Fair Trade gives coffee drinkers a choice

Fair trade coffee is coffee bought at "fair trade prices" from local, independent coffee farmers throughout the world. The "fair trade price" pays the farmers well enough to cover the cost of production and the livelihood of the families growing the coffee. The idea began as idea of a Dutch Priest, Max Habilar. The small family farms that get to participate must grow coffee the old way, known as "shade grown," the way coffee naturally grows. The method is natural and organic, preserves the forest trees, which sustain birds, other wildlife and local water quality downstream of the coffee growing operation. Coffees grown in this manner are superior in flavor and command a higher price.
Normal coffee growing floods world markets with cheap, low quality coffee that mainly go into canned coffees. They are grown in the hot sun, in areas cleared of any other growth. The operations are administered by low-paid laborers that live in very extreme poverty. Next time you buy coffee or tea, seek out FAIR TRADE certified coffees, which bear a co-op label.
Fair trade has since expanded to include other crops typically exploited by global free trade, such as tropical lumber products and bananas and has even expanded to within the United States, where logging drove entire species of animals to near extinction and forested lands to sheer clear-cut devastation.
Visit: Garstang, England, the world's first FAIR TRADE TOWN.
Visit: first U.S. fair trade organization, Trans Fair USA of Oakland, California.
Visit: Caffe Ladro, first fair trade coffee chain, based in, where else, Seattle!
Visit: wild oats stores
Visit University of Puget Sound, Seattle, whose food services are supposed to use a lot of fair trade products
Visit: FSC Forest Stewardship council
Visit: The Collins company, FSC certified sustainably logged lumber company
Visit: FSC certified grower near Fresno - they have an outlet in Atwater.
Visit: website of the documentary film, "Buyer Be Fair" which I just watched on Free Speech TV