Global Exchange : News Updates (#)
„Coffee Program Expands to More Churches -- Three large religious charities are hoping to persuade churchgoers to buy so-called fair-trade coffee, which guarantees farmers a set price for the lucrative crop that often enriches the middleman and not the small grower. Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief and World Relief said they will sign a pact on Friday with the U.S. Agency for International Development to work with small coffee farmers in Nicaragua. The groups hope to create demand for the coffee in the United States through their churches and help the farmers improve coffee quality and diversify their crops.“
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/ update.html - Cached
See Technorati for links to this site, see Alexa for related sites and search this website for ›Fair Trade And Coffee‹.
„Fair-trade organizations and wholesalers, such as Equal Exchange, deal directly with farmers, cutting out the middlemen, and guarantee a minimum price that ensures a living wage even if the world price for coffee drops. Equal Exchange buys from 15 farm cooperatives and sells to retailers such as Louisville's Just Creations.“
http://www.cooperativecoffees.com/about/news/ courierjournal.html
-
Cached
The Coffee Review - the world's leading coffee buying guide
„Given the brutally low prices being paid to farmers for their coffee at this moment in history, it is difficult to be critical of a concept like Fair-Trade certification. Larger farms are threatened with bankruptcy, peasant farmers with starvation, and the American specialty coffee industry with deteriorating supplies of fine coffee. Fair Trade is one response to this crisis. A Fair-Trade seal certifies that a coffee has been produced by a democratically run cooperative of small-holding farmers who have received a fair price, derived by formula, for their coffee.“
http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?id=14
-
Cached
The Coffee Review - the world's leading coffee buying guide
„To simplify, the fair-trade movement determines a formula for a "fair" price for coffee paid to farmers, a price that will make no one rich but which will help subsistence farmers avoid absolute misery. The certifying agency, in this case TransFair USA, also confirms that the farmers who receive this fair price are small holders organized in democratically run cooperatives who follow positive environmental practices. The modest premium paid the farmers according to the fair-trade formula is passed on through the system to coffee lovers, who presumably will happily pay a couple of pennies more per cup, given how much those pennies help struggling farmers.The controversy mainly focuses on whether paying people for coffee on the basis of formula and democratic organization rather than on the basis of quality is wise in the long run. Some of us, me included, have dedicated ourselves to creating a culture around coffee analogous to the culture around wine, with the long-term goal of assuring that people who produce great coffee are paid great coffee prices, rather than the insulting pittance they receive now.“
http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?id=8
-
Cached
The Coffee Review - the world's leading coffee buying guide
„Fair-Trade certification, for those who have not been paying attention, guarantees that farmers have been paid a formula-determined "fair" or economically sustainable price for their coffee, and that most of the Fair-Trade premium makes it back to the farmers who actually perform the work growing the coffee. From what I have observed, the national and international organizations that organize and monitor Fair-Trade certification make efficient and transparent use of the small part of the premium that supports their activities on behalf of the farmers.“
http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?id=93
-
Cached
Global Exchange : Coffee is grounds for initiative
„Other opponents contend the measure will aid few small farmers because "fair-trade" certification is too costly, difficult and time-consuming. And while critics acknowledge that Berkeley's actions don't amount to a hill of coffee beans in the context of a $55 billion worldwide coffee market, they worry that the sentiment will spread to other products and other cities.“
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/ 391.html
-
Cached
Archived in Fair Trade And Coffee