Under the current system of coffee trade, very little of what consumers pay for coffee, often less than 10%, reaches the farmer who grows the beans.
Of the 25 million coffee producers, approximately 15 million are small farmers. Unable to export directly they must sell their crops to mid-level traders, or as they are commonly called in Central America, coyotes.’ These traders often use their monopoly position to force the farmer to sell low. As lenders, these coyotes demand extremely high interest payments. This type of exploitation results in a spiralling debt cycle that leaves farmers and families further impoverished.
However, there is an alternative. Fairly traded coffee is bought directly from farming cooperatives, which eliminates the role of the midlevel trader and allows farmers to earn a fair living.
Your choice makes a difference. Please support Fair Trade.
Coffee companies doing little to help struggling farmers -- December 9, 2004
Greetings and peace be with you Pure; and thank you for starting this thread
The biggest injustices are done against the poor in the world, about a billion people live on a dollar a day, about half the world population lives on two dollars a day. It seems life is a lottery, there is about a fifty-fifty chance that any one of us could have been born into a family living on two dollars a day.
If you earn over five thousand dollars a year that puts you in the top ten percent of the richest people in the world, most people in the western world would not get out of bed for five thousand a year.
About one thousand billion dollars are spent on the arms industry in a year, which is about a hundred and sixty five dollars for every man, woman and child on this planet.
We don’t trade fairly with the poor of the world, we exploit them, the rich become richer and the poor grind and toil, from day to day.
Coffee has to be one of the most unfairly traded commodities in the world, the retail price has gone up about three hundred percent in the shops over the last twenty years in the UK; yet we are paying the growers about a fifth of what they were getting twenty years ago.
This would be like having a low paid job twenty years ago earning 50p an hour, but only getting 10p per hour for doing the same job today. This would be made worse if you knew that the coffee companies were getting progressively richer thanks to your poverty. Many coffee plantation owners cannot afford to pay their workers, yet we advertise coffee in the UK. As if it is a luxury product.
If you pay around £2.50 for a 100 gram jar of coffee in the UK the growers get about 1p of that, all the profit is in the processing and retailing.
Faitrade is a brand that pays the growers a fairer price for its goods and it can be found in many supermarkets in the UK.
If you live in the UK. You can buy ‘Fairtrade tea, coffee, bananas, dried fruit, sugar, chocolate, clothes and wine.
Big Sugar is a scary reality; it stems off from black slavery all the way from the 1800's. To this day the Haitan sugar cane cutters live in terrible conditons, they work for 12 hours a day for two U.S. dollars a day. http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/bigsugar/index.html
When the big corporations are confronted, their excuse is that "you can't compare the living conditions of North America with the Dominican Rupublic" or the "we give them jobs"
However, there is an alternative. Fairly traded coffee is bought directly from farming cooperatives, which eliminates the role of the midlevel trader and allows farmers to earn a fair living.
salam
Got any company names or websites sis? i usually buy tea only because it owns coffee but if i can find these farmer made brands available i will buy them
Quran[42:40-43] The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah: for (Allah) loves not those who do wrong.
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