coffee part 2: the coffee conundrum

It seems that nothing in life is simple. With my growing love of coffee over the past few years came a growing concern for responsible coffee-purchasing practices. I am acutely aware that the way I spend my money has an effect on commerce around the world, particularly with food. If I buy organic, I support organic farming. If I buy local, I support local farming. If I buy fair trade, I support fair trade farming. That "fair trade" thing is a bit if a buzz-word, particularly in reference to coffee. And, like most environmentally-and-socially "responsible" people, I tend to want to support it. It is, wouldn't you agree, the responsible thing to do! Support farming where people get paid good wages and growing and work practices are "good." However, it turns out that it's not that simple.

There are potentially a variety of reasons why the fair trade choice isn't "that simple," but the one I'm going with today springs from a conversation I had with a friend's dad not long after he returned from a medical mission trip to Nicaragua last year. His group spent time tending to the medical needs of people and livestock in the "villages" surrounding a large coffee plantation. Basically everyone there works at the plantation. In fact, the villages are technically located within the confines of the plantation itself (e.g. the land was owned by the plantation owner). The people work from sun-up to sun-down (which, when you're in Nicaragua, is a long period of time thanks to its proximity to the equator) doing the hard labor of tending to the coffee crop. In exchange, they get to live in mud huts and eek out a living. Truly, there's not much opportunity to get away from this lifestyle, so they're rather stuck.

And that's the thing. Yes, the work conditions are awful. Yes, these people are poverty-stricken. Yes, it seems I should stop buying the coffee this plantation forces the people so painfully to produce. But...if I stopped buying the coffee...the people wouldn't have any income. Not only that, they wouldn't even have a place to live! If their plantation gets shut down, these people have absolutely nowhere else to go, no other job to get into, no way of getting to a city to find a new job even if there was a job to get, and no savings to make ends meet in the meantime!

I asked my friend's dad what he thought I should do. He didn't know. I don't know. I suppose the answer is to force all the plantations to stop being so harsh. But is that really possible to accomplish without economic pressure and follow-through - saying, "If you don't change, I won't buy" and then acting upon that promise when change is not made. If that's the solution, then I am responsible for the worsening of living conditions for all the people whom I was attempting to help in the first place with my noble goal! It's a tough situation; it's a coffee conundrum.