Trend Towards Growing Organic Coffee

There has been a big movement in recent years toward growing organic coffee. And for various reasons, this practice lends itself to certifying the coffee for fair trade as well. The two ideas of organic and fair trade are not in fact identical, but they dovetail very nicely.

The main reasons for going organic, of course, involve environmental concerns and sustainability. The latter has to include the possibility of the coffee growers themselves being able to make a decent living, sustaining not just themselves but the organic growing methods too. This is where fair trade certified coffee and organic certified coffee may become the same thing.

When a coffee company would enter the market in a big way in the past couple of decades, one big switch they pretty much always demanded would be to move from a shade-grown method of producing coffee to an open field, sun-grown method that would produce higher yields.

But because of soil depletion and erosion, this would also require a great deal of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. In growing organic coffee, some farmers are now going back to shaded growth, but even if they don't, they use much more organic methods for watering, fertilizing and pest control.

Not all fair trade coffee is also organic, but about eighty percent of it is. This indicates that some coffee companies are not just taking account of profits but are recognizing other costs involved in the more recently favored methods of mass production.

Organic coffee production can prevent environmental losses that will eventually lead to such depletion that coffee may not be able to be grown at all. If organic methods are combined with fair trade practices, then both land and farmers can be sustained in a healthy way, thus ensuring a future for both coffee bean crops and the growers.

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