News
Starbucks-Show Me the Money!
This is a little coffee tale about fudging the truth with statistics. Or maybe it's that the largest specialty coffee company in the world simply made a little inadvertent mistake. You be the judge. As people learn more about the long-term crisis in coffee pricing, they are wanting to know what their favorite coffee company is paying its farmers. As a 100% Fair Trade company, our answer is easy - we pay $1.41/lb at a minimum to the farmer cooperatives for all of our coffees. To this we add a Social Equity Premium of five cents and a Cooperative Read more
This is a little coffee tale about fudging the truth with statistics. Or maybe it's that the largest specialty coffee company in the world simply made a little inadvertent mistake. You be the judge. As people learn more about the long-term crisis in coffee pricing, they are wanting to know what their favorite coffee company is paying its farmers. As a 100% Fair Trade company, our answer is easy - we pay $1.41/lb at a minimum to the farmer cooperatives for all of our coffees. To this we add a Social Equity Premium of five cents and a Cooperative Read more
News
April 18, 2006
Tully's Coffee Corp. has designed its first blend of fair trade espresso with the help of college students and will begin selling the blend at the University of Washington in the coming months.
The blend consists of Chiapas beans from Mexico, Sidamo beans and Yirgacheffe beans from Ethiopia, and Sumatra Gayo Mountain beans from
Indonesia.
Representatives of UW Housing and Food Services, along with The Fair Trade Coalition, a UW student group, selected the espresso blend after tasting samples with Tully's roastmaster, Brian Speckman.
The Fair Trade Read more
The blend consists of Chiapas beans from Mexico, Sidamo beans and Yirgacheffe beans from Ethiopia, and Sumatra Gayo Mountain beans from
Indonesia.
Representatives of UW Housing and Food Services, along with The Fair Trade Coalition, a UW student group, selected the espresso blend after tasting samples with Tully's roastmaster, Brian Speckman.
The Fair Trade Read more
News
May 8, 2006
Fair trade is all about making sure third world farmers get paid a fair price for the crops they produce.
It sounds worthy - and it is - but it's also turning into a huge business opportunity for companies with an eye for untapped markets.
Erica Adutwumaa Kyere is a cocoa farmer from Ghana.
In New Zealand a block of chocolate made from her product costs $5.80, compared to $3 for a relative block from a big company.
The farmers who grow the cocoa that goes into the cheaper block of chocolate make between $44 and $158 per year. In comparison farmers Read more
It sounds worthy - and it is - but it's also turning into a huge business opportunity for companies with an eye for untapped markets.
Erica Adutwumaa Kyere is a cocoa farmer from Ghana.
In New Zealand a block of chocolate made from her product costs $5.80, compared to $3 for a relative block from a big company.
The farmers who grow the cocoa that goes into the cheaper block of chocolate make between $44 and $158 per year. In comparison farmers Read more
News
April 13, 2006
Although this is just a conservative estimate, and I have no real data to back it up, I'd be willing to bet that nearly 3 million IU students visit Starbucks every day.
I, meanwhile, had been able to avoid ever even stepping foot inside a Starbucks, let alone spending any money there, until this school year, when Starbucks managed to establish, at least within the Indiana Memorial Union, a monopoly on coffee that actually somewhat resembles coffee. As depressing as my inability to resist the convenience is from a personal standpoint, it's been quite an educational experience. Read more
I, meanwhile, had been able to avoid ever even stepping foot inside a Starbucks, let alone spending any money there, until this school year, when Starbucks managed to establish, at least within the Indiana Memorial Union, a monopoly on coffee that actually somewhat resembles coffee. As depressing as my inability to resist the convenience is from a personal standpoint, it's been quite an educational experience. Read more
News
April 8, 2006
"Is it fair trade when you get designer prices for it?"
"New York educational standards should require students to learn the relationship between their shirts and the global world."
"We need to connect fair trade with local poverty in Ithaca."
Such were the thought-provoking comments at a March 24 workshop, "Fair Trade and Local Development Initiatives," for area K-12 teachers on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York. Among the educators gathered for the day-long workshop was a team of Lehman Alternative Community School (ACS) teachers and two representatives Read more
"New York educational standards should require students to learn the relationship between their shirts and the global world."
"We need to connect fair trade with local poverty in Ithaca."
Such were the thought-provoking comments at a March 24 workshop, "Fair Trade and Local Development Initiatives," for area K-12 teachers on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York. Among the educators gathered for the day-long workshop was a team of Lehman Alternative Community School (ACS) teachers and two representatives Read more
News
April 22, 2006
Gone are the days when fair trade goods were available only at charity shops and church bazaars. Fair trade - or Fairtrade, as it has branded itself - is now big business.You can choose Fairtrade coffee in high-street outlets like Starbucks and Prêt a Manger, and local authorities are starting to declare themselves Fairtrade councils. More than 1,000 products are now certified as Fairtrade in the UK and, on an international level, the industry estimates it benefits five million producers worldwide.
Yet with multinationals moving to cash in, and supermarkets approaching fair trade Read more
Yet with multinationals moving to cash in, and supermarkets approaching fair trade Read more
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