[Sca-cooks] Fair Trade Coffee

[Christine Seelye-King]

I am thrilled to hear it.  Fair Trade Coffee is the best possibility for
breaking the cycle of poverty in coffee-growing countries.  By offering a
Fair Trade price to the coffee growers, along with cooperatives working with
the growers to encourage them to grow organically, shade grown, and
complimentary planted trees, they eliminate the 'coyotes' or middle men that
have traditionally paid just pennies per pound for the coffee, making
tremendous profits for themselves.  Current Fair Trade co-ops in Guatamala,
Nicaragua, and others have made such improvements with their new profits as
bringing in electricity and bus routes for the first time to their towns,
opened businesses such as clothing stores and general merchandise stores for
families of the growers to work in and buy new domestic goods in.  By
educating the farmers in how to grow without the chemicals touted by big
American companies in the 70's (along with the idea that if the rainforest
was cut down, the shade-loving coffee treses could be grown faster with lots
of lovely chemicals), they also increase the habitat for song birds.  This
sounds simply nice, but when the usefulness of the birds for pest controls
and polination are considered, it becomes clear that these animals are an
essential part of the ecology.  (When the song birds aren't there, the need
for pesticides and fertilizers goes up as well.)
	We have been selling Fair Trade coffee for a couple of years now (we're the
largest retailer in Atlanta), and have run a few functions for folks to come
and talk about the benefits of the program, from Farmer's groups,
Co-Operative proponents, Audubon group reps, and more.  In addition to being
chemical free, contributing to the increase in living standards of the
growers, and re-forestation of the rainforest, these coffees taste better,
too!  I strongly encourage everyone on this list to find out more about Fair
Trade (coffee and even teas are being grown this way now).  It is a program
that makes sense in so many ways.
Christianna
mka Christine Seelye-King
Health and Education Coordinator
Sevananda Natural Foods
Atlanta,GA


> http://www.mycfnow.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-151777720020618-10
0620.html
> Berkeley May Ban Non-PC Coffee
> If Measure Passes, Violators Could Get Jail Time
> Posted: 11:17 a.m. EDT June 18, 2002
> BERKELEY, Calif. -- How about some sugar and cream with that
> coffee? Or maybe you'd like some "PC" coffee instead?
> Some folks in Berkeley, Calif., are calling for only "politically correct
coffee" to be sold inside the city limits.
> Attorney Rick Young has turned in 3,000 signatures at City Hall.
> They support an initiative allowing coffee brewed for sale to be made only
from organic, shade-grown or Fair Trade certified beans.
> To qualify the measure for the November ballot, just over 2,000 of those
signatures must be valid.
> If the measure makes it to the ballot and is approved --
> retailers will have three months to comply. Violators could be punished by
up to six months in jail and a $100 fine.