Coffee and coffee machines

The truth about fair-trade coffee

17 May 2011

Fair-trace coffee producers often end up poorer: this is the shocking (for some...) revelation by Lawrence Solomon following a study out recently from Germany’s University of Hohenheim. The study, which followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair-trade market "are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers".

The truth is that a lax system of certification is certainly not the best way to guarantee a fair amount of money for the coffee producers. But when the coffee roaster is looking for the best quality coffee beans, the only solution is to deal directly with the farmers, that can have a far higher price for their product than with fair trade: fair trade pays $0.5 above the market price, but godd quality green coffee beans can be sold for much more!

Coffee is one of the few internationally traded commodities that is still produced mainly on smallholdings farmed by peasant households, with almost 70 per cent of production coming from producers who farm less than ten acres of land. Some believe that certified coffee is superior, but the study reveal that the small-scale farms whose local ecologies produce distinctive, niche coffee beans can’t operate on a scale that would justify official certification.