Filed under: All About Coffee, Fair Trade | Tags: coffee, Fair Trade, organic
If organic products are the next big thing, Fair Trade is the next/next thing. And that is a good thing. Fair Trade really means fair. And right. Fair Trade is a partnership based on mutual respect between producers and buyers. It provides fair wages and humane working conditions for coffee farmers. It polices child labor and also supports transparency in business and accounting practices.
- Fair Trade = environmental protections. Most Fair Trade coffee is also organic, grown using sustainable farming practices. Fair Trade actively promotes methods that improve soil fertility while protecting the ecosystem. Harmful agrochemicals are limited, resulting in coffee that is safer for the farmers to grow … and safer for you to drink.
- Fair Trade provides gender equality in the workplace. Despite the gender equality strides that have taken place in America and many other countries, gender equality and fairness is sadly not the standard in many developing nations. Fair Trade supports equal pay for equal work by coffee-producing men and women.
- FairTrade protects against unfair child labor practices. Children who participate in coffee production are assured security, well being, and educational and recreational requirements in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Protecting children is a crucial piece of the Fair Trade puzzle, and one worth remembering.
- Fair Trade supports communities. Working through cooperative organizations, Fair Trade coffee farmers are able to invest their earnings in improving housing, health care, and schools.
- Fair Trade helps sustain local economies. Fair Trade coffee farmers can build their own businesses, rather than work for commercial go-betweens – where they earn significantly less money. What is more, Fair Trade profits stay in the farmers’ own community.
So: ready to buy Fair Trade? Look for the logo, and remember that you have a choice. For about what you are paying now, choosing Fair Trade Certified coffee supports sustainable development for small farmers in developing nations.
Cheers!
Filed under: All About Coffee | Tags: coffee, coffee filter, emerald frog, Fair Trade, organic, paper coffee filter
Coffee filters. Those innocuous little white papers that are as much of a staple in American kitchens as paper towels. (As a side note, I have sadly witnessed paper towels being utilized as emergency coffee filters.) But emergency paper towel substitutions may well be part of the lore of paper coffee filters. Did you even realize that there was paper towel lore?
Yes, there is actually paper towel lore, proving once again that necessity is the mother of invention since that fateful day on July 8, 1908 when the first paper coffee filter was created by German housewife named Melitta Bentz (1873-1950). Ms. Bentz had had enough of drinking coffee-grounds in her morning java and began to experiment with her children’s blotting paper from their work books. Viola! The first coffee filter prototype was born.
Later that same year, she applied for the patent of her invention, and by December 1908 M. Bentz Company was born. Indeed, the company still exists, employing approximately 4000 people in Germany today.
I Heart Coffee Filters
Little, white, disposable, and making coffee even more delicious for 101 years. But did you know that several studies have linked paper coffee filters to lowered cholesterol?
A 2007 study by the Baylor College of Medicine has shown that cafestol, a substance in boiled coffee drinks, dramatically increases cholesterol levels – particularly among women. However, the lowly coffee filter has been shown to bind the lipid-like compounds to the paper. Essentially, the ‘bad’ cafestol sticks to the filter, leaving your filtered coffee largely cafestol-free.
So if you heart coffee like I do, your heart wants you to use paper filters.
Organic junkies will want to reach for unbleached brown coffee filter paper – without glue or any other type of binding agent.
Enjoy some paper-filtered coffee on this 101st birthday of the filter!
Filed under: All About Coffee | Tags: coffee, emerald frog, Fair Trade, organic, shade grown
Shade-grown coffee: should we be paying attention?
In a word: YES. We should.
Shade-grown coffee follows the age-old principle of “live and let live.” The shade-grown coffee beans are cultivated without clear-cutting the natural fruit and hardwood trees, bushes, and other green plants that form shade canopies in the coffee regions of the world. Simply put, shade grown = shade trees. Trees = good.
And then there are the birds. Shade trees on coffee farms are home to an astonishing two-thirds of the bird species found naturally in those areas. Not to mention the multitude of other animals that call naturally-occurring trees home. The soil health is maintained, too, thanks to the plant diversity.
On the other hand, for coffee beans to flourish in the full sun, chemical poisons come into play. Insecticides, fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and the like are crucial for full-sun growth. Runoff from these chemicals pollutes the water and destroys animal habitats. On point: less than one-tenth of birds live in full-sun coffee farms.
Give me shelter:
Although shade-grown coffee certification is typically a Western-Hemisphere phenomenon, there is hope that market pressure will help it spread to the East.
For shade growth, organic, and Fair Trade coffee, please visit www.emeraldfrog.com.
