Why Fair Trade coffee isn’t enough (aka MY coffee purchases can help change the World!)
We at Camano Island Coffee Roasters go beyond the hype of fair trade coffee to present you with a whole new buzzphrase: “Coffee With A Conscience” – genuine organic coffee that is rich in its benefits as well as its flavor.
1.) Camano Island Coffee Roasters pays more than the real market pricing for the fair trade coffee. We pay upwards of three times the fair trade price. This is important because many coffee farmers can’t afford to continue running their coffee farms due to pricing being driven down so much by large corporations that want nothing more than to make lots and lots of money. Our philosophy as a mission based business is the more we can do to support the coffee farmer in their endeavors, the more they will do to bring us even better coffee.
How we define “Coffee With A Conscience:”
Purchase a Coffee Lover’s Box and partner with us to give something back to the families who grow our coffee. As a member, $1 of every package of ethical coffee you order will be donated to Agros International which is an organization recognized for making a great difference in the lives of the people they serve. As a certified organic roaster, we are dedicated to supporting our customers with education about the issues that are related to the world of coffee. Organic coffee, fairly traded coffee, shade grown organic fairtrade coffee and other words and phrases become “buzzwords” and lose their meaning if not supported by a commitment and a promise that goes beyond marketing hype. At Camano Island Coffee Roasters, our commitment to roast coffee that is always organic, always fairly traded and always fresh is the same commitment we have in supporting the farmers we buy from and the people impacted by this industry.
2.) Self-reliance. It’s a word that many Americans take for granted. Imagine if you had only one major source of income and a storm came through and destroyed that crucial crop, leaving you with nothing to take care of your family for over half a year. On top of that, you have nothing to resume your crop for the next year. Camano Island Coffee Roasters (through our partnership with Agros – www.agros.org) aims to help alleviate those issues through teaching coffee farmers secondary trade skills and helping them learn how to start saving money in case disaster strikes.
This goes far beyond buying fair trade coffee and gets directly to the heart of poverty. The ability to take care of yourself and your family is such a non-issue for most of us that we couldn’t fathom raising a family on a couple thousand dollars a year. Yet that is more than most coffee farmers have to raise their families and that is on a good year with a full crop. Since coffee is an agricultural product, it’s subject to the same atrocities that can befall many different harvested crops. Unfortunately, from many of these third-world farmers, there is nothing to fall back on if that happens except for poverty. When this happens, many farmers lose their land and sometimes, their families.
Through our alliance with Agros, we are able to offer hope to these coffee farmers again. We help them get back on their feet and help them regain ownership of their land. We use the philosophy of “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime, but help a man own the pond and you change generations.”
The farmers pay back the land-ownership loans (allowing Agros to continue doing this good works) and learn concepts they’ve never known before, such as savings and 2nd incomes. In many cases, farmers go on to help out friends and family in the same manner. This greatly improves the way of life in these poverty-stricken areas.
3.) Through self-reliance, infrastructure work, and direct relationships with these coffee farmers and their villages, we assist underprivileged nations in growing their own heritage. This heritage gives them a firm foundation to build a future and ultimately, change the way of life in these third-world countries. Camano Island Coffee Roasters helps to build schools, medical facilities, water systems… and many other infrastructure pieces in the communities. This gives them something on which to build a heritage, something to start them on the right foot and keep them moving in a forward motion. Any one thing that can be done is not enough. They need the tools to continue on a forward motion. Camano Island Coffee Roasters is there to assist them and give them those tools.
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