In the spirit of Pumpkin Spice Latte season, I thought it would be a good time to discuss the affects of where our coffee actually comes from.
As a college aged student, 40% of us typically drink at least 1 cup of coffee everyday. Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, equivalent to 146 billion cups of coffee per year, making the United States the leading consumer of coffee in the world.
Coffee production ultimately starts with the farmers. They are the most essential factor into how we get our daily cup yet they are the ones getting paid less for what we buy, and the middle men end up making the most money off of both sides.
Millions of coffee farmers end up living at or below the poverty line due to this unfair trading practice. When coffee prices fall below the production cost the farmers can lose everything.
Does that seem like a fair trade?
When fair trade practices are enforced, farmers get a fair price for what they grow and can be able to be more self-sustainable.
So what can you, as a consumer do about it?
Well…you can start by purchasing your coffee from small roasting companies rather than from major corporate coffee companies. This will ensure that the fair trade movement will help farmers rather than harm them. Claiming that a company is a fair trade one can be one of the most well-respected labels to have in the world.
In the Cabin, we have a whole coffee/tea station that gets used quite often. However, the K-cups that we use for the Keruig do not always come from fair trade coffee companies. The Green Mountain Coffee K-Cups have the “Fair Trade Certified” logo, but our Starbucks K-cups seem to not have the logo.
Check for 
on the packaging next time you’re buying some K-cups or bags of beans and that will tell you whether or not the farmers they buy from are getting a fair price for what they produce. This is a good technique to use when looking for the right branded coffee to buy.
So next time you want to satisfy your coffee fix, try going to a local coffee shop nearby where they brew up fair-trade beans!
-Amie Newsome
(Coffee Shops left to right in pictures at the top: The Village Grind, Methodical, Tandem, Swamp Rabbit Cafe, Due South)
Sources:
http://fairtradeamerica.org
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/americas-coffee-obsession_n_987885.html
http://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=honors