What's Important about a Cup of Coffee ?

It's possible you're like I was and haven't heard the case for fair trade - shade grown coffee.

Here it is in a nutshell.

Most people have a rather narrow view of sustainability. It's much more than "going green." It has has components of social justice and economic robustness. And -- as it turns out -- understanding coffee is a really good way to help us see these relationships.

Coffee is big business. It is the second most heavily traded commodity in the world. (The first is oil). So where does coffee come from? The answer is not the grocery store. No, it comes from the coffee plant.

Most of the coffee we normally buy is called commodity or technified coffee because it is grown on large coffee plantations -- which helps keep the price low. However, this cost saving farming method requires that coffee be heavily treated with pesticides and that the great forests be cleared to make room for the coffee farms.

The traditional way of growing coffee is to grow it in the shade -- either under the canopy of an existing forest or under other useful trees that have been cultivated.

So when we buy coffee, we make a choice. We can buy whatever coffee is available in the store or from the vendor. This is almost certainly technified coffee. Or we can buy it from sources that specialize in shade grown, organic, fair trade coffee.

So, it turns out that if you buy shade grown, organic, fair trade coffee, you're buying from local communities and you're helping stabilize the economic well being and the social well being of those local communities.

When you choose to buy shade grown, fair trade coffee several things happen: 1) More money goes to the farmers and their families than if you buy commodity coffee. 2) The people in those local communities are less exposed to pesticides and herbicides.

So, when you make a choice about what coffee you're going to drink, you're also making a choice about the stability of the local communities.

But it doesn't stop there. When you make a choice for fair trade coffee you're also influencing the preservation of the forests. Because if the native farmers and their families are doing well and are more able to make a livelihood, they have less reason to engage in things like illegal logging.

And when forests are allowed to remain intact, song birds and other animal species that depend on forests for their habitats are less likely to die off.

When we begin to notice (and to care about) where the cup of coffee came from, we suddenly realize that it is in fact tied to everything else.

In that simple cup of coffee there is this complex system of relationships that involves natural ecosystems, wildlife, the economic and social viability of farmers and their families throughout the world.

So, in the face of all this, why aren't we falling all over ourselves to buy fair trade coffee? Two reasons I'd say: First, we haven't heard this story. Secondly, we're used to thinking only in terms of lowest price. Fair trade coffee is more expensive than the mass produced, technified version.

But, knowing what we now know, there are very good reasons for the Christian to think about more than the lowest price. So let's do it.

Change a habit. Buy fair trade coffee.