03/26/2008
What's Just About Fair Trade?
By Louise Shawkat
Fair Trade verses Free Trade
Free trade allows the open, free market to determine who will succeed. Results? With no guidelines, the poor and disenfranchised often get left behind.
Coffee farmers are typically some of the poorest people on the planet. We expect them to grow the most fragrant and delicious coffee and then individually pick each ripe coffee cherry by hand. In the end, they are rarely paid a living wage for these efforts. Cooperative Coffees develops direct relationships with partner-producers based on fairness and an open exchange of information.
Fair Trade guarantees these folks a livable, fair wage. If the international coffee market price for a pound of coffee goes below this fair trade price (which it often does), we pay the farmers the higher fair trade price. If the coffee market goes above the fair trade price, the farmer gets the higher price.
read more | post comment
