For those of you who wonder what is going on with fair trade and why we are not selling fair trade coffee, please read this long e-mail from Geoff Watts. Geoff is one of the worlds absolute pioneers when it comes to sourcing and buying green coffee and establishing relationships and direct trade models with the coffee producers he and Intelligentsia (the company he works for) buys their coffee from.

This is by far the best read I have had about Fair trade and Direct trade.

We are proud to announce that we just bought the no. 11 lot at the 2009 Guatemala Cup of Excellence.

The coffee is grown on the farm San Antonio De Esquipulas y Anexos and is a mix of Bourbón, Catuaí and Caturra.

Here is a taste description:

Aroma: Hints of almonds and chocolate.
Acidity: Tropical and stone fruit-like acidity. Lively and refreshing.
Mouthfeel: A clean cup with a fat texture without being heavy. Intense sweetness and a really nice balance.
Flavour: Intense chocolate flavour. Hints of rasberries and peach. Sweet finish.

The coffee was bought for USD 7.45 per lb. (453g) of green unpacked coffee ex. transportation cost. This is about USD 6.19 above fair trade price. The farmer gets 80% of the money, the remaining 20% goes to managing the Cup of Excellence system.

Our national television NRK sent a very interesting and critical documentary about fair trade yesterday.
You can watch it here

Although we endorse the principals of sustainable trading and also care about the welfare of the workers that in our case pick our coffee, we have never been huge fans of the fair trade organization.

The reason for this is because we believe it does not benefit the farmer in long term, because there is too little focus on the quality of the coffee and the certification is too expensive and the control system is not efficient.
We have also experienced that most fair trade stamped coffee is of poor quality.

Therefore we have a different take on the principals of fair trade:
We pay more for better quality and try to create a relationship with the coffee farmers in order to make them focus on quality of the coffee as well as for their workers. You can only get the farmer and the picker to do a better job if you pay them well for it.

An example of this is our project in Colombia with Finca La Lomita. We are currently paying USD 2,50 per pound of green coffee for Mr. Alvaro Diaz’ coffee which is over USD 1,20 above the market price and the fair trade price. We know that Mr. Alvaro Diaz is getting his money and we know he pays his workers well.
How do we know? We communicate with him and we visit him and talk to him and his neighbours as well as with the cooperative he works with.

Although we are paying more for a better coffee, we cannot call the coffee “fair trade coffee”. Despite this my conscience is a hell of a lot better.