For all coffee drinkers...

[ogryn]

...this is a public service announcement (or Ogryn puts on his serious hat).

Kraft, Sara Lee and Nestle are the biggest coffee companies in the world. They are also screwing-over coffee producers in the worlds poorest countries. Due to stupid trade laws, coffee producers are getting less and less for their goods, whilst the coffee giants are amking record profits in the millions. In 1998, a grower would have got $1 per pound of coffee, now it is only $0.30. Nestlé has made an estimated 26 per cent profit margin on instant coffee. Something isn't right here...!

Despite the stagnant consumer market, the coffee companies are laughing all the way to the bank. In the free market their global reach gives them unprecedented options. Today's standardised coffee blends may be a mix of coffees from as many as 20 different coffee types. Sophisticated risk management and hedging allows the companies, at the click of a computer mouse, to buy from the lowest-cost producer to mix these blends.

At the other end of the value chain the market does not feel so free. Without roads or transport to local markets, without technical backup, credit, or information about prices, the vast majority of farmers are at the mercy of itinerant traders offering a 'take it or leave it' price. Their obvious move out of coffee and into something else is fraught with problems. It requires money that they don't have and alternative crops that offer better prospects. For a farmer to turn her back on the four years spent waiting for coffee trees to start bearing fruit is a highly risky strategy.

It's not only coffee, rice, sugar and other core goods are being subjected to unfair trade.

Some bullet points for you:

• The US government pays its farmers $1billion a year to over-produce rice and dump the surplus at rock-bottom prices in poor countries. In Haiti, one fifth of the population has been driven out of business and into poverty as a result.
• 5 million farmers and their families are facing ruin because the US governments subsidises its corn farmers to over-produce and dump the surplus at rock-bottom prices in Mexico.
• Over 1 billion people – most of them farmers and farm workers – live on $1 or less a day.
• 25 million growers face ruin because they don't get a decent price for their coffee – yet some of the world's biggest coffee companies continue to make big profits.
• Ten million cotton farming families in Africa are being forced into poverty because of unfair trade, which benefits just a few hundred cotton farming companies in the US.
• Poor countries lose around $100 billion a year because rich country put up barriers, which prevent them making the most out of trade in crops such as cocoa.
• While the cotton barons of the United States receive four billion dollars of subsidies every year, the Peruvian cotton growers sink deeper into misery every day.
• The European Union gives its dairy farmers $2 a day in subsidies for every cow. This is more than half the world's population have to live on each day.
• Poor countries lose around $100 billion a year – twice as much as they get in aid – because rich country put up barriers that prevent them making the most out of trade in crops such as peanuts.

So, how can you help. Well, you can start by buying "Fair Trade" coffee & chocolate. It is marked on the packet if it is. Also, Starbucks gives you the choice to drink Fair Trade. It may be a few cents more expensive, but you know that the person that grew that coffee is actually helped by your purchase, not just the shareholders of the big companies.

For more information, visit http://www.maketradefair.com

Thank you for your time

 

[barnum42]

A friend of mine runs a Fair Trade Cafe in Bristol - "Cafe Unlimited"