It seems you can’t move for people asking (is it Fairtrade) – from Bananas to Coffee the indoctrinated phrase rings out – well it may work for the Banana grower (although I don't know that for a fact), but in the coffee industry, where Fairtrade started, we think it’s loosing the plot and not giving the leadership needed to produce and promote a quality product. You may know we don’t roast Fairtrade coffee and this is for many reasons, with our main gripes being:
- the price paid to the coffee farmer
- the quality of Fairtrade coffee
- self-sustainability of the model
- the unfairness found within the model
On the price issue - we don’t believe enough is given back to the farmer from the premium paid by the brand beaten consumer as most of the premium ends up with supermarkets profits and Fairtrade operating fees. Fair? And then there is the quality issue - and this is what prompted me to write this - we are due to visit Uganda and Ethiopia in November to hunt out some new coffees and visit existing farms / areas we already deal with.
Talking to contacts on the ground in these Countries we have been asked to visit a Fairtrade Co-op during this trip where we are told there is top quality coffee that does not get sold as Fairtrade, but goes to the open market. Hmmm. This is not the first time we have seen this and it happens because the price in the open market is solely determined by quality, the better the quality the higher the price paid and thus the more the farmer earns for his family - this is why last year we paid way way above the Fairtrade minimums for our coffee, which of course we are very please to do - the farmer gets well paid for a job well done, we are happy as we get a top quality product and our Customers are happy as they get quality in the cup.
So what is happening in the Fairtrade Farms (and this is not isolated) is the farmer sells his quality beans in the open market for a high price and then dumps his poorer beans into the Fairtrade market, where he is guaranteed a minimum price regardless of quality which the consumer ends up paying more to support the supermarket - : a fair model? This is happening because Fairtrade co-operatives mix every farmer’s beans together, farmers who improve quality within the Co-op receive the same payment as those who do not, which of course discourages crop improvement and self sustainability within the marketplace.
Maybe I’ve got it wrong - and people that are asking ‘is it Fairtrade’ are asking the question because they don’t want to buy Fairtrade coffee anymore. A question worth considering next time you brew one of our coffees or conversely get caught short and find yourself asking for a double espresso in a high street chain that embraces the brand.
We are not adverse to Fairtrade - we just believe there are far better ways to imporve the living standards of coffee farmers and workers on the coffee farms - and producing a quality product is the foundation to self sustainability.