In the early 1990′s the number of small, quality focused roasters began to increase in the US. They bought estate coffees but knew there were many more coffees in the hills that would be of equal or greater quality. They started to journey out to the farms and realized the sad state of affairs small farmers faced.

USAID began funding grants that were designed to develop cupping labs and sample roasting facilities. Coffee Corps began sending roasters and cuppers to train farmers. The common belief was: put the skills in the hands of the farmer and they will be better equipped to join the global economy as our equals.

Out of all of this, roasters began relationships with farmers. Information is being shared via all of the outlets you mentioned. Cupping labs are all over Nicaragua, Rwanda, Peru, Guatemala, just to name a few,and sample roasting is becoming more common at origin.

In Peru, KC Okeefe of Jungle Tech is training a national corps of cuppers at a feverish pace. Not transfair related, but a very equitable exchange of information, goods and services is taking place.

Collectively, the efforts made within and outside of fair trade is making a huge difference.

Rodney — Interesting about the Brazil to Europe tariff issue — Would love it if you’d let me know if you run across more details on this :)

Tim — I’m really interested in hearing how the cupping and small-sample roasting’s been encouraged in the last 10 years. Are these the results of efforts by fair trade companies working directly with farmers? Or simply better information sharing between countries, as abetted by air travel and internet and so on? Or some other reason? Or a combo? Encouraging, regardless –

Justin — I believe you brought up the issue of fair trade choco bars not being required to use fair trade sugar in a previous comment, and thought you might be interested in reading this article. It’s about a French economist critiquing fair trade — one of the reasons being exactly that unfair trade sugar in choco bars with the fair trade label issue –

As a roaster in the US market I can say that the competition for shelf space and market share in the sustainable market has been intensifying for several years. It will not get any easier.

Roasters at origin have several hurdles to overcome that would likely make their entry to the US market pretty difficult. We’ve hit on the logistics and costs of shipping,freshness, and limited ability to offer an array of products. We touched on the cost of developing and maintaining a roasting plant.

Technical training for roasting professionals is an absolute must. Consultants and educational opportunities are available, but there is a fairly steep and expensive learning curve in the roasting profession.

Of course I have self-preservation in mind, but I can’t help but think that a more beneficial arrangement would come in the form of higher prices paid for quality green coffee and development of internal markets.

Internal market growth will allow a microroastery revolution to take place at origin which will unseat Nestle as the cup of choice in many origin countries. It will also enhance the quality of coffee in the longterm as the roaster/grower relationship would flourish because of their close proximity. I think there would be an outpouring of support from US roasters if we framed roaster training at origin in the context of benefitting internal development rather than export market development.

In the past ten years farmers at origin have been developing their sensory skills via cupping and learning how to roast small samples. The results are amazing, quality is up and the cooperatives can more effectively use agronomists and imporve their processing techniques. If we add the skill set of profile roasting and blend development to their communities the odds are that quality will imrove even more.

I can find the details later, but I know for years Brazil (which has all the infrastructure for selling a variety of packaged instant coffee) has been pushing Europe to remove its trade barriers to such coffee. I think Brazilian instant coffee currently faces tariff or quota barriers or both.

Good point re: tea – there are diferences with tea on this issue.
For example, all of our tea packaging is printed in the country of origin (India, Sri Lanka, & S.Africa), and the tea bags are prepared and packaged at origin as well.