What is Fair Trade Coffee: Your Ultimate Guide to Understanding the Movement
Learn fair-trade coffee facts and why the fair trade movement is worth paying attention to.
Did you know it takes over four years from the time a coffee bean starts growing to when it ends up in the cup you are sipping it from?
It’s true!
The coffee growing process is long and difficult, which is why buying fair-trade coffee has become more popular in recent decades.
Buying fair-trade coffee helps ensure that the workers who pick your coffee beans get paid a fair wage.
It also comes with many other benefits worth considering before making your next coffee purchase.
At Aethereal Coffee, we’ve been purchasing and roasting fair-trade coffee beans for over five years.
That’s why we put together this article to explain what fair trade coffee is and how it can benefit your life and the lives of others.
And here’s a pro-tip: Fair trade coffee tastes better, too.
So, grab a cup of coffee and buckle up – let’s talk fair trade:
Fair Trade Coffee Definition
Before we dive in, you should know that “fair trade” can be spelled three different ways: Fair-trade, Fairtrade, and Fair Trade. So, you may see it show up differently in this article and in other places depending on the application.
Now, let’s get into it. To understand fair trade coffee, you need to know a little bit about the fair trade movement.
Fair trade is an approach to global selling that aims to help producers and growers in developing countries achieve better conditions and promote sustainability practices.
The movement focuses on providing fair prices, ensuring ethical treatment of workers, and supporting environmentally friendly practices.
Growers and farmers can receive a fair trade certification, which helps consumers like you know that the company practices fair trade and inspires you to buy from them.
Here are six key principles of the fair trade movement:
Fair Prices: Producers such as coffee farmers receive a minimum price for their product which covers the cost of sustainable living and production.
Fair Labor Conditions: When you buy fair trade, it means the workers who helped create your product are provided with safe working conditions and fair wages. Fair trade also prohibits the use of child labor and forced labor.
Direct Trade: This means that roasters like us purchase from fair trade producers as directly as possible, eliminating unnecessary middlemen that could potentially drive up prices and cut into the wages for the workers behind the products you are buying.
Community Development: Producers with a fair-trade certification receive a premium to invest in social, economic, or environmental development projects for their communities.
Environmental Sustainability: Certified fair trade producers practice environmentally friendly production methods, and emphasize sustainable agriculture and resource management.
Respect for Cultural Identity: The fair trade movement also supports and respects the cultural identity and traditions of the producers and their workers.
Growers who practice fair trade can apply to receive a fair trade certification from several different organizations including Fairtrade International, Fair Trade USA, and the World Fair Trade Organization.
The certification helps to show retailers and consumers that the producer meets fair trade standards.
Fair trade products can include tea, chocolate, sugar, textiles, handicrafts, and yes, coffee!
How Does the Fair Trade Coffee Industry Work?
The coffee industry is one of the largest and most important sectors where fair trade practices are applied.
Harvesting coffee is challenging due to the nature of the coffee plant and the conditions under which it grows, which is why purchasing fairtrade coffee can help make it a bit easier for those who do the hard work.
Here are some of the reasons why coffee is difficult to harvest:
Challenging Labor Requirements: Coffee beans start out as coffee cherries, which ripen at different times, even on the same branch! This means harvesters have to manually select only the ripe cherries, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming.
It also means that the process requires skilled workers who can identify ripe cherries and handle them carefully to avoid damaging the plant or unripe cherries that have yet to be harvested.
Geographical Challenges: Coffee is grown in hilly and mountainous regions with steep slopes, making it difficult for machinery to operate and for workers to access the plants safely.
Coffee farms are frequently located in remote areas, which means workers often pack down your coffee harvest on their backs. Bet you didn’t know all of that went into your cup of coffee!
Weather Dependency: The weather can also make harvesting coffee more difficult. Harvesting isn’t always possible during the rainy season, which can hinder access to coffee fields.
Additionally, coffee plants are highly sensitive to temperature changes, which means adverse weather conditions can impact the success of the harvest.
Perishability and Timing: The coffee cherries need to be harvested quickly when they are ripe to prevent overripening and spoilage, which can degrade the quality of your coffee beans.
The cherries must also be processed quickly after picking to maintain quality, which means the producer must have efficient logistics and infrastructure in place.
All of these challenges require coffee producers to invest in skilled labor, effective management practices, and innovative solutions to optimize the harvest process while ensuring the quality of your coffee beans.
When you buy fair trade coffee, your dollars go toward making the process a little bit better.
Benefits of Fair Trade Coffee
The feel-good vibes you get from knowing your fair trade coffee is helping the workers who pick your beans aren’t the only benefits of buying fair trade coffee.
Investing your hard-earned dollars into a bag of fair trade coffee is also better for the planet.
Fair trade coffee promotes sustainability practices that have a significant environmental impact.
These include:
Sustainable Farming Practices: Fair trade coffee encourages sustainable farming methods, including organic farming and crop rotation, which help maintain soil health and reduce erosion.
Reduced Chemical Use: Farmers are also encouraged to minimize or eliminate the use of harmful pesticides and fertilizers, which leads to healthier ecosystems, better working conditions for farmers – and a better-tasting cup of coffee for you!
Biodiversity Conservation: Fair trade standards often promote the preservation of natural habitats, helping protect wildlife and ecological balance.
Climate Change Mitigation: Many fair trade farmers practice agroforestry, where coffee is grown under the canopy of native trees. This means carbon dioxide is directed back into growing the coffee plants rather than entering the atmosphere, which can contribute to global warming.
Even though purchasing fair trade coffee is more expensive than conventionally grown coffee, now you can see where the higher price is coming from and make a buying decision that’s right for you.
The Best Fair Trade Coffee Benefit of All
Let’s circle back to one of the key parts of the fair trade coffee movement, which is the premium that producers get when they get certified.
Yes! Fair trade coffee producers receive money back from the certification organization to help them invest in their communities for things like education, infrastructure, and business development.
When you buy fair trade products, you help cover the cost of this premium and know that some of your money is going back into the communities where your coffee came from. Pretty cool, right?
We think so, which is why we *only* work with fair-trade coffee growers or those in the process of getting certified.
Here are a few of the projects our farmers have invested in:
Our coffee bean producer Gold Mountain Coffee Growers in Nicaragua invested money into providing running water for schools far from the utility grid
Our coffee producer in Colombia invests money into training the youth in the coffee industry, including marketing, production, and even becoming certified tasters! P.S. - They also built a swimming pool to provide fun breaks in between lessons!
Our coffee grower in Sumatru is fully women-owned and works to promote the education and advancement of women in this Indonesian island country.
There truly is a trickle-down effect when it comes to fair trade coffee. And we’ve barely touched on flavor!
Give Yourself the Fair Trade Coffee Gift
Now you know all of the incredible ways buying a single bag of fair trade coffee can impact your life and the lives of others.
Investing in fair trade coffee can have a huge impact on the world, from promoting fair labor practices to supporting local communities worldwide to helping prevent climate change.
Are you ready to make the switch?
Aethereal Coffee puts all the fair trade love into each and every bag of coffee we roast. Whether you use a simple drip coffee maker or like to get fancy with an Espresso machine, there’s a soul-warming bag of beans waiting for you here.
Plus, we ship your coffee in a compostable bag so that we can keep the environmental impact to a minimum.
So, what are you waiting for? Taste the fair trade difference in body and soul.
