subject: Organic Fair Trade Coffee Market Taking Off [print this page] Fair trade efforts were made in the modern world from the 1950s onwards, through church and non-governmental organizations, but the efforts didn't really go mainstream until the movement to buy coffee using fair trade as a guide. This was because fair trade products sold up until that time tended mostly to be handicrafts, not all of which were that useful. The depredations of large corporations and agricultural restructuring on small farmers became serious in the 1980s, so coffee (in general) and later on organic fair trade coffee were prime areas in which to start doing some serious economic and social good.
Fair trade coffee that is grown organically was not the primary focus at first. Just getting coffee growers a fair economic deal was the important thing, whatever methods they used to grow their crops.
Early on, alternative trading organizations were set up, but the big breakthrough occurred in North America when an organization called Equal Exchange was founded in 1986. It made a deal with coffee cooperatives in Nicaragua to bring coffee into the United States, and the coffee was eventually fair trade certified when that system came to the U.S. in 1998.
Once fair trade took off with coffee, it wasn't long before the same concept was applied to other products. Fair trade tea followed soon afterward, and the movement spread to other foods like sugar, fruit, juice, rice, spices and so on. But as the fair trade idea spread around the world, the environmental movement began exerting an influence as well, as the concept of environmentally friendly and sustainable farming methods began taking hold. That was when the movement involving coffee began to help farmers learn sustainable farming as well, and organic fair trade coffee finally came into its own.
Thanks to the fair trade movement, you can now go into entirely fair trade stores and find all sorts of manufactured products, as well as fruit, vegetables, and of course, organic fair trade coffee. That's still the granddaddy of them all, recognized as the industry that kick started everything. As people saw farmers being helped in that industry, it inspired them to extend similar help to many others. It's become exciting to watch, to see where the fair trade concept is going to land next.
