More on Coffee in CR

For the coffee industry, the development of Fair Trade Coffee resulted in many advances in the lives of small farmers everywhere and the improvement of their treatment. From Fair trade Coffee, producers receive a fair price at which to sell their products, usually a price that supports a living wage. Other benefits included the end of forced and child labor, the improvement of working conditions from both a safety and health prospective.

Overall, Fair Trade benefits small suppliers of coffee the most but is effective for the whole industry in determining a minimum acceptable price. It provided equal work opportunities for all those interested and also put all processes of production and trade in the public eye. Mostly, Fair trade Coffee ended a time in the coffee industry where small scale producers were exploited for the product at prices not high enough to support their way of life.

Today, the Fair Trade System (which includes the coffee industry), employees over 800,000 people and has organized cooperatives and unions in over 48 different countries. The problem today is that there is still coffee being sold outside the Fair Trade system which hurts all the producers of coffee from a price standpoint. In coffee, the end product is marked with the appropriate logo if it is a Fair Trade Coffee product.

By buying and supporting Fair Trade Systems of trade, the rest of the world can help support industries in developing countries that without this system would lack the structure needed for the industry to be successful for the producers.