Coffee Straight from Guatemala

Every summer for the past five or six years my roommate travels to Guatemala with a group of people from her church. They work with orphanages down there, and she actually sponsors one of the girls herself. I absolutely love hearing her talk about her trips there (she loves it so much) and seeing her pictures, and the other day I fell in love with something else about her trips - the coffee.

The other day was one of those typical winter days in Northwest Ohio - gray, windy and plenty cold. In other words, it was the perfect weather for a mug of coffee. I offered to pull out the Folgers in my cupboard, but she offered something better - coffee she had brought back from Guatemala. Thank goodness she offered.

The coffee had a deliciously rich flavor and it was extremely smooth. It was a little bolder than I thought it would be, but it was a pleasant surprise. For some reason it struck me as the perfect winter coffee - the bold richness was warming and helped get rid of those winter doldrums. It was also a great coffee to give me that kick I needed to get through the day, I was most definitely awake when my mug was empty.

My roommate better be careful, she's going to spoil me with her great coffee taste.


--Alissa

Fair Trade Coffee Aids Guatemala

Image via Wikipedia

Bowling Green State University senior Michelle Erford has  traveled to Guatemala with her church for the past five summers. In that time she has been able to see firsthand how important coffee is as a crop to Guatemala.

"There are a ton of coffee farms in Guatemala, and it's a high export," Erford said. "They are very proud of their coffee because it's grown by the volcanoes."

With that importance, the Fair Trade movement has begun to have an effect on the Guatemalan coffee growers.

Fair Trade Certification

To have a product become Fair Trade certified, the importer must pay a minimum price of $1.26 a pound, according to Global Exchange, an advocacy group based in San Francisco that promotes human rights and social, environmental and economic justice worldwide. By requiring a minimum price per pound at that amount, the Fair Trade certification is ensuring that the small coffee farmers trying to make a living can do just that.

In Guatemala, a large number of coffee producers are small farms that produce small quantities of coffee while the smaller number of large farms produce the larger share of coffee in the country. This imbalance makes it hard for the small Guatemalan farmers to stay afloat and many have had to abandon their farms and move to the cities or another country to make a small living.