Stepping Back to Appreciate Fair Trade
Posted by Doug on 20 Oct 2009 at 10:50 am | Tagged as: Fair Trade
Fair Trade Month Quiz:
Question 20: How many metric tons of Fair Trade coffee were sold in 2008 worldwide?
Answer: 66,000
Haven’t answered our Fair Trade Quiz question of the day, yet? Well, why not? The answer’s right there! If that isn’t enough for you, the first 100 participants* get a sample of Green Mountain Coffee’s Fair Trade Certified™ Organic House Blend and all answers get entered to the grand prize drawing of 12-months of Green Mountain Coffee Fair Trade Certified™ Coffees. Go here to enter: http://www.eatdrinkandbefair.com/quiz.php.
*Sorry, employees and their immediate family members of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. are not eligible. But keep an eye out for our internal Fair Trade quiz.
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Being immersed as we are in the Fair Trade movement, it’s all too easy to take some of the successes of Fair Trade for granted… at least until we back up a bit and take a look at the larger landscape. Then some of the numbers are a little bit startling.
Here’s a few of the facts that make us sit up and take notice that what we’re up to isn’t just a market, but a movement:
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- More than 50% of the world’s coffee is grown on small, family-run farms.
- More than 800,000 farmers and their families sell their coffee through the Fair Trade register.
- Through the Fair Trade market, family farmers in Fair Trade cooperatives can earn three to five times more than farmers selling conventionally (depending on the market price of coffee, or the “C”.)
- Fair Trade Certified® coffee is the fastest growing segment of the $11 billion US specialty coffee trade.
- According to the journal Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, 63 million Americans base their purchase decisions on how the products they consume affect the world.
- Imports of Fair Trade Certified green coffee have grown about 75% a year since 1999.
- More than 400 US college campuses serve Fair Trade coffee.
- For every daily coffee drinker in the United States there is a worker in the world who depends on coffee for his or her livelihood.
For all that, there’s still so much work to be done…
-Doug