Fair Trade Coffee

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©1996-2012 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products

They hire people to oversee the slaves. Unlike slaves of old, these slaves don’t even get enough to eat.

Just what work do these slaves do? They grow and pick coffee, bean by bean, for $0.65 CAD a pound - a price lower than it was even in the depression days of the 1930s.

Coffee-drinking you are an unwitting slave owner.

Perhaps you might consider being outrageously generous and paying the grower  $1.65 CAD a pound instead of $0.65 CAD .

If you are willing to do that, all you have to do is buy coffee marked as Fair Trade. Ask for it at restaurants and grocery stores. There are many different brands to choose from.

It will set you back $0.02 CAD a cup.

If you ask me, people who knowingly keep slaves to save $0.02 a cup on coffee are sick.

It’s easy. Just say, "I’d like a cup of Fair Trade coffee please."

Lobbying

Coffee is big business. It is the leading crop traded on the international market. It is the most valuable international commodity next to oil. Volunteering $0.02 CAD a cup extra for Fair Trade coffee makes a tremendous difference to the grower.

Sources

We buy Creekmore coffee at the local supermarket. It is roasted here on Vancouver Island in Qualicum Beach. Another great local brand is Salt Spring made on nearby Salt spring Island.

You can get Clipper fair trade, organic instant coffee. The coffee is grown in Papua New Guinea and is packed in Germany. This is the best instant coffee I have ever tasted. It hits you with a delicious coffee aroma just opening the jar — expensive but fun. Even Starbucks now offers one fair trade blend they call Café Estima. To their credit, it is one of their least expensive offerings.

To find out where to get it from a source near you try searching for "fair trade coffee".

Since I wrote this essay, Fair Trade coffee has become ubiquitous, at least here in Victoria. Grocery stores carry many brands, and every public event serves fair trade coffee.

The international fair trade certifying organisation is called Fairtrade International. The Canadian fair trade certifying organisation is called Fairtrade.ca aka Transfair. They maintain lists of certified coffee roasting companies. They audit to make sure the coffee truly is fair trade. They also provide similar certification for fair trade chocolate, tea, sugar, tropical fruits, and soccer balls. There is some phony fair trade stuff out there. If you don’t see either of these two certification logos, be suspicious. Most of the world’s fair trade certification groups are in the process of converting to the international logo.

Canada	International

Starbucks Coffee Sizes

Cutting Back

If you claim you can’t afford fair trade coffee, just cut back on your consumption. The easiest way to do that is to scale back on the size of your cup:

You don’t know how big you cup is? Fill it with water and pour it into a kitchen measuring cup.

Cost of a Cup of Coffee

Just how much does a cup of coffee cost? Here is my raw data:

• A cup of coffee is 177 mls (5.99 fl oz).
• A serving of cream is 20 mls (1.35 US tablespoons).
• A serving of sugar is 5 grams (0.18 oz)
• It takes 7 grams (¼ oz) of ground coffee beans to make one cup of coffee.
• 340 grams (11.99 oz) of the very best Fernwood Ethiopian coffee beans cost $17.00 CAD .
• 500 mls (1.06 US pints) of coffee cream costs  $2.25 CAD .
• 1 kg (2.20 lbs) bag of sugar costs $2.50 CAD .

So a cup of spectacularly good coffee you make at home sets you back $0.35 CAD for the coffee beans, $0.10 CAD for each serving of cream, and $0.01 CAD for each serving of sugar. Compare that with a cup of Starbucks or a cup an a restaurant. Most often there is no additional cost for Fair Trade, but even when there is, it amounts to only a few pennies a cup. When people complain about but have no problem with Starbucks prices, it means there is something other than the money at play.

My Choices

A decade ago, fair trade coffee was hard to find, but where I live now, nearly all coffee is fair trade, at least the beans roasted locally. It an embarrassment of riches. There all kinds of specialty coffees. I have tried Kicking Horse Coffee, Salt Spring Coffee and Van Houtte. They are all excellent. Level Ground is delicious but the fair trade credentials are not as clear. My roommate and I consider the Ethiopian Harrar, with notes of Cherry, Tamarind and Cocoa as the best coffee ever. The Solstice Café introduced us to it. You can get it from the Fernwood Coffee Company. McDonalds makes the best coffee for a fast food outlet, but it is not fair trade. I don’t like dark French roasts. I would not start with them if you are just beginning to try something new. Snobs eschew Robusta beans, mainly because they are less expensive. They have that pleasant breakfast coffee smell. Just because a coffee is organic does not mean is Fair Trade and vice versa, so check the labels. You can sometimes be seduced by all the earthy imagery in the ads into presuming both.

When I was a teen I became a coffee snob much like a wine snob, showing off by telling people what their blends were composed of, and hosting a coffee tasting party where I served rare coffees from all over the world. I was popular in student residence because I had mastered the art of making the perfect cup of coffee. The odour would attract people who appeared at my door on all manner of pretexts.

Packaging

In the olden days, coffee always came in 453.59 grams (1 lb) bags. Now it comes is many sizes. When you buy coffee beans, compute the cost per gram, not the cost per bag. Many websites do not tell you how much their bags contain. You have to ask. This is a dishonest business practice, but unfortunately widespread.

Sources

You will notice a predominance of BC and Canadian suppliers below. There are two reasons for this.

1. I am more familiar with local businesses.
2. Fair trade took off in BC long before the rest of the world. BC vendors have a head start.

A number of suppliers offer a coffee-of-the-month subscription. If you don’t know what you like yet, this is a fun way to find out.

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