Knowing what goes into your coffee

By Ann Thomas

I awake to a cock-a-doodle-doo, the persistent natural alarm clock welcoming the rising sun and all sleepy residents of the village to a beautiful day. The morning has begun -- a woman starts the fire, children sleepily find their way to breakfast (a cup of coffee and bread) and men buckle their machetes to their belts.

It is a busy time of year for the people of Tacuba, El Salvador: coffee-picking season. It is so important that the school year schedules its two-month summer break during this time so children can help their family in "el campo." Men, women and children all pack their supplies -- large bags that strap to one's head, baskets and sharp tools for cutting through the bush -- to aid them in the long day of work ahead.

We begin our trek early to beat the afternoon heat. For every step I take, I slip a half a step back down the steep slope. My arms are already fatigued within a half-hour from holding on for dear life as I look down to the valley below, and our work has not even begun. I try to keep up with my host family, José, Anita and their four children, during the six hours of tedious, back-breaking labor.

Their fingers work fast, picking the small red berries. They make a difficult task look not only easy, but also beautiful. By the end, my fingers hurt from the constant movement, my legs are tired from trying to keep sturdy and my back is exhausted from bending over.

Women spend the next day leaning over berries, washing and de-husking them for hours on end. Next, they lay out the beans to dry. Finally, Anita and other women spend hours sorting the beans into different qualities to sell.

Later, the men take the beans to the market to sell to middle-men. For their hard labor they will receive the conventional market price, which is about 44 cents per pound of coffee. These prices fluctuate and have dropped to all-time lows in the past decade.

At the end of these long days of work, families like Anita and José's return to homes that do not have sufficient food to feed their children, communities that do not have enough teachers and schools that lack adequate resources.

The cooperative farm where I stayed is trying to become fair trade certified. It takes years to process the applications, months for certification agents to come inspect their farms and an additional couple of years before their farms become pesticide-free.

On top of all this costly and time-consuming work, farmers also need to pay the certification fee.

Did I come back from this trip a bit disillusioned by the fair trade system? Of course it is not as idyllic as I had once perceived. But I still believe fair trade markets can provide opportunities for small-scale farmers.

Once the farm has become fair trade certified, the hard-working families receive a "living wage" and a set price of $1.26 per pound. The farmers also get access to loans at low interest rates and other support services to sustain these small-scale coffee producers practicing environmentally sustainable farming methods and democratic decision-making.

How does this relate to our lives at Santa Clara? Every morning, students wait in line to get their morning kick-start from a cup of coffee. Fortunately, people can leave Mission Bakery with a less guilty conscience because last year Bon Appetit switched to 100 percent fair trade coffee.

Students can be assured their money is going more directly to farmers. But the thought process should not stop here. What about the farmers, like José and Anita, who sweated for hours picking the berries to make your coffee?

What about the women that slouched over beans to hand sort the best quality for you to get your morning charge? So often we take these little things for granted.

The U.S. is the world's largest coffee consumer. Coffee is the second-most highly traded commodity in the world after oil. It is time for us to take responsibility for our daily choices and their impact on people like coffee farmers and places like Tacuba, El Salvador.

Ann Thomas is a junior who spent a year traveling the world studying globalization. She is an environmental studies and political science double major.