This morning as I sip my coffee, and read coffee news from around the world, I keep reading about the failure of Fair Trade Coffee. I believe Fair Trade was started on the best of intentions, after all we want farmers to make a good living producing the coffee we love. Studies are showing more and more that money is not going where it really needs to go - to the farm worker.
The University of London has recently announced a study showing that farm workers are mostly unskilled labor, and they may make between $500-$1000 a year. These are the people who go out into the fields and pick and then process the coffee. I have been on coffee farms, and the terrain is mountainous and muddy in Central America. I can only imagine what conditions are like in other farming regions.
Farm workers usually means a family travels from farm to farm picking coffee. They have children out there filling HUGE burlap bags of coffee cherries. This is what families do to stay alive. Is that a life though?
Fair Trade needs to be re-evaluated. It was built on the premise that the farmer(owner) needed to be helped, but somehow that money is not getting to the ones doing a majority of hard work. I'm hoping the practices can be changed so the worker will benefit too.
If not, how comfortable are you with this?
Charlie
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