Coffee

Choose Fairtrade

Fairtrade Certified Coffee. Good intentions don't change things, good business does!

Whether it's in the high, misty tea gardens in Sri Lanka, the green hills where coffee grows in Chiapas, Mexico or the red-earthed cocoa farms in Ghana, Fairtrade certification is providing growers with clean water, education, health care and a better quality of life for their communities.

This certification ensures fair trading practices by setting standards for each product, including common principles such as no child labour, a minimum wage that ensures a decent quality of life, minimum health and safety standards and democratic decision making policies within the growing communities. Fairtrade also aims for long term trading arrangements, credit extension to avoid debt and consumer awareness of the need for trade to be made fair.

Most importantly, Fairtrade teaches people to fend for themselves - giving those who grow tea, coffee, cocoa and other tropical crops in developing countries the ability and means to dictate their own futures. Fairtrade brings balance to the global playing field.

Coffee is grown in tropical and subtropical climates as undergrowth of larger shade trees, either in small plots with hand harvesting, or without shade trees on plantations with mechanical harvesters. The two main types of coffees are: Robusta - which is grown at sea level, or Arabica, which is best grown in mountainous regions.

In the growth process the coffee trees first get white flowers, eventually developing into green cherries, which must be harvested when they turn red, each cherry contains two beans.

The red cherries are first pulped, then fermented, washed and dried, creating parchment, which is processed in a factory by hulling, polishing and sorting into exportable Green Coffee Beans.

Small coffee farmers either sell the coffee cherries to a wet-plant or add value by pulping, fermenting, washing and drying it to parchment, in preparation for the market.

5 to 8 kg of cherries gives approx 1kg of green exportable coffee beans. One coffee tree yields approx 15 to 20kg of cherries per year.