Coffee Different: Fair Trade and Ecological Sustainability

There are as many as 500 million coffee consumers around the world, drinking 2 billion cups of coffee every day, but only 25 million producers. Coffee is the second largest commodity in the global market after oil, with prices in the futures markets of New York and London. In 1965, several purchasers accounted for 15% of the global market. By 2001, there were only four major coffee buyers in the world. Philip Morris, Nestle, Sara Lee and Procter and Gamble are responsible for 60% of the trade market. It is not difficult to imagine that the imbalance between supply and demand and speculative oligopoly market will lead to a sharp rise and fall in coffee prices. Perhaps as consumers, it is not a problem for us to spend money on coffee; however, for small farmers who produce coffee, it is a daily lament for survival, unable to get rid of the huge pressures such as poverty, population migration, drop-out of school, lack of medical treatment, and so on.

The ecological and economic problems of the coffee industry have not occurred recently; since the global coffee trade emphasizes mass production and supplies vast demand, the problems have accumulated day by day, especially in the past decade or two, there have been several price crashes. It is not difficult to imagine the unprecedented difficulties faced by coffee farmers. Because of the huge rise and fall in prices, people are aware of the fact that free trade is "unfair trade", followed by fair trade initiatives and production and marketing mechanisms, trying to propose solutions. The first pioneers were European countries, which began to appear the concept of fair trade in the sixties and seventies of the last century in the ○ era, while it began to enter the trademark period of fair trade in the late ○ period. Of course, coffee, which is the most criticized trade structure, is the primary agricultural product of the Fair Trade Movement.

This search for a different way of coffee trade was initiated in Mexico, a small-scale farmer country where about 90% of coffee farmers own less than five hectares of land and about 70% of coffee farmers own less than two hectares of land. The starting point for the search for dignity is in the poor southern province of Oaxaca. UCIRI (Unix de Comunidades Ind í genas de la Regi ó n del Istmo,UCIRI) can be said to be the forerunner of the coffee fair trade movement around the world; what is most moving is that this movement is not only an economic reform, but also inseparable from the traditional "organic" and "shady" farming patterns of the indigenous Mayans in Mexico. Unlike the daylight dwarf coffee we drink on the market, a single crop that has to cut down a large number of trees is planted under the shade for the traditional way of cultivating coffee, that is, there is a canopy to provide coffee shade, which has a good ecological appearance and plays an important role in ecological conservation.

Oaxaca province, located in the south of Mexico, is one of the most important coffee producing areas in Mexico and one of the poorer parts of the country. The Tehuantepec area of Oaxaca province has been growing coffee since the end of the 19th century, and most of the farmers belong to the two indigenous peoples, Mixe and Zapoteca. Small coffee farmers in southern Mexico rely on acquirers; they call them "coyote"; their low purchase prices are often less than the cost of growing coffee, and farmers in Tehuantepec are not immune. It was not until the ○ 's sixties and seventies that acquirers abandoned local business and farmers began to use the next harvest of coffee to borrow money or guarantee corn production.

In 1973, the Mexican Coffee Institute (Instituto Mexicano del Caf é, INMECAFE) and the Grameen Bank entered the area to provide assistance. These two official agencies provided technology, resources, acquisition services, etc., although at first they brought hope to farmers, but in the end they were still ineffective. For example, in the end, INMECAFE seriously defaulted on the payments paid to small farmers, and the problem with the Grameen Bank was enough to make small farmers heavily in debt. In order to solve the problems of middlemen and official institutions and improve their livelihood, local farmers gathered 35 tons of coffee in 1981 and found a fair purchase price. then, in the next harvest, a total of five communities joined the sale, and a cooperative UCIRI was established in 1983. The addition of several Dutch and German missionaries promoted UCIRI's work to find a reasonable price and a fair market. On behalf of the groups that buy coffee independently, they approach the producers directly, omitting the exploitation prices in the middle, and giving the producers the message of Libreville Field. Although this market is called "free," it actually squeezes the producers.

UCIRI has gradually gained the trust of European consumers, so coffee can be sold to many countries in Europe and North America. At present, the production of the cooperative has a total of 53 communities, with about 2700 farmers joining. Unlike the unstable coffee prices in the past, small farmers fall into a great poverty crisis once they plummet; in a fair trade market, cooperative farmers on average derive 80% of their income from coffee, while the rest comes from other fruits or crops, with fixed sources of income. Not only that, in order to ensure food, the traditional farming method ── milpa, that is, corn, beans, melons and other mixed cropping can also provide staple food for small farmers.

