The tutor shares some reflections about the fair trade movement in connection with coffee.

My wife and I were very poor while I was at university.  My joke is that we didn’t eat Kraft Dinner; rather, we ate the store brand, since it was about 25% less.  It’s a joke, but nonetheless true.

I got out of UVic in ’95; finding a good job was tough.   However, by the end of ’96, life was looking up. While we were earning more money, we lived in fear of being poor again, so continued to consume generic brands.  Despite my love of coffee, I wouldn’t buy “the good stuff”, though I noticed more and more new kinds on store shelves.

Sometime in 2001, I’d guess, my wife brought home a few parcels of the new coffee.  “It was on special,” she explained, so it hadn’t cost much more than our normal kinds.  The packages were bright and attractive, displaying words like “ethical” or  “fair”.

After we put the groceries away, I opened one of the packages and ground some up.  It was a cautiously festive occasion:  how good was the “fair trade” coffee that I’d been rejecting?

I poured our cups and put cream in them (and sugar in my wife’s).  What happened next was a revelation and a revolution.

The coffee in our cups was obviously much better than the “standard” kinds we’d always drunk. Half a cup in, I knew I couldn’t go back.  The “fair trade” coffee was so good, I’d have to join my politically correct cohorts.  Since then, I’ve paid the premium for the “fair trade” coffee, and been happy to do so.

I don’t buy “fair trade” coffee to be a good person; I buy it because I like it.  Is it “fair trade”, or just fair trade?

I drank two cups of coffee while producing this article:)

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.