DLC Blog

Fair Trade: It Makes a Better Cup of Coffee.

Fair Trade: It Makes a Better Cup of Coffee.

When people all over the U.S. and abroad think of Seattle, what do they associate the city with? Residents of Washington and non-residents alike like to spout off famous things or people that call Seattle home: The grunge band Nirvana, Microsoft, Jimi Hendrix, Boeing, and of course, coffee.

Not only is Seattle home to the world’s biggest coffee corporation, Starbucks, but Seattleites are notorious for their coffee sophistication, whether it be orders of grande-nonfat-no-foam-extra-hot-sugar-free-vanilla lattes or walking down the street for three minutes and passing twice as many coffee shops.

So, to Seattleites, and all Washingtonians: it’s time to be responsible about our coffee addictions. What I’m talking about is the growing grass-roots movement of Fair Trade advocates who are fighting to get coffee corporations like Starbucks to pay fair prices to coffee growers and promote organic, environmentally friendly growing methods.

The Fair Trade movement started first in Europe, later to be established in the U.S., when fair trade advocates realized that coffee producers in poverty-stricken countries, especially in Latin America, faced tremendous disadvantages in the global market; the prices they received for their coffee were scandalously low, and growers were forced to sell the future rights to their harvest to exploitative middlemen in exchange for the credit they needed to pay for basic necessities.

photo courtesy of www.alternativegrounds.com

Fair Trade mandates that coffee buyers must buy directly from the growers, not middlemen, and pay no less than $1.26 per pound. This really isn’t a lot to ask; a pound of coffee in most stores can cost as much as $10-$12!

In recent years, Fair Trade activists have focused their attention on Starbucks, who was initially very hesitant on offering Free Trade certified coffee in their stores. But a lot of campaigning, letter-writing, and peaceful demonstrations in front of Starbucks locations across the country eventually changed its mind.

Last May, after a lot of student campaigning by the Fair Trade Coffee Coalition (FTCC), the University of Washington opened it’s first 100 percent Fair Trade coffee outlet on campus, serving Tully’s Fair Trade Certified espresso blend.

These recent successes are a big step in the right direction, but we need to do more to ensure that coffee growers in developing countries, at the very least, can afford to feed their families and pull themselves out of debt. So do your part, and buy Fair Trade!

photo courtesy of www.alternativegrounds.com

-Becca Lewis
Foreign Language and Social Studies Student Mentor

Posted by Becca on December 8, 2006 04:18 PM.