FAIR TRADE COFFEE

Buying fair trade coffee and tea is one of the easiest and most effective ways you can make a difference for millions.

Let's start with the coffee industry, which is one of our biggest sources of commerce worldwide, and advertisers will have you believe it's all about "Juan Valdez" and the pickers are working happily in the fields, side by side, life is good.

Unfortunately, most of this enormous industry is not like this at all. The coffee industry is well known for widespread human rights abuse and economical injustice. Here are a few facts.

WHERE TO BUY FAIR TRADE COFFEE.
10 Surprisingly affordable and common places where youcan find fair trade coffee!

FAIR TRADE AND TEA
The fast growing segment of the fair trade movement.

THE GUATEMALAN COFFEE CRISIS
Cheap coffee from around the world is flooding the coffee market and making it impossible for the small coffee producer in Guatemala to eke out a living.

FARMING COFFEE IN MEXICO
Unlike most of the coffee producing world, most Mexican coffee farmers are still smallholders who feel trapped due to a lack of other work.

COFFEE RESOURCES
A fun resource for coffee drink recipes, baked goods and coffee makers.

With over 130 million coffee drinkers, the United States consumes one fifth of all the world's coffee, making it the number one coffee consumer on the planet, and very little of it is fair trade coffee.

Coffee is America's number one food import, and second largest commodity behind oil. On a GLOBAL level, coffee is the world's second largest traded commodity only behind petroleum. The world's largest coffee producer is Brazil, followed by Columbia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico. Global coffee consumption is now over 12 billion pounds annually.

There are now some 20 million families in 50 countries who are directly involved in coffee cultivation.

Bottom line, consumer action aka buying fair trade coffee, can make a huge difference in the lives of literally millions of people worldwide.

COFFEE PLANTATIONS: More reasons to buy fair trade coffee...

Since coffee is a commodity, the price per pound is driven by the commodities market. Since 1997, coffee bean prices have been falling, reaching a 30 year low in 2001 of just over 41 cents per pound, and an all time low in real terms.

Now, coffee prices hover around 50 cents per pound. Often, the price of the coffee beans is lower than the farmers' cost for production.

In Guatemala and Mexico for example, many coffee plantations or fincas, are set up on a system of serfdom where the workers are indebted to the plantation owners, never quite able to dig their way out of the money trap.

The plantation owners provide a place to live, usually substandard shacks on the property where many pickers share one house. They often are provided with food as well, at inflated prices.

Pickers often leave their homes and families behind to go work on the fincas. At the end of the season, they return home indebted to the plantation owners with wages too low to cover their costs of living, having to come back the following year to repay the plantation owner. Often, if the pickers don't return, the plantation owner sends armed men to force them back. Coffee workers in Guatemala are subject to abysmal working conditions, making LESS than minimum wage and being forced to pick a quota or 100 pounds or more per day. Many are forced to work overtime without compensation, and do not receive any legally-mandated employee benefits.

Because coffee prices and conditions of workers are so poor around the world, coffee workers bring their children into the fields just to get by. Children as young a 8 years old have been found working in these miserable conditions, often without compensation. The rural nature of agricultural workers makes them particularly susceptible to human rights abuses. Labor laws are overlooked, including worker's rights to organize, and they are threatened and coerced, and forced, often at gunpoint to work without minimum wages, health and safety requirements, or the freedom to form unions.

FAIR TRADE COFFEE---HOW IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

They must pay producers a minimum of $1.26 per pound, nearly 3 times the global commodities price. They also must provied much needed credit to the farmers and provide assistance and help in transitioning to sustainable practices such as organic farming.

For the farmers, this means education for themselves and their children, environmental sustainablility, community development in a positive way, meeting their family's medical needs and the ability to provide good food and shelter for their families.

We hold the key to ending this cycle of human rights violations and the endless cycle of poverty and debt. If people buy fair trade certified and reject the others, soon the largest retailers and chains of coffee houses in the world would only be selling fair trade certified coffee. It's that simple.