Imagine a national coffee day?! I didn’t realize this until I read an article this morning about Starbucks new instant coffee. Please tell me its similiar to April Fools. I love coffee as much as the next person, but to have a national coffee day is stretching it, but for Starbucks to put out an instant coffee [...]
For those of you looking for a real life account of how the fair trade coffee process works and affects people, here is a brief story about fair trade in action. In the coffee growing mountains of Columbia, there is a co-op of 270 farming families called APCO (Asociación Pequeños Caficultores de Ocamonte) that was [...]
Organic coffee is coffee grown primarily without the use of pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers. Packages will display one of several logos depending on where they are packaged. To the left are the logos for Canada and the U.S. Fair trade coffee producers are required to farm with sustainable farming techniques. The rules are intended [...]
Today I’m reviewing Second Cup’s (I believe, only) fair trade coffee Cuzco. Its labeled as a 3 – medium roast, Peruvian bean from an area near the city of Cuzco (or Cusco). I must first confess that lighter roasts are not my first choice when it comes to coffee, however, I am looking at this [...]
Continue reading about Second Cup’s Cuzco Fair Trade Coffee Review
As you read articles on fair trade and organic coffee you will see positive and negative comments. Many of the negative comments are based on assumptions such as, “what difference can one person make?”, “what difference does it make when they’ll ship via polluting transport modes?” “what difference does it make if I drive an [...]
Continue reading about Is buying fair trade coffee a waste of time?
How many cups of coffee do you get from a pound of fair trade coffee beans? Well, having a Bachelor of Mathematics, I couldn’t resist weighing in with some calculations of my own (apologies to any one out there who happened to do the same math that I’m going to do, its either purely coincidence [...]
Below is a chart comparing some of the major differences between Fair Trade Certification and Rainforest Alliance Certification. The basic primary difference is Fair Trade is based more on the economics of the farmer whereas Rainforest Alliance is based primarily on the sustainability. However, even given that I just said that, the Fair Trade certified producers [...]
Continue reading about Fair Trade Coffee vs Rainforest Alliance
This is a brief description of what fair trade and fair trade certification are.
Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace. Fair Trade is much more than a fair price though!
I’m not one for long boring history lessons, sorry to say, history was always one of my weakest subjects, but the following is a brief history of fair trade coffee. In the first half of the 1900′s there were many small movements and discussions about providing fair wages and working conditions for workers in some [...]
My wife was strolling through Costco many months ago (not sure it may even be a year or so ago) and as she always does, stops at each sampling presentation. This one time, William Spartivento had a booth set up and she tried a sample of their organic fair trade espresso (they do offer several [...]