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Favorite brand of coffee?
On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 03:37:31 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:
>In rec.food.cooking, Miche > wrote:
>
>> > But the wanky coffee yields a better price to the farmer than Fairtrade.
>
>> But it's priced so that I can't afford to buy it.
>
>If you buy Fairtrade coffee, you pay at least as much, and likely more,
>than non- Fairtrade coffees which yield more for the farmers. I am not
>opposed to Fairtrade. Some other people are, because it does not pay the
>farmers as much as they would get by improving quality. Generally, it is
>used as a marketing thing. Dunkin Donuts, for example, is selling
>Fairtrade coffee. By doing so, they pay less per pound than they would if
>they were to buy true specialty coffee, and give the impression that they
>are helping farmers. Indeed, they are helping farmers, and the coffee
>they get is better than average. but alternatives exist which help the
>farmers more, and provide better coffee (and a better value) to consumers.
>
>If helping coffee farmers is something you feel strongly about, another
>excellent organization is CoffeeKids.
>
>But anytime you buy specialty coffee, Fairtrade or not, you help farmers,
>and anytime you buy supermarket-type canned coffee, you hurt farmers.
That statement could be made about most farming the world over. Buy
pastured poultry (grass raised) and the farmer gets a bigger cut of
the profits. Buy most anything that eliminates more of the middle men
and the farmer gets more of the profits.
Of course, the price may be half-again, or double, or more, of what
you used to pay in the supermarket so you'll be spending a greater
portion of your discretionary income for it - IF you can afford to do
so.
For the folks who can afford luxury items like specialty coffees this
is all well and good. For the folks who can't or don't want to spend
their discretionary income on such things they'll stick with the
usual.
I think if you can produce a specialty item that commands a higher
premium go for it! I have done the same in the past with eggs and
will do so again in the future. Of course, it cost me more to produce
those eggs than the chicken factories, but they were worth it and to
my customers they were glad to pay it.
But it's a fairly small market relative to the mass produced stuff and
probably always will be. As much as I like Kona coffee (and I do) I'm
not going to pay $13.00-$16.00 a pound for it - which is what Sweet
Marias wants for their green Kona beans. The $4.00-$5.00 a pound
stuff has some possibilities since we don't drink more than about four
cups of coffee in a day. If I drank coffee like I used to when I was
still working graveyard shift even that would be beyond the pale.
......Alan.
--
Curiosity killed the cat -
lack of it is killing mankind.
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