My church is going to be switching to fair trade coffee. I mentioned it to the appropriate people several months ago, and the wheels are now in motion. It seems to me to be a no-brainer. For churches, especially. Fair trade (which doesn’t stop at coffee, of course) means farmers are guaranteed a minimum price for their coffee regardless of the current market price. It includes other things, too, such as more transparency, community development, and sustainable farming practices. I know there are some who aren’t convinced; who say it’s all just a marketing ploy and that the certification doesn’t actually carry any weight.
Fairtrade Canada, this country’s certifying body, explains fair trade like this:
“Fair Trade is a different way of doing business. It’s about making principles of fairness and decency mean something in the marketplace.
“It seeks to change the terms of trade for the products we buy – to ensure the farmers and artisans behind those products get a better deal. Most often this is understood to mean better prices for producers, but it often means longer-term and more meaningful trading relationships as well.” (You can read more on their website, fairtrade.ca.)
Now they admit that “How this is done varies widely – how people practice Fair Trade is largely determined by how they understand the problems it’s meant to address.”
This is why certification is important. “The intent is to both bring clarity about Fair Trade and instill confidence in the public that it is not about empty promises.”
No system is perfect, and I’m sure there are some criticisms of fair trade that are legit. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s better than no fair trade at all. Coffee is the world’s second most traded commodity, next only to oil. The majority of coffee bean growers live in developing countries, are small-scale subsistence farmers, and often barely make ends meet because the price they get for their crop is so low. Coffee prices are especially vulnerable to market fluctuations, as weather can greatly influence bean production and quality. When the price drops, so does the price paid to those small-scale farmers for their beans (who were already making a pittance).
When explaining fair trade to one of the women who handles much of the hospitality at our church, Matt, our outreach team leader, said this:
“It wasn’t an issue of money or people being unhappy with the coffee and tea that was served at Knox but more of a change in the philosophy. Fair Trade is a way that Knox can be more ethically aware of the way we support our purchasing of products around the world and can be the start of transforming the way we look at the products we buy in our everyday lives [emphasis mine]. Sometimes it takes the church to be the starters of a movement that sees a positive and more effective change in its congregants and the world simply by bringing to their attention the inequality and injustice that happens when we buy certain products from countries around the world.”
I love thinking of the church as the place that “starts a movement.” Don’t you?
And then, somewhat perfectly, Matt shared this: “Jacqui and I were having this conversation last night as we shopped and were buying grapes that were imported from the tip of Africa and we started to question these same things.”
And isn’t that the point? That we begin to ask questions, and then begin to make small changes, and then…well…who knows where it can lead.
The subtitle of Shane Claiborne’s book (and hence the title of this blog) is Living as an ordinary radical. Living in a different way, in a way that more closely resembles God’s plan for His creation, doesn’t necessarily mean doing huge, grand things—even though our culture loves the big, the better, the sensational. Claiborne argues instead for small things (more on this idea next month!).
“Today the church is tempted by the spectacular, to do big, miraculous things so that people might believe, but Jesus has called us to littleness and compares our revolution to the little mustard seed, to yeast making its way through dough, slowly infecting this dark world with love.”
Can buying fair trade coffee change the world? Well, what does change look like to you? Does it mean a farmer can afford to feed his family? Does it mean his children are now able to attend school? And does it perhaps lead you to question other things you buy? To find out what’s going on in, say, Mexico, when you put some avocados in your shopping cart; or to learn more about Sierra Leone when you look down at your diamond ring; or wonder about life in the Congo every time you use your cell phone. Before you know it, you’re researching justice and civil war and on and on and on, and maybe taking steps to find out what you can do to help make things better.
I was in Ethiopia 11 years ago; I fell in love with the land and its people almost immediately, and my feelings for that country remain today. While there I visited many farmers; some doing well, others not. I remember seeing green, unripe coffee beans on the vine; a farmer proudly displaying his crop. Later we were treated to a traditional coffee ceremony—and it was love at first sip. Ethiopia is said to be the birthplace of coffee, and I still pine for the taste I haven’t been able to duplicate here.
How can I think of that country, of its people, of those farmers, and not want to make choices that support them as best I can, half a world away?
Our choices matter.
I have a lot of work to do on this.
Until next week,
Amy
Photo: “Coffeee img451” by Nevit Dilmen (talk) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
