Olivia Sykes
Sustainable Supply Chain Analyst
A dive into the idea that fair-trade has 'run its course', and looking into the alternative ways to source your coffee.
Coffee is a non-negotiable staple in my day! I spend a lot of time in local coffee shops and had a conversation with an owner of one recently which challenged a belief of mine. He told me he didn’t believe in the fair-trade Certification and that none of the coffees at his cafe were fair-trade. Weird. I had spent years prioritising fair-trade bananas, chocolate and coffee, spending the little extra, on the basis that I thought I was doing good. Apparently, there are many layers to that ‘good’, some of which are not so ‘good’, and methods in which I can be doing it ‘better’.
Fair-trade started in response to the worries of Mexican coffee farmers following the collapse of world coffee prices in the late 1980s. The concept of fair-trade is that it pays producers an above-market “fair trade” price provided they meet specific labour, environmental and production standards with the main objective to reduce poverty. It has a rigorous model for all kinds of products, ensuring producers meet these standards, from which they then receive a certification to slap on their packaging to attract consumers like me. However, this model has never been updated since it was implemented, meaning a loss in development. Around the world, 25 million smallholders produce 70-80 percent of the world's coffee, however, coffee drinkers like me are paying additional fair-trade cost that is not going directly to growers, but are used to maintain cooperatives and the fair-trade model that growers participate in.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea and motivation behind fair-trade is fantastic. It has drawn amazing attention to the inequalities and difficulties for coffee bean farmers, among other commodities, and facilitated immense development, but my coffee shop informant believes it has run its course and there are more ethical ways to get a coffee, without it being fair-trade now. My research supports this.
Small scale roasters and coffee shops doing small scale business with small scale farmers is the most ethical way to consume that cup of coffee. In a study of 12 research sites in Ethiopia and Uganda, it was found that non-fair-trade certified farms paid better wages and provided better working conditions than fair-trade certified farms. The direct trade cut out the middlemen (and their wages), gave the farmers more autonomy over their pricing as they could access global bean prices, allowing them to decide to market themselves fairly individually, and gave the roasters and coffee shops quality beans. This method is not flawless, in a farming market where climate change is making bean harvests considerably less predictable, it does leave farmers with less certainty than they’d receive being part of the fair-trade team. It also puts the onus on the roasters to find and build a relationship with farmers, a mammoth task when dealing with remote locations in Papua New Guinea, for example. However, these are issues that my coffee shop friend has managed to work with and still very strongly believes this is the most ethical way in which he can be a coffee lover and an ethical guy at the same time.
My part to play in this has recently totally changed and it isn’t as complicated as going to Ethiopia to pick my own beans (which would also bring up a whole new problem for how I reduce my carbon footprint). I choose local coffee shops, every time. Those independent cafes care about their product and they’ve done the hard yards, so I don’t have to. When I’m at home using a coffee machine, I have a choice for the beans I use in that. Admittedly, the supermarket is the easiest place to pick up some fair-trade beans and was previously on my weekly grocery list. Instead, I spent time looking into buying them directly from a local, small scale roaster (which is actually also much better coffee) who has developed and maintained long term and fair relationships with their farmers.
My non-negotiable staple has not been compromised but ethically, instead of being ‘good’, it is now ‘better’.
https://ftepr.org/publications/#publication-563
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-reasons-fair-trade-coffee-doesnt-work_b_5651663
https://www.javapresse.com/blogs/buying-coffee/fair-trade-vs-direct-trade-coffee
https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/farmers-and-workers/coffee/
