Tag Archives: Fair Trade

113. More on quality, innovation and risk

2010-12-07 Comments Off on 113. More on quality, innovation and risk

Lest someone think the subsidies we are providing to reduce farmer risk are the exclusive domain of development agencies and NGOs that spend other peoples’ money, I want to share some details today about a roaster that has taken a similar approach. Equal Exchange, the pioneering Fair Trade roaster, is paying a farmer organization in El Salvador to implement new post-harvest practices, without regard to cup quality.

110. Coffee quality: Fair Trade’s competitive advantage

2010-11-25 Comments Off on 110. Coffee quality: Fair Trade’s competitive advantage

Yesterday I suggested that Fair Trade has little to do with quality on the roasting and retail end of the coffee chain. On the sourcing end, however, I believe that there are elements of the Fair Trade model that help certain Fair Trade roasters get a leg up on the competition.

109. Coffee quality: What’s Fair Trade got to do with it?

2010-11-24 Comments Off on 109. Coffee quality: What’s Fair Trade got to do with it?

I suggested yesterday that Fair Trade coffee is on a roll. I think it is important to reflect further on the relationship between Fair Trade and quality, as much of what accounts for coffee quality has nothing at all to do with Fair Trade

108. Fair Trade and coffee quality

2010-11-23 Comments Off on 108. Fair Trade and coffee quality

Fair Trade roasters have taken the last two Roast Magazine Microroaster of the Year awards, while Fair Trade coffees got high praise in a feature in Coffee Review not too long ago. I have to agree with Kenneth Davids: Fair Trade coffee has indeed been “on a bit of a roll.”

105. The Coffeelands Blog turns 1

2010-11-04 Comments Off on 105. The Coffeelands Blog turns 1

Tomorrow, the CRS Coffeelands Blog turns 1. We won’t be able to publish the standard one-year-old birthday party picture of a wide-eyed baby with a face — and hands and hair and clothes — covered in icing and cake crumbs, but I did want to do something to observe the happy occasion.

91. The future of Fair Trade

2010-09-09 Comments Off on 91. The future of Fair Trade

I have published some critiques of Fair Trade Certification here in recent weeks, and have gotten some thoughtful and even-minded pushback about it both online and off. I feel compelled, as they say in the U.S. Congress, to “revise and extend my remarks” about Fair Trade. In so doing, I will turn for help to one of the great parliamentarians of the 20th century, and a small group of allies working to shape Fair Trade in the 21st.

90. Fair Trade Certification in the news, unfortunately

2010-09-07 Comments Off on 90. Fair Trade Certification in the news, unfortunately

Last week, the Seattle Times published an article on Direct Trade that did not reflect particularly well on Fair Trade Certification. Then a bad moment for Fair Trade was made worse when Sprudge cherry-picked the worst lines of the article, which had more than its share of unfortunate content.