Ethiopia
How is it produced?
Local Farmers are expected to grow and maintain the coffee plant to harvest their beans which will then be shipped to Canada for processing and roasting.
Describe the supply chain to the store shelf in Canada:
. The Fair Trade coffee supply chain is broken down and analyzed into producer, roaster, retailer and consumer. In an imagined scenario, stage one (producing) entails the farmer who will pick coffee beans, then give them to the local co-operative or domestic trader or curing plant. Stage two (roasting) involves international traders or exporters, the roasters, and the wholesalers. Stage three (Retail) is simply the retailing locations which will put the finished product in front of the consumer (Naegele 2020).
What is the power balance between the producer and seller?
The power balance is actually heavily tilted towards the roaster throughout this process.
“The quoted number refers to the retail
example, where the detailed shares are 13.8% for the retailer, 2.4%
for the certifying body, 58.2% for the roaster. 12.5% goes to the cooperative and 13.1% to the farmer.” (Naegele 2020, p. 2)
Can you recommend changes to the system to improve the balance?
Involving local governments with NGO’s help, if a nation is a part of a fair trade agreement then the World Bank and the international monetary fund should look to reduce further costs by providing some benefit to the country for their efforts in furthering human rights and empowerment. Only if we get more large scale compliance to the Fair Trade system will we see a larger impact on a global scale.
References/Resources:
Naegele, H. (2020). Where does the Fair Trade money go? How much consumers pay extra for Fair Trade coffee and how this value is split along the value chain. World Development, 133. https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105006