Fair Trade Coffee

Think your £2 coffee is a product of fair play and friendly workmanship? Wrong.

Coffee farmers are being exploited in Latin America and Africa every day. Exploitation, in a nutshell, is vulnerable small-time production farmers not being paid the fair amount of revenue for their bean production and often being paid under the coffee production value, subsequently leaving them in poverty and debt. This problem affects thousands of lives, but many turn a blind eye to it.

Things are being done about it, but nothing hits home quite as hard as Fair Trade.

The Fair Trade brand strives to put an end to the exploitation of coffee farmers by paying them the correct pound for pound value of what they produce. The Fair Trade brand is expanding, and by 2009 157 million pounds worth of Fair Trade coffee was being bought in the UK alone.

To gain the right to bear the Fair Trade name, coffee producers must comply to a whole bunch of rules and regulations, of which I am not going to reel out. In simple words, the coffee farmers get the pay they have so rightly earned, without being ripped off.

More than anything, the Fair Trade brand gets you thinking about what you buy.

So next time you’re at Morrisons,  Asda, or Tesco, take into consideration the coffee farmers you are indirectly exploiting with your morning buzz, and opt for Fair Trade coffee.

Fair Trade Coffee, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

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