“Saving the World”, One Fair Trade Cup of Coffee at a Time?

Coffee is the second-largest globally traded commodity after oil (Murray et al., 2007). As a result, coffee has woven its way into society's social, economic, and political fabric. Unfortunately, the coffee industry has also enabled multiple facets of inequality with negative impacts on its producers because of the volatile nature of its production and markets. To aid in producer equality, the Fair Trade initiative emerged as a social movement to ameliorate the alarmingly high rates of poverty faced by small-scale farmers. Fair Trade attempts to reconfigure capitalist trade relations to ensure fairness within trade relations (Ruiz & Luetchford, 2021, p.885). The overarching objective of this major paper will be to investigate the benefits and limitations of the Fair Trade partnership. A literature review of food movements, specifically food justice, will prove that Fair Trade fits within a reformist political trend that often reproduces, rather than reconfigures, structural inequalities (Ruiz & Luetchford, 2021, p.885). The analysis in the major paper includes a comparison of the coffee industry from the perspective of coffee farmers in Costa Rica, contrasted with Ontario coffee roasters. The Costa Rician small-scale producers are active members of cooperatives and grow coffee as a stable source of income. They shed light on the realities of Fair Trade and working with cooperatives. Understanding the daily realities of producers will be vital in making recommendations on improving Fair Trade policies and practices. The second portion of the analysis will focus on Ontario’s coffee roasters. These individuals operate coffee roasters and work closely with cooperatives to maintain a highly ethical partnership. This research component aims to identify the impact that coffee roasters (in the global North) have on small-scale producers (in the global South). For this major research paper, Ontario’s coffee industry will be limited to coffee roasters who work with Global South cooperatives that sell Fair Trade and other sustainable coffees but not specifically from Costa Rica. A consensus gathered from the interviews was that they are all working collectively to make positive changes in the coffee industry. On the producer level, they work with the cooperatives to earn a fair and decent living for their family farm while challenging the injustices at general assemblies. On the coffee roaster side, both Planet Bean and Equator are challenging the status quo by delivering premium coffee and making an actual difference in producers' lives.