UCIRI can be said to be the benchmark for organic coffee farmers in Mexico. In addition to Fairtrade coffee, it is also the first organization in the world to enter the international market in the form of "collective organic certification for small farmers", promoting the establishment of ── Certimex, an organic certification organization in Mexico, and ── Comercio Justo M é xico (Fair Trade Mexico), a Mexican fair trade organization, to integrate the farming conditions of domestic organic small farmers and to be in line with international organic and fair trade certification systems, respectively.

The emergence of UCIRI, the liquidation of the official INMECAFE due to corruption and poor operating conditions in 1989, and the collapse of the international export price of Mexican coffee to historic lows in the late ○'s and early'9 '○' s all contributed to the rise of small farmers' cooperatives in Oaxaca and Chiapas provinces in southern Mexico. The co-production of cooperatives can obtain a better guaranteed purchase price and give back to the community development, breaking away from the unreasonable mechanism of middlemen and Libreville field. In addition, in the case of Mexico, the repeatability of Fairtrade coffee and organic coffee is quite high; the average purchase price of organic coffee is 10% higher than that of conventional coffee, and if it is also fair trade, it is 3% higher.

Shade coffee, friendly bird coffee

Fairtrade coffee is a conduit for coffee farmers to get socio-economic justice, and it also has a set of environmentally friendly norms for the place of origin, but the Mexican coffee story is not only that, it is of higher ecological value. Mexican Arabica coffee is grown in mountains and tropical or subtropical forests at an altitude of 600 to 1200 meters above sea level. The popular way for aborigines to grow coffee is traditional agroforestry. Coffee is planted among a variety of native trees, and the ecosystem is close to forest. In fact, in order to expand business opportunities, Libreville field coffee has long abandoned the possibility of agroforestry, using the green revolution model to inculcate the concept of a single crop to increase yield; just like the coffee we drink on the market, cutting down trees on all farms in the production process requires the input of large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. It may be possible to increase production in a short period of time, but there is a great loss of biodiversity and soil fertility, which has a considerable negative impact on the ecology, and is not a sustainable mode of production.

Coffee in the shade, that is, coffee grown in the shade of trees, is very different. There are many types of shade coffee, and although it is more eco-friendly, not all of them are organic. For example, shade coffee promoted by INMECAFE in the past, only a single tree species on the farm can provide shade, and the application of pesticides and chemical fertilizers is necessary. On the contrary, in the "shade" coffee traditionally cultivated by the aborigines, according to the way of agroforestry, all kinds of shade trees are often intermingled with fruit trees, and sometimes relatively dense banana trees are planted under the forest canopy and above the coffee shrubs.

Pruning creates small light pores in which cassava, yams or other annual crops can be planted. When coffee shrubs need to be renewed (that is, old plants are removed and new ones are planted), larger light pores can be created to grow corn, soybeans or other crops that require optical rotation. As a result, traditional coffee farmers' land has structural characteristics that usually belong to forests. This farming model not only has a good canopy provided by rich tree species, but also has high humus, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water conservation, prevention of soil loss and other functions, but also an important habitat for migratory birds in North America. There is no doubt about its ecological value.

In the late 1980s, small farmers' cooperatives emerged one after another, which coincided with the European and American markets in pursuit of fair trade and organic coffee. In addition to organic coffee, the importance of shady and friendly birds should not be underestimated. Therefore, research and certification units in the United States are not only engaged in "organic" certification, but also emphasize environmental benefits, including Rainforest Alliance certified coffee (the Rainforest Alliance Coffee), providing rainforest canopy, soil and wildlife protection standards, friendly bird certified coffee (The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center Bird-Friendly Coffee), standardizing rainforest canopy and strict organic standards, etc., in order to ensure the biodiversity of the producing area.

Agribusinesses that support large-scale single crops often say that only by increasing production can they meet consumption needs. What is worthy of our further consideration is that nowadays, more and more scholars have questioned the definition of "yield", that is, the coffee yield of daylight dwarfs is not necessarily higher than that of coffee in the shade, and the traditional way of planting in the shade can better ensure ecological sustainability. Another fact you must not know is that the world's coffee production is in a state of surplus at present. Here we would like to ask: Libreville Field always pursues the supremacy of production, should it still be an unshakable absolute standard?