Whenever I go to the Grillé to get some coffee (and believe me, this is a place I go to oftent) I am always asked which type of coffee I’d like. Generally I mix it up. Some Kenyan on Tuesday, Somalian on Wednesday...that is, until I heard someone ask about Peace Coffee. Which got me to wondering, as an ignorant first-year, just what is Peace Coffee?

First off, it’s an un-advertised coffee served in the Grillé part of the Café only. For whatever reason, and we must assume that there is a reason, it is not served to people eating within the Café. Second, it’s a shade-grown, certified organic, Fair Trade coffee. Which means...what? I have to admit that I had no clue. So I did a little research and found that what I had been nonchalantly consuming was marred by the death and destruction of lives, environments and communities. Unless, that was, I decided to drink Peace Coffee.

Fair Trade certainly sounds good—but is it like Jay Benanav who says he wants student rights and then proposes ludicrous bills? No, fortunately. Fair Trade and Jay Benanav have very little in common. Fair Trade is a term used to describe coffee produced for a standard amount of $1.41 per pound, which ensures that the farmers continue to profit even when the market is down. This number may shock you. It seems incredibly low for the $2-3 cups of coffee we buy daily. But other coffee growers, those working without Fair Trade agreements, sell their wares for as little as ten to fifty cents per pound. Currently, coffee is selling for under forty cents a pound.

This price forces coffee workers not using Fair Trade to sell their goods for less than the cost of production which forces the worker into poverty and debt. Without the added income of Fair Trade the workers go without things such as warehouses to store the coffee beans, flat-bed trucks to deliver the coffee, and proper cleaning and handling tools. They have no sick days or vacations, and there is no such thing as a maternity leave. Which means that if you get pregnant you are laid off, and if you have a sun stroke from working ten hours in the sun all day, then you also get laid off and you won’t even have the money to go to a proper hospital or doctor. It means that you live in poverty throughout the entirety of your life without so much as a elementary education, as many of these farms are miles away from public schools. The employees can’t even afford to buy their own product.

Fair Trade coffee certifies that employees are offered an opportunity to run their own plantations and work in the marketing and advertising positions; it assures that all employees are treated equally and that the plantation becomes an equal-opportunity workplace. Fair trade also provides opportunities for education, health care and community development such as the building of local water pumps, roads and schools. This includes a firm stance against the abuse of child labor and a belief in preserving the local environment. The act of preserving the local environment is part of what makes Fair Trade coffee so important—all Fair Trade coffee is shade-grown.

The coffee beans in a shade-grown brand are harvested under a canopy of trees. This means that the environmental devastation which goes hand-in-hand with other coffee types does not occur. Many coffee plantations must relocate their plots every few years because of serious soil erosion and the release of chemicals into the soil, causing the destruction of the coffee plants themselves. Shade-grown coffee preserves the environment, allowing farmers to keep one plot for the majority of their lifetime. Because Peace Coffee is also organically grown it avoids pesticides which, because these workers work without masks or gloves, slowly destroy the health of coffee harvesters and the fragile environment surrounding them. Certified organic coffees are free from synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

So when you go to warm up on these cold Minnesota nights make sure you think about the people who made the coffee in your cup. It’s all sold for the same price and it’s only you who can make the choice to bring about a better world for a people who have never known the luxuries we indulge in.

This information came from the Fair Trade website: http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade, and the website for an environmental audit done at Macalester in 2001: http://www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/Audits/audit2001_foodservice.htm; also, Whole Food’s October edition of “Delicious Living.” By the way, the Peace Coffee is the Guatemalan blend.