photo credit: Mykl Roventine

It’s the stereotypical routine. You wake up, smash your alarm clock, smell the coffee brewing on your automatic drip-brewer, trundle downstairs and begin your day with a hot java. Quaint, cozy and all-American. But there’s a catch. Should your conscience be bothering you about your coffee? If it is not fair-trade coffee, the simple answer to this question is: Yes.

Today, many coffee lovers and non-coffee lovers alike have heard the term ‘fair trade coffee.’ You see it in the grocery stores, in your local coffee shop, and Starbucks uses it as an excuse to charge $90 for a 16 oz. cappuccino. But what is this stuff? What is fair-trade coffee? It is a wonderful, revolutionary way of doing business that truly needs to spread to other industries as well.

First off, what many people are beginning to realize is that many of the coffee plantations, especially in South America, are basically sweat shops. Workers are paid terrible wages and are forced to work in horrendous conditions. Often, due to the market demands of increasing one’s profits, the coffee farmers have to sell their coffee for less than they spend in production. The problem is obvious: a cycle of increasing poverty and unfairness for these smaller farms. Thus, the huge coffee production facilities which make less quality coffee and have questionable practices are drumming out these smaller farmers. Although this is capitalism, it is not good capitalism. Fair-trade coffee does not dictate a bunch of controls on capitalism, it simply proposes the idea of capitalism with conscience.

Fair-trade coffee basically insures and requires that certain strict requirements are met in the buying and selling of coffee. One of these requirements, currently, is that an importer must pay no less than $1.26 per pound of coffee in order to be termed Fair Trade. Furthermore, importers are required to give credit to farmers and even help them improve their practices. As a recent development, Fair Trade certifications are pushing a move to organic coffee farming practices.

In essence, fair-trade coffee is the coffee industry with a regulated and accountable conscience. In fact, consumers are even seeing this practice expand to other industries. Our hope should be that fair-trade practices become more of the rule, rather than the exception. It is not a fantasy that, if this happened, it could quite simply change the world. So remember that fair trade means capitalism with conscience.