Why is Fairtrade mainstream and specialty coffee not?

The commodity coffee market is unlike any other. At first glance it is not very different than gold, corn, oil or any other commodity traded on the global markets. Prices rise and drop, people invest, hedge, win and lose. However, there is one significant difference. Unlike the other products, coffee is not produced by a handful of large agricultural or mining companies. Rather the contrary, coffee is produced by an estimated 25 million smallholding producers which results in a total of 200 million people directly and indirectly dependant on coffee; that’s almost 3% of the world population.

The fact that such a large amount of people are dependent on coffee could be a good thing; if coffee production were a lucrative business to be in. But, let me break it to you: it’s not. Producing coffee is not profitable because it was never meant to be. Coffee spread around the world through European colonization in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and, as we all know, CSR wasn’t a big deal back then. The lucrative part has always been and still is coffee roasting and retail.

Moving coffee, one of many jobs involved in coffee production credit: Matthew Schodorf

 However, the (not so) glorious days of the colonies are long gone and slavery has been  abandoned for centuries (right?). This does not take away that the principles of the trade have not changed. Although the coffee plantations are not foreign-owned anymore, the trade is still based on cheap extraction of raw materials and huge profits on the processing and retails side of things.


The cost of production of a pound of coffee and the global market price for a pound of coffee are almost on par. For a couple of months a coffee producer might be able to earn a few cents on a pound of coffee but on other occasions it might actually cost him or her money to produce it. One might argue that this is the nature of doing business, but there is one major difference.

Coffee farmers considering to purchase much-needed fertilizer. 

 A coffee producer is deeply intertwined with the coffee plantation in every single aspect of life. All cash flow has to account for everything; personal and business. There is little or no social security to protect a coffee farmer in case the market price dips, or one of many threats affect to highly vulnerable coffee harvest. The only thing one can do in such an occasion is to tighten the belt.

To sum it all up: almost 3% of the world population is directly and indirectly dependent on coffee production for their livelihoods. However, coffee production was never meant to be profitable. Moreover, the cost of production often exceeds the price paid for coffee. Furthermore, coffee is a high risk crop and the finances are deeply intertwined with the producer’s personal lives. Lastly, there is no or little safety net in case things go south for the producer.

Talking about challenges at the farm.

This, of course, is no news for the ethical consumer. The fairtrade movement has been very successful in raising awareness of issues in the coffee industry. Together with other certification bodies it has saturated the hedonic needs of the ever growing number of said ethical and nowadays also, regular consumers. The specialty coffee movement, which emerged some decades after fairtrade has continued on this path and addresses, among others, the issues with aforementioned fair trade movement. This new movement is built on the pillars of quality, transparency and traceability. However, contrary to fairtrade, it has not been successful of reaching the mainstream markets with its products and communication efforts.

How did the fairtrade movement become so successful and where did specialty coffee miss the boat? Two of the pillars of specialty coffee are traceability and transparency, the exact principles fairtrade is missing out on. The lack of it, perhaps, makes fairtrade simple and specialty to complicated.

Separating the yellow cherries from the red is a popular practice in specialty coffee.

The fact that transparency and traceability adds value for producers has been proven through plenty of anecdotal evidence available. But how can these principles be of added value to the everyday consumer and can it be a starting point to further address the myriad of issues we encounter in coffee production? The coming months I will look for answers on these questions in my bachelor thesis.

A Relfection on Melbourne.

29 December 2015 - In a bus, New Zealand.

Let´s face it, my tall body and busses don´t work well together. Despite the muscle-knotting and bone-cracking positions I do still thoroughly enjoy long busrides. It is not like any other kind of joy, it is excitement either. It is peace of mind. That one seat is the only place you´ll have to be for the next 8 hours. I have a hectic mind; chaos gives me energy and adrenaline. This has kept me going for the last 6 months in Melbourne. Right now there is nothing I could, or should be doing. For me this bus is the perfect place to be. It also treats me to some good vistas of Kiwi landscape. From time to time a gasp a little, lakes and mountaintops pass occasionnaly and it is clear that this is different than any place I have been before. However, most of time it is a vast nothingness. Dull yellow plains with a mix of eucalyptus-like and pine trees dotted around. This disappointed me a bit at first, but I realised just now that A) it probably is a good thing the highway doesn´t run through ancient rainforests and glaciers and B) that New Zealand is incredibly thinly populated leaving so much space empty.

