For the novel I’m working on now, I’m researching coffee–history, production, and modern growing, cultivation, and distribution practices. Although most of us coffee devotees possess a vague, back-of-the-brain consciousness of the suffering that coffee has caused historically throughout the world, we probably stop short of thinking about what our own coffee habit means to rural farmers and migrant workers. The fact is that more than 25 million acres are used worldwide for coffee production annually, and more than half of the global coffee supply is produced by small farmers (The Coffee Book, by Nina Luttinger and Gregory Dicum). The Coffee Book contains this description of a visit to a coffee farm in Costa Rica, where workers are harvesting the cherries from coffee trees:

There were many of them, whole families, ranging from toddlers still unsteady walking, to seniors old enough to be grandparents…the wage was one dollar per full basket. The people work from five-thirty in the morning until six at night, seven days a week.

I was reading this passage this morning while enjoying my $2.25 (plus tip) cup of coffee. My son is spending the day with his babysitter so I can work on my book. I couldn’t help but think about the enormous disparity–me reading and writing while my toddler eats healthy food, reads books, and plays in the back yard–while other children are working alongside their mothers on coffee plantations around the world, both mother and child involved in hard manual labor. (The photo below, from the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, shows a family of coffee workers in Nicaragua).

If you worry about where your coffee comes from, the first and easiest thing you can do is buy only certified Fair Trade coffee. You can also look into organization called Coffee Kids, which works to improve the lives of children and families in coffee-producing regions, in large part by building sustainable communities. Coffee Kids reports that “25 million families around the world work in the coffee-fields and totally depend on the coffee crop as their only source of income.” You can make a direct donation on the Coffee Kids web site, or you can patronize one of these businesses that supports Coffee Kids–especially DaVinci Gourmet, Caribou Coffee and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

You can also write to Starbucks CEO Jim Donald at this address to insist that Starbucks feature a Fair Trade coffee as the coffee of the day every day. Currently, Fair Trade makes up only about three percent of the coffee that Starbucks serves.
Jim Donald
CEO Starbucks
P.O. Box 34067
Seattle, WA 98124-1067