Fair trade Coffee became more and more popular in the last years. It seems like customers finally care about the production circumstances. Many of them want to go sure, nobody gets exploited during the production process.
For our company this is a huge concern too.

Fair trade coffee means that the beans are produced with good conditions and higher wages for the workers. They workers get paid higher wages than others, working on non – fair trade farms. They have for western people normal working hours too.

With the help of the Fair Trade labels, Producers and workers can escape poverty.

Fair Trade standards say, that farmers must receive fair prices for their products. In the coffee branch this means that farmers receive about the threefold prices and the workers receive about 3 times higher wages.

There are a few requirements that a Coffee gets the approval of the Fair trade commission, like the following examples:

Fair labor conditions: The working conditions for workers at Fair Trade farms have to be safe and they have to receive for the area more than fair wages. And it is not allowed that children work on the farms.

Community services: Farmers and workers have to invest in social projects like health care services and education.

The organizations have to be transparent: Fair trade farmers decide how to invest their revenues.

Elimination of distributors: Since the distributor gets removed, the producers can sell the Coffee more expensive, which results in higher revenues for the local farmers.

If all these requirements can get fulfilled, the coffee is “Fair Trade Coffee”.
The Fair Trade Label is something, everybody can consider before buying a product.
It’s quite a small price customers have to pay, to make sure everybody during the production process gets treated well and nobody got exploited for this transaction.
This slightly higher price can make such a big difference in the life of so many people.
All the workers earn about 3 times higher wages than workers on non – fair trade plantations, which causes a huge improvement of their standard of living. In addition they don’t have to work much more hours per day, than somebody in the western world with a normal job. Our workers work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week!

So think about the huge improvement for so many people, before you think about the few bucks, the fair trade product is more expensive than the product produced by exploited workers or even from child-workers.