just a niche that can be exploited, than that’s a bad thing that could jeopardize all that we are—organic, fair and just,” he said.
Amy Page, who also participated in the Nicaragua trip with Sheber, stopped to comment on the fair trade movement.
“It’s becoming trendy almost to support causes like fair trade,” said Amy Page, who was lingering near the table piled high with fair trade items.“The green movement is helping; it’s introducing people to this concept.”
Sheber and Page described the pottery and clothing co-ops they visited that use the same principles and follow the same journey as the coffee bean.
FT CertifiedMany businesses must first get certification before calling themselves fair trade businesses(Courtesy of greenoptions.com)
Cesarotti joked even alcohol can be labeled as fair trade.
“When you buy fair trade products, you are supporting a deeper cause,” Page said. “Sometimes you’re buying on a whim; you don’t know where it comes from. Buying fair trade products makes you think a lot more.”
The fair trade certification has specific requirements a company or product must follow before to earn the label.
Generally, five percent of the product must be fairly traded, however Cesarotti said this is subject to the volume of product traded to begin with.
Starbucks, he explained, gets the fair trade label with only two or three percent of their product fairly traded, simply due to their size. Coffee co-ops similar to the ones Sheber and Page visited have 100 percent fairly traded coffee
“Really, the fair trade certification is becoming a marketing label,” Cesarotti said. “It requires minimum standards that don’t always embody the ideals and principles of the movement. They claim to act in solidarity, but in actuality there are very few people speaking on their behalf, which goes against the existing principles.”
He explained because of this a lot of companies don’t bother striving for the official certification but live up to their own ideals of fair trade that can conflict with the overarching goals of the movement.
Fair-trade products aim for the conscience, not the wallet, as evidenced by the products on sale at the Kirkhof.
Cesarotti explained some fair trade products cost more than their non-fairly traded counterparts, due to the base price that is higher for fair trade producers.
The price ensures producers get enough profit for their products to support themselves and reinvest money in their community to pay for things like education and youth programs.
Where are your beans coming from It is important to check to see if your local coffee business is using fair trade for their coffee beans (Courtesy of flyingtigercoffee.org)
Part of the price of a fair trade product is the sustainable and organic farming practices that went into it.
Plus, farmers involved in fair trade co-ops get a steady wage all year round, rather then being dependent on when they sell their product.
Despite the $7 per box cost of the chocolates, students grabbed them up, sometimes two at a time.
Whether this was because their taste was “so worth it,” as Sheber said, or due to the students’ socially conscious shopping habits, is hard to say.
But Cesarotti said the benefit to the consumer doesn’t have a number attached to it.
“You’re benefiting because you have a better idea of where what you are consuming comes from. You’re helping build a relationship between the producer and the consumer, in solidarity,” he said.
This idea of solidarity is important to the fair trade movement as Sheber explained.
Home grown Java city at GVSU provides fair trade coffee
“We get involved not because we want to give them charity, or because we feel sorry for them, but because we feel this solidarity with them. We want to struggle with them,” she said.
Wherever the end of the little coffee bean’s journey was, it has made a world of impact along the way—providing fair wages for its producers and a delicious product for its socially conscious consumers.
By Mary Pritchard
Edited by Lauren Fitch
High in the mountains of Nicaragua, a tiny coffee bean grows on its tree until the sun-tanned hands of a Nicaraguan farmer pluck it from the branches.
The bean then joins hundreds of thousands of other shiny brown coffee beans in a warehouse.
At the co-op roasting plant, the bean is roasted by machines, sorted by hand and tasted by trained coffee connoisseurs.
This roasted, sorted and taste-tested bean is assigned an adjective-laden flavor (“medium bodied, full roasted, light acidic vanilla bean”) and then packaged with other beans from the same area. This gives the coffee a richer, more cohesive flavor.
This little coffee bean ships to buyers directly from the co-op plant and is placed on shelves in stores all over the world.
When that little coffee bean is purchased, taken home and brewed into a steaming mug of joe, it is giving the sun-tanned hands back in Nicaragua a fair portion of its profits.
The family high in the mountains is able to maintain a living because of the journey of that little coffee bean.
From the mountainside to a mug of coffee, that little coffee bean is now a part of something bigger—the fair trade movement.
Several students at Grand Valley State University have joined the fair trade cause by selling fair trade items in the Kirkhof Center on campus.
Their table stood out in the student center, draped in pinks and reds with glitter sprinkled over pyramids of fair-trade chocolate, dusting the petals of fair-trade roses and blending in with the red-wrapped fair trade condoms.
Yes, fair trade condoms.
“It’s the rubber in them that is fairly traded,” said Sarah Sheber, a member of the group that was manning the table. Sheber pointed to a slip of paper that summed up the gist of the fair trade movement.
