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By Laurel Hopwood
 Fair trade is an innovative approach that guarantees farmers will
receive a fair price for their products. This allows them higher
living standards, sustainable farming practices and improved working
conditions.
Fair Trade Certified coffee is available from dozens of African,
Latin American and Asian countries. Hundreds of small-scale, worker-owned
cooperatives representing 500,000 farmers and their families grow
and export coffee through the Fair Trade market. Fair Trade standards
also exist for tea, cocoa, chocolate, spices, and some fruit.
When a product bears the fair trade label, it means that it has
passed strict economic, social, and environmental criteria for
certification. The system eliminates the middleman by creating
direct trade relationships with farmers. Workers are empowered
by instituting a democratic decision making process. Unfair child
labor practices are eliminated.
That's not all. Fair trade representatives teach farmers the value
of reducing erosion and waste, limiting pesticides, and protecting
waterways and virgin forests. With greater economic independence,
fair trade farmers can afford better food, housing and keep their
children in school.
Historically, the collapse of world coffee prices has been contributing
to societal meltdowns affecting millions of people, resulting in
a combustible brew of unemployment, hunger and migration. Coffee
farmers are now receiving only twenty cents per pound for their
crops, which is one third of the actual cost of production. Although
there is no easy answer to solving the price crisis, Fair Trade
is a viable market-based alternative that enables farmers to survive
and invest in their farms and communities. For many, the fair trade
system has meant the difference between keeping their land and
farming successfully or losing it and drifting into urban slums.
Flora and Antonio Montenegro were some of the early pioneers.
They produced Fair Trade Certified coffee on their small coffee
farm in Nicaragua for export to the United States. At that time,
fair trade seemed hopelessly fringe. Equal Exchange embarked on
a tireless educational campaign. At the start, this fair trade
company was ridiculed by the coffee industry for being naive. The
conventional wisdom was that you couldn't pay small-scale producers
more than the world commodity price and still expect to compete
at retail. Equal Exchange remained vigilant.
Fair trade has now reached critical mass. In 2003, Dunkin' Donuts
announced that all of its espresso would be Fair Trade Certified.
For many in the coffee industry, this was the singular event that
announced fair trade had arrived. In an effort to boost its flagging
morning business, McDonald's followed suit. Presently, thousands
of retail outlets, faith based organizations, and college campuses
are carrying Fair Trade Certified coffee.
Every time you purchase a Fair Trade product, you are participating
in a humane alternative to an economic system that has disastrous
social and environmental consequences for the developing world.
Consider changing your own purchasing habits and ask your employer
to jump on the wagon. Then go to bed at night knowing that more
farmers got a fair price and more families are living a better
life.
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