What is Fair Trade? Is Starbucks Fair Trade Coffee Good?

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Today, global trade is growing rapidly and global wealth has reached an unprecedented level. But at the same time, the disparity between the rich and the poor has also widened rapidly. the eight super-rich sit on half of the world's wealth, while the assets of the poorer half of the world's population have declined instead of rising. Eighty percent of the world's poor and hungry people are small farmers, fishermen, herdsmen and farm labourers who make a living by farming, with Africa being the most serious. In Africa, poor small farmers who work hard all day without enough food and clothing can be found everywhere.

Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of coffee and has a history of growing coffee for more than 3,000 years. Coffee has become a major local export. However, although Ethiopia is the producer of the highest quality coffee in the world, the lives of local farmers are still difficult, and the global coffee crisis triggered a collapse in coffee bean prices, plunging them into poverty. The Government of Ethiopia estimates that the sharp fall in coffee bean prices over the past five years has cost the country nearly $8.3 billion, dealing a severe blow to the local economy and the livelihoods of farmers and their families.

In 1999, Oxfam assisted in the establishment of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperatives Union (OCFCU) Cooperative Alliance, which connects coffee farmers with the Fairtrade market, providing farmers with higher returns, increasing community facilities, improving productivity and improving farmers' lives. OCFCU consists of 34 farmers' cooperatives with a total of 23000 members.

In 2003, OCFCU recorded a profit of US $1.3 million for the first time. These profits allow each member to receive $25, which is enough to buy food for six months or to send three children to school for a year.

In addition, OCFCU also invests part of its return on community development projects, such as purchasing bean washing machines and cars to facilitate the delivery of coffee beans to the market. Various improvement projects help to improve the quality of coffee beans, and cooperatives can sell coffee beans at better and fairer purchase prices.

In addition, Fairtrade has made improvements to local education, and most of the Fairtrade community deposits have been used to build schools and improve classroom facilities to educate farmers' children to lift themselves out of poverty and change their lives with knowledge.

And many coffee beans are also billed as being produced under the rules of the fair trade game: good coffee beans that are socially fair and just (as opposed to non-bus beans that exploit soybean farmers).

However, boutique coffee is in fact less affected by fair trade. after all, the raw beans of famous coffee estates have long exceeded the minimum purchase price guaranteed by fair exchanges, but it has to be said that there may be some estates before their quality is improved and their fame is not well known. It may also benefit from fair trade and thus improve the quality of farming.

But fair trade also has its costs and limits. He is the elixir of bean farmers' lives. Or is it just morphine for the pain?