It read: “Thank you for purchasing a socially responsible Valentine’s Day present for your valentine. Through this purchase, you have helped farmers in developing communities to have sustainable farming practices, provide for their families and communities and make a higher wage.”
She also explained what sparked her support for the cause.
“I wasn’t involved in the fair trade club last year, but after I went to Nicaragua this summer I knew I had to be involved,” Sheber said.
Sheber spent three weeks in Central America with six other students for a class in the psychology department called “psychology of social inequality.”
“Here is this gorgeous country with amazing people that we have treated so badly and yet they are still nice to us. If I were a Nicaraguan I’d have a bone to pick,” Sheber said, speaking of the social injustices the people have endured.
Sheber went on to describe how Nicaraguans don’t have the infrastructure to market their own goods.
So when coyotes, or middle men, offer to sell it for them for a fraction of the cost they should be receiving, they have no choice but to accept.
This is where fair trade comes in to play.
During her time in Nicaragua, Sheber spent a week in the mountains with a family of coffee growers who use a fair trade co-op to sell their beans.
“They didn’t have a lot, but they were still better off than the farmers who don’t work through fair trade,” Sheber said. “They own their own land, and I can’t stress what a big deal that is for them because no one can take that away.”
Being certified as “fair trade” seems like the latest trend in an economy that is already plastering “organic” and “green” labels on a nation of products.
Fair trade is the epitome of sustainability—a quality high prized in all three of these labels, said Brian Cesarotti of the Grand Valley State University Students for Fair Trade organization.
“Fair trade is organic. It is sustainable. Sometimes you don’t equate social justice with environmental issues, even though they are interconnected,” Cesarotti said.
Cesarotti described it as a new level of consciousness the consumer is gaining.
However, he worried the support for the movement may just be a passing phase.
“If the market does trend towards the norm in these directions, then that’s a good thing; but if it’s just a niche that can be exploited, than that’s a bad thing that could jeopardize all that we are—organic, fair and just,” he said.
Amy Page, who also participated in the Nicaragua trip with Sheber, stopped to comment on the fair trade movement.
“It’s becoming trendy almost to support causes like fair trade,” said Amy Page, who was lingering near the table piled high with fair trade items.“The green movement is helping; it’s introducing people to this concept.”
Sheber and Page described the pottery and clothing co-ops they visited that use the same principles and follow the same journey as the coffee bean.
Cesarotti joked even alcohol can be labeled as fair trade.
“When you buy fair trade products, you are supporting a deeper cause,” Page said. “Sometimes you’re buying on a whim; you don’t know where it comes from. Buying fair trade products makes you think a lot more.”
The fair trade certification has specific requirements a company or product must follow before to earn the label.
Generally, five percent of the product must be fairly traded, however Cesarotti said this is subject to the volume of product traded to begin with.
Starbucks, he explained, gets the fair trade label with only two or three percent of their product fairly traded, simply due to their size. Coffee co-ops similar to the ones Sheber and Page visited have 100 percent fairly traded coffee
“Really, the fair trade certification is becoming a marketing label,” Cesarotti said. “It requires minimum standards that don’t always embody the ideals and principles of the movement. They claim to act in solidarity, but in actuality there are very few people speaking on their behalf, which goes against the existing principles.”
He explained because of this a lot of companies don’t bother striving for the official certification but live up to their own ideals of fair trade that can conflict with the overarching goals of the movement.
Fair-trade products aim for the conscience, not the wallet, as evidenced by the products on sale at the Kirkhof.
Cesarotti explained some fair trade products cost more than their non-fairly traded counterparts, due to the base price that is higher for fair trade producers.
The price ensures producers get enough profit for their products to support themselves and reinvest money in their community to pay for things like education and youth programs.
Part of the price of a fair trade product is the sustainable and organic farming practices that went into it.
Plus, farmers involved in fair trade co-ops get a steady wage all year round, rather then being dependent on when they sell their product.
Despite the $7 per box cost of the chocolates, students grabbed them up, sometimes two at a time.
Whether this was because their taste was “so worth it,” as Sheber said, or due to the students’ socially conscious shopping habits, is hard to say.
But Cesarotti said the benefit to the consumer doesn’t have a number attached to it.
“You’re benefiting because you have a better idea of where what you are consuming comes from. You’re helping build a relationship between the producer and the consumer, in solidarity,” he said.
This idea of solidarity is important to the fair trade movement as Sheber explained.
“We get involved not because we want to give them charity, or because we feel sorry for them, but because we feel this solidarity with them. We want to struggle with them,” she said.
Wherever the end of the little coffee bean’s journey was, it has made a world of impact along the way—providing fair wages for its producers and a delicious product for its socially conscious consumers.
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