Coffee farmers in northern Haiti survive the crisis thanks to fair trade

Oxfam document (extract), 16 May 2001

Fair trade was launched at the beginning of the 1990s to guarantee a better price and access to export markets for coffee farmers. The presence of a fair-trade label on a coffee product guarantees that small farmer' co-operatives were given a fair price, currently US$1.26/lb for arabica, which is 50 per cent more than market prices.

The co-operative of Carice in northern Haiti, which sells 100 per cent of its production to fair-trade organisations, bought coffee from about 300 families this year. Last year, farmers received the equivalent of 90 US cents/lb for their coffee.* This was 50 per cent higher than the price received by farmers outside the co-operative. In monetary terms, the net average benefit provided by fair trade reached US$36 per member, which is more or less equivalent to one full month of rice consumption for an average family.

'I don't even want to think what would have happened without the co-operative. I could not have sent my son to school. The local intermediaries give you a miserly price for your coffee. At some point, they were giving only 18 cents/lb.'Mme Fabius Mirtil, member of the Carice cooperative* (after deductions for transportation, processing and marketing costs incurred by the co-operative)