As we move into full harvest season here in Central America, prices are at record highs, putting pressure on cooperatives, importers and roasters. One importer friend offered this blunt assessment: “It is going to be ugly.”
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.
The innovations that have potential to boost quality usually require up-front investment and involve some kind of risk. Unfortunately, most of that risk usally falls squarely on the shoulders of the people least able to bear it — smallholder farmers. We are supporting a pilot in Nicaragua that is heavy on quality-driven innovation and light on risk to farmers.
Critics have seized on recent findings on hunger in the coffeelands as evidence of Fair Trade’s failure. I see it more as a failure to understand the complexities of hunger, to communicate appropriately and to set fair expectations for Fair Trade.
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.
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
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.”
ASOCAMPO – Asociación Campesina Pochuteca – is comprised of 112 members who are working to be able to give their children what their parents couldn’t give them – land to call their own.
Back in May, Counter Culture Coffee owner, SCAA President and all-around coffee guru Peter Giuliano took me to task for some pretty lazy reporting. Today, I settle in for a heaping plate of crow.
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.