There is an interesting editorial in the Financial Post about the lack of fairness to poor farmers in the system that certifies fair-trade coffees. Read it here: http://t.co/VJUPrgS. The author raises some issues that I have been made aware of through conversations with growers and other members of the specialty coffee community, such as the expense of Fair-Trade certification and the commensurate lack of access for poor smallholder farms.
However, from a more selfish perspective, Fair-Trade coffee also presents a number of drawbacks, such as lack of information and lower quality beans. Because certification is only available to relatively large cooperatives, specific details about individual lots of coffee are generally sparse. And, while farmers may participate in a fair-trade coop, they may not sell all their coffee through the coop. For high-quality growers, they can often fetch a higher price on the specialty market than the set premium available through the coop. As a result, they will sell their lower-quality beans through the coop and reserve the better stuff for the specialty market. There is also the fact that because coffee from the whole coop is sold together, good and bad quality beans are often mixed together, leading to mediocre quality lots.
Tags: coffee growers, Fair-Trade