It seems like there is so much in my brain which hasn´t been updated yet. Do you know the feeling when you´re Facebook feed keeps displaying the same articles and posts? That´s how I feel. It hasn´t really hit me yet that my 6 months in Melbourne are over, and that I now am in another country of another dream. Up until the very last moment and even beyond my subconsecious does not acknowledge my Australian departure. I don´t believe I will be able to live the Melbourne lifestyle anywhere but in Melbourne it self. A big city feel with village-like people. It is such a lively culture filled with quality food, genuine service, endless festivals, and a community spirit. Melbourne does not try to be anything, nor do the majority of its inhabitants. Everybody is encouraged to do with they love to do most, go with flow and enjoy every possible moment. Calling this trip an epliogue to Melbourne would not do honour to what I hopefully am about to witness. In Melbourne I was part corporate sales person, part international student, 100% coffee snob and a tourist from time to time.

What will I be in New Zealand? I can´t tell yet. I´ll surely still be a coffee snob carrying around my portable grinder, Aeropress, Proud Mary´s Coffee and two newly acquired books about the golden bean. I will definitely put effort in to capturing this journey with photos and video material as well as writing. There is little itineray, kicking-off in Queenstown and flying out of Auckland in exactly 30 days from now.

The bigger picture of my exchange.

8 July 2015, Melbourne, Australia.

It become clear to me how my exchange year impacted my relation with other people around me only a few months after returning home. This thought had come to my mind before whilst I was on exchange. But I saw the bigger picture when I settled back home. On a certain point in time, when I was struggling to make friends beyond the superficial level I figured it must be because I didn’t know all the social connections in my classroom; ‘who dates who?’, ‘who are the cool guys’? etc. Throw in a language barrier and profound cultural differences and you’ll probably recognize a familiar picture. On top of this I also beared in mind that I just brutally stormed into their easy going lives and stirred up some things in an usually pretty average Costa Rican classroom. Yep, making good friends was difficult the first months. However, language barriers were broken and social connections appeared to be close to irrelevant. Nevertheless, the struggle for deeper friendship remained; and that I attributed to the cultural differences. I often thought I understood parts of the culture and tried to apply them in my day to day life and I would end up looking back a month or two later and I would laugh about how foolish I was acting. Culture isn’t something you apply, culture should come genuinely. It is to be integrated in not only behaviour but also in your line of thinking. I can happily say that after 11 months this had come a far way and great friendships have come hand in hand with that. (Sidenote: doing sports is a GREAT help in making friends, in my experience that is.)

When my host family dropped me off at the airport I collapsed and bursted out in an endless stream of tears which continued during the long hours of travelling back home. I quickly wiped away my last tears as I entered the arrival hall and finally got to hug my family again. The novelty was great, there were numerous photo’s and stories to be shared. I spent weeks catching up with old friends. Finally I got to eat all the dishes I missed and walk around my home town as if I had never left. But soon the novelty faded away and everybody’s life continued just as it did when I wasn’t there. This was when I started feeling out of place again and struggled picking up many of my friendships and old patterns; I didn’t get passed the superficial level. The same feeling I had in Costa Rica arose. However, this time I knew the social connections, I knew the language and I knew the culture. Why was it then, that I was struggling with these problems once again?

For me it then became clear why I had had the issues before, and why I was experiencing them again. Whilst trying to make friends and making emotional connections I have always been very eager to share pieces of myself and my culture. Unfortunately this is often hard for other people to understand and / or appreciate. In Costa Rica my 17 years of Dutch life had little meaning to the people I was trying to share it with. And vice versa, in The Netherlands my year of Costa Rican life had little meaning to the people I was trying to share it with here.

And from this arises one of the many beauties of doing an exchange. It requires you to let go of all you know to be able to fully enter into a culture, it requires you to find who you are for who you are regardless of country and culture.