As the world's largest consumer of coffee, the United States of America has lot of guilty people. Not that I'm razzing their effort or anything, but the fair trade coffee people seem like guilty marketers who are just trying to get themselves ahead and not-for-profit status. Fair trade is an idea born on the backs of the thought that, among other things, “small farmers are the best stewards of the land,” consumer politics is trending towards the thought that we all should be paid a fair wage, industries are doing the same, and farmers are unable to support themselves on the money they earn farming.
While the fair trade movement certainly is a noble one there seems to be a lot of assumptions in this argument and a lot of suppositions that maybe aren't always necessarily the whole truth. While the fair trade coffee statistics look grim, there certainly is a silver lining to all this in that business ethics are getting better day by day and people are trying to do the best they can regardless of the fair trade coffee.
If you're looking to purchase fair trade coffee you can do so from a number of different retail conglomerates including: Starbucks, Tully’s, Peet’s, Equal Exchange, Diedrich, and Green Mountain. These are some of the major names though there are allegedly over 7000 retail locations and new locations being added all the time. You also can look for fair trade coffee in a variety of online presences. The popularity of websites and online services has made movements like fair trade even more possible. With all the difference online service providers available and all the difference combinations of potential buyers, sellers, and people interested in the movement, an online forum is probably one of the best places for people to go.
And while an economic assessment of fair trade coffee isn't really all that applicable due to the different government programs available in other countries, the standard of living is different in other countries and its just the whole back to the matter that it's really hard to compare one country to the next without being able to raise some ire from some. Organic fair trade coffee and other types of fair trade coffee are for sale; if you want to buy organic fair trade coffee, you need to locate your nearest retailer, or check out what's going on online, do little but of the investigation and then played some money down where your mouth is. I think it's great that we wanted to thing for the people but I have a problem when people try to shift their guilt based on unsubstantiated evidence.
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