Fair Trade

The road a coffee bean takes to your cup is a long one. At the very least, the seed must be cultivated, cared for, picked, sorted, pulped, dried, consolidated, shipped, roasted, distributed, ground, and finally, brewed. What ends up in your cup passes through many hands, and rest assured each hand that plays a part in this process wants its share of the profit. Often times it is the farmers who planted and cared for the crop which receive the smallest cut. An estimated twenty million people work on coffee plantations throughout the world, contributing to what has become, behind oil, the second most valuable item of international trade, as well as the most valuable food import in the U.S. Most coffee farms are relatively small and are located in rural areas of some of the most economically poor countries in the world.

Fair Trade Certified Coffee

The decision to grow coffee for a living involves many potential risks. Growing a coffee tree is no easy task. Coffee is best suited to be grown at higher elevations where many other agricultural crops won’t grow, and is very sensitive to changing weather patterns. It can take up to five years for a coffee tree to produce its first crop, which on average yields only about 1 pound of coffee per year. The tree hits its peak productivity at around fifteen to twenty years and then begins to taper off. Fluctuating international markets also affect the value of the crop. When trouble arises, the economic effects ripple outward and often have a damaging effect on the farmers, their families, as well as the larger community.

There are a number of different programs and certification agencies that seek to balance out the injustice that is prevalent in many coffee producing countries. The biggest and best known of these is the Fair Trade Labeling Organizing. The FLO is an international consortium of Fair Trade groups in Japan, Canada, the U.S. and seventeen other countries. FLO utilizes written applications, yearly site visits, financial documents, and transaction records to assure that both producers and consumers are meeting the standards of Fair Trade. The U.S. certifier of Fair Trade coffee is Transfair USA.

Transfair and the FLO came into being during what is now called the ‘Coffee Crisis’. This was a period of time when the speculative coffee market priced coffee well below its cost to produce. When the market was in such imbalance, the need for Fair Trade criteria was at it’s height. Because of the ‘crisis’ the FLO was structured in such a way as to help family-owned and operated farms and co-ops made up of these farms. Unfortunately, any farm wishing to sell its coffee on its own and not join a co-op was left out of the system. In addition, FLO and Transfair have no current mechanism in place to allow larger farms with employed workers to join. There are many sustainable and responsible farms and producers that have been left out of the system.

The FLO has effectively saved more than half a million producers from poverty over the last decade. But as world prices have risen along with coffee quality produced by these co-ops has improved, the need for alternate fair trade and sustainable programs to supplement the FLO has increased.

While the FLO and Transfair are the most well known fair trade certification, there are other important programs that also ensure sustainable economic and social practices. Programs such as Utz Kapeh, Rainforest Alliance, and the Fair Trade Federation also have the highest standards of social, agricultural, and economic practices. In addition, having direct contact with farms and co-ops can often result in the best coffee relationships where trust is built between the producer, the roaster, and the consumer.

Wandering Goat is dedicated to buying only those coffees that have been proven to be at the highest level of sustainability. We ensure this by utilizing a variety of the certification programs available and by tracing all of our coffee to its source and confirming the growing methods, economic distribution, and overall sustainability of the farm, co-op, or project. If you have any questions about the source of our coffee, call us. We’ll be glad to give you any information you need to be assured that your coffee is being produced in the best possible manner.