Image via Wikipedia"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.
