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These small farmers are currently trapped in an economic crisis. Coffee prices are at an all-time low, less than 40 cents per pound. (However, prices for consumers have in fact increased, and major coffee companies such as Nestle, Starbucks and Proctor and Gamble are making enormous profits.) Current economic conditions hold potential for even greater hardships for impoverished coffee farmers, many of whom can barely afford to educate their children or provide health care and food for their families. Extreme poverty in coffee producing countries such as Nicaragua has led to massive urban migrations, and the dependence of many...
There is an opportunity for Harvard students to help the plight of these farmers by buying fairly traded coffee. Fair trade coffee is purchased directly from small, democratically run farmers’ cooperatives. Farmers are guaranteed a minimum price of $1.26 per pound, and if market prices rise above the fair trade premium, farmers receive 10 cents more than the market price. Fair trade coffee is a feasible alternative because it is bought directly from cooperatives, instead of through exploitative middlemen, called coyotes, who are pervasive in the coffee trade...
...They can accumulate capital such as trucks and processing machinery, and by selling through cooperatives, farmers increase their market power. Fairly traded coffee is also better for the environment because farmers are given a 15 cent premium for organic coffee in addition to the guaranteed price of $1.26 per pound. Nearly 80 percent of fair trade coffee is organically grown and, because the majority is grown on small farms, the clear-cutting of rainforest in order to build large plantations does not occur...
Critics of fair trade coffee often argue that by guaranteeing a wage floor of $1.26 per pound, market forces will not prevent oversupply. However, the current market is not free. Producers in poor countries do not benefit from the same government subsidies that American farmers do and are restricted from: emigrating to richer countries such as the U.S. While producers who can’t profit in one sector should be able to switch to another, coffee farmers are generally too poor to do so. (If they do switch, coca, a source of cocaine, is one of the most profitable...
...play one of the few songs she knew, John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” “I really sucked,” she recalls in an interview a few days after the Newbury appearance. When a passerby flipped a pound coin into the guitar case, it was an electric moment (on multiple levels) for Lord...