Now that we have looked at the commercialization of
fair-trade coffee it is time to turn back to look at the farmers them selves.
One of the top coffee bean producing areas is Central America. There are both benefits and limitations
to fair-trade that impact everyone involved in fair-trade certification of
coffee.
Sarah Lyon provides a nice table that helps summarize the
impact of fair-trade. The table was created after data was gathered from
“participant-observation at the Guatemalan National Coffee Association’s annual
conference (2000, 2002) and visits to several fair-trade coffee cooperatives
located in the Western Highlands (where informal interviews were conducted with
cooperative administrators and board members.)” (Lyon 2007:102)
Table 1 from her
report is shown below.
Courtesy of Sarah Lyon 2007
FLO is mentioned in the chart. For those of you who are
unaware what this stands for (like me at the beginning of my research), it is the
Fairtrade Labeling Organizations. They also have a website:
www.fairtrade.net
The relationship coffee companies have with their coffee
farmers is one of great importance. In Central America it has been confirmed
that the prices paid to the fair-trade certified producers, for their coffee, are
helping sustain their rural communities. When the small local producing areas
invest the incoming money from coffee production toward education and their land
it can support effective, local development. (Lyon 2007: 105) The fair-trade
relationship also considers the “highly volatile international coffee market”
(Lyon 2007: 105) by rewarding the small producers with high prices. Lyon gives
the example that “when there is a
frost in Brazil, prices historically rise dramatically” (Lyon 2007: 105)
Lyon’s statements about how fair-trade coffee relationships
help create a sustainable living for the small producers go hand-in-hand with
the findings of, fellow anthropologist, Christopher M. Bacon. In northern
Nicaragua Bacon “clearly
demonstrated that households […] participating in certified [fair-trade coffee]
markets are significantly less vulnerable to low coffee prices than members of
cooperatives whose sales are directed exclusively into conventional marketing
channels.” (Bacon…et. al 2008: 19); further showing the benefits of fair-trade
in the coffee market.
Although the amount of fair-trade coffee producers is lower
then it should be, it is most likely not as a result of the fair-trade coffee
producers are fleeing from fair-trade relationships. Why flee when the benefits
of fair-trade relationships seem to out way the limitations. Some of the
limitations being the fact that the fair trade producers are not fully aware of
the goals and requirements of fair-trade coffee certification. So that
limitation could be one of the reasons why the numbers of small producers are lower
then estimated; lack of communication between the companies buying the coffee
and the local farmers. With coffee
in such a seemingly high demand in today’s metropolitan society this movement
has grounds to really take off. With an increase in fair-trade coffee could
possibly come the increase in long-term benefits to the producing countries
like Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
