Farmers Paid By Roasted Coffee Industry

In the eyes of people who believe in fair trade, the elimination of the middleman from the roasted coffee buying and selling process was one of the improvements brought about by the movement.

Big corporations buying coffee were never familiar with actual growers because it was coffee middlemen who bought the beans from them, as the driving force in the process was to make huge profits with the lowest costs possible.

These "savings" always tended to come at the expense of the farmers, and the idea of fair trade food originated so farmers could be given fair prices and be treated fairly.

The system has helped many farmers in the past few years, yet some people now worry that coffee middlemen are reappearing. Online gourmet coffee clubs, with special offerings to their members of different coffees they can't find anywhere else, is just one example of the new form of middleman.

Internet companies are forming that employ a similar model to the previous one. Farmers are generally anonymous, and the costs of this intermediary are added to the process of growing and selling beans, turning them into roasted coffee, and then selling the coffee to the consumer.

Some coffee roasters have begun to bypass even the official fair trade certification process, instead doing something called direct trade.

Because they have seen the middleman reappearing, and seen too many concessions made to big businesses who became involved in the fair trade roasted coffee industry, these companies have returned to the original concept of fair trade: dealing directly with farmers, using fair practices, and paying fair prices.

It seems to be the nature of business always to produce middlemen and short-change original producers for extra profits. But people interested in the welfare of the farmers will apparently re-invent fair trade as often as they must.

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