Robin White is the VP of Marketing at Reunion Island Coffee. This man joined the Fair Trade USA staff on a trip to Chiapas, Mexico. Robin documented his experience and was nice enough to share it with all of us.
Before his trip to Chiapas his perspective on fair trade was that it guaranteed a minimum price to coffee farmers to protect against crash in price of coffee on the stock market. Soon after his trip he realized that this was not the case at all. Robin explains how the demand for fair trade coffee has grown very big, not only do people want it, but they also want to understand what it really is. While he was on his trip to chiapas, he would ask the workers what fair trade meant to them, and none of them gave him an answer similar to what he had mentioned earlier. At this point he realized just how big of an impact fair trade had had on these communities. Fair Trade has helped these people prosper and improve their lives, and they would not have been able to get these opportunities without it. The coffee workers of Chiapas were getting screwed over by people called "Coyotes" who were giving them loans with unbelievable interest rates, causing them to fall into really deep debt and making it almost impossible to get out of it. This would force them to sell their harvest at extremely low prices, making everyone suffer. After his trip, Robin understood that fair trade was so much more than just a guarantee of a minimum price of coffee, he was it changed the lives of so many people for the better.
http://www.fairtradeusa.org/blog/fair-trade-my-new-perspective-reunion-island
No comments:
Post a Comment