“Buying Fair Trade coffee gives people the opportunity to make a real difference in the quality of life of farmers around the world who produce the coffee that we enjoy every day,” says Deborah James, director of the Fair Trade program at Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based international human rights organization that has worked since 1988 to build support in the United States for Fair Trade. “The millions of US consumers who have been searching for an alternative to sweatshop products finally have a convenient way to purchase Fair Trade goods daily. Still, people should know that there is no guarantee that coffee without the Fair Trade seal is not sweatshop coffee.”

Fair Trade coffee has been widely sold in Canada since 1997 and in Europe since 1990, but it only came to the US in the summer of 1999, when the California-based certification agency TransFairUSA began certifying small and medium-sized roasters around the country who wanted to offer Fair Trade coffee.

Coffee is the second most valuable commodity traded in the world and the second largest US import after oil. The US consumes an estimated one-fifth of all the world’s coffee, making it the largest consumer in the world. But few Americans realize that agriculture workers in the coffee industry often toil in what can be described as “sweatshops in the fields.” Many small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt. Intensive coffee farming also leads to environmental problems such as deforestation and bird habitat destruction. Additionally, the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on large-scale coffee plantations contributes to air and water pollution.

Fair Trade corrects these imbalances by guaranteeing a minimum price for small farmers’ harvest and encouraging organic and sustainable cultivation methods that are safer for communities. Fair Trade farmer cooperatives are provided badly needed credit and assured a minimum of $1.26 per pound. In comparison, the world price usually hovers around $1 per pound, but most farmers earn less than half that since they are forced to sell to exploitative middlemen. With the profits generated from receiving a living wage, coffee growers are able to invest in their families’ health care and education. Fair Trade Certified coffee currently benefits 500,000 farming families in 20 countries; an increase in US demand would dramatically increase that number.