The next issue of the Coffee and Tea Festival is going to happen at A Thought Over Coffee – the blog of Cafe Evoke Catering – Oklahoma’s premier specialty coffee catering company.

If you want to get your posts in, you can by heading over to the Festival Submission Page.

This is going to be a cool thing so be sure to check it out!

I have been having the same discussion it seems like for months now – Direct Trade v Fair Trade, which is better. My answer to this question every time is the same. They are both great! Let’s put them together and make an even better Fair Trade Program!

It seems that every time I begin talking with people about Direct Trade, Relationship Coffee or Fair Trade Certified Coffee, we go back and forth about why one is better than the other. Really, what it all boils down to is transparency – how much is going to the grower and at what costs. Yes, there are the issues of certification fees and the fee of having a coop handle the transaction but there are people that are working on that as well.

When we were living in Nasville, TN a few years ago, we spent most of our time at Bongo Java. When we first started Cafe Evoke Catering this group became our main coffee supplier. There were several reasons for this:

1. The group was a founding member of Cooperative Coffee – a green coffee importing cooperative, comprised of 24 community based coffee roasters in the USA and Canada, committed to building and supporting equitable and sustainable trade relationships for the benefit of farmers and their exporting cooperatives, families and communities.

2. The owner, Bob Bernstein, was a major reason I came on board and starting believing in the Fair Trade Program as much as I do now

3. They do what they do not because it is some sort of fad, but because it is what they believe in.

I was reading – as I have been every day now – over at Change.org’s Fair Trade Blog and Zarah had a great post on the need for transparency in Fair Trade. I think the post was timely as I think this is a major problem that the Fair Trade program has and one of the reasons people began a new “program” in direct trade and relationship coffees (more on that later).

She mentioned a site called Fair Trade Proof which I had not heard of before. I clicked around and found out that this site was created by the group at Cooperative Coffees. This just goes to show how intent this group is at making sure that you can feel confident that your Fair Trade Coffee purchases are just that – Fairly Traded! This really blows the doors off anyone saying that the Fair Trade Program cannot work in it current state. Here is an example from Bongo Java:

BOA61 docs

As you can see, you can now trace each lot by each member of the group – contract date, lot numbers, bill of lading, price, quality, etc…

Keep in mind that there are many issues that both groups talk about when discussing which is better. I don’t think that it is a worth while conversation, really. The Fair Trade Certified Program is much more far reaching (as far as products and industries covered) than the Direct Trade coffee program. It takes funds.

Every time I talk about this, my thoughts are the same. Let’s embrace both ideas and figure out how to make the one certified program we have even better.

There is a good conversation about Fair Trade v Direct Trade over at the Coffee Tao. He feels that the Fair Trade program is fine and should not go away but that the Direct Trade program has all the answers.

Let conversation live on!

…be bold

Tagged: Oklahoma City, fair trade, direct trade, cooperative coffees

The Collective will host classes, cuppings, film screening and other coffee meet ups across the state.

Please check back as we begin our journey together with the Oklahoma Coffee Collective.

More information coming very soon! In the meantime, please check out the links on the sidebar for great OK coffee culture.