Did you know that by choosing to purchase your morning coffee at
Crossroads in Oklahoma Memorial Union you could feed an
impoverished family in Nicaragua for a day? Did you ever conceive
that you had that much power to change the world?

You do.

Crossroads sells what’s called Fair Trade Certified coffee
which means that the farmers who grew the coffee and the women and
children that hand-picked all 40,000 coffee beans were paid a fair
wage for their labor.

Coffee is the second largest commodity in the entire world
behind oil. To put that into perspective, America has waged war in
developing nations for commodities as frivolous as bananas.

Yet nothing can stop us from making demands from our wallets.
Think of how much coffee you consume in a week and what kind of
power that gives you! Putting time and energy into the products you
buy could mean the difference between life and death for people in
developing nations. And you don’t have to join the Peace
Corps or even leave the country to do all this good work.

So, what is fair trade? Simply put, it is paying a fair wage for
labor or goods. But for people in developing nations, finding fair
wages can be more challenging than it should be thanks to
America’s love of free-trade agreements that put
corporations’ needs before that of any of the workers.

I bet that nobody ever told you that free trade might not be a
good thing. I mean, it had the word “free” in it, so it
can’t be all bad, right? Wrong. Free trade agreements such as
NAFTA, GATT and CAFTA are designed to give large corporations more
freedom from international regulations but they include no
international laws to protect workers. Nor do they provide for the
fact that these large companies destroy the family farm
cooperatives and small businesses in the countries where they
trade. A free trade agreement is not a pact between governments but
an agreement between First World corporations and small
governments.

According to the Organic Consumers Association, four corporate
giants–Procter & Gamble Co. and Philip Morris Co.'s Kraft
Foods Inc., Sara Lee Corp. and Nestle SA of
Switzerland—control over 40 percent of the coffee market.
They buy their beans in bulk from middlemen and have no contact
with the farmers themselves to ensure that they are paid
fairly.

Here in America we see this happening too. Factory farms are
ousting smaller farmers. But in America, a farmer has the freedom
and means to move to Wichita and work at the Wal-Mart if he has
to.

It’s not right or fair for our farmers either, but they at
least have a few options. In Nicaragua, the poorest Central
American country, the only option a farmer who can’t farm has
is to watch his family starve.

Yet the First World is mobilizing for change. Fair trade coffee
sales have increased over 270 percent and it is the most widely
available fair trade item. You can even ask for fair trade at
Starbucks!

As citizens of the First World, we are the ones that need
empowering to believe that without even leaving the country we
could change the lives of thousands upon thousands of farmers,
workers and artisans. So instead of buying Maxwell House, stop by
The Earth to try one of their fabulous blends of fair trade coffee.
Try Crossroads or Starbucks instead of your usual coffee haunts.
Just look for the trademark that says, “Fair Trade
Certified.”

Think about where your money goes and you can change the
world.

 

—Liz Kiser is a professional writing graduate student. Her
column appears every other Tuesday. She can be reached at
opinion@oudaily.com.
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