Two things today.

1) Great video on how coffee is grown, picked, processed, and roasted from the show, Dirty Jobs. This really helps to give a sense of the hard work farmers put in to make the coffee we enjoy daily. Also, it's important to keep in mind while watching this video that the farmers working here are from the United States, and the equipment they use can be more advanced than farmers in developing countries where most of Fair Trade coffee is grown. Fortunately, Fair Trade helps to improve the equipment available to these farmers (more on that later), but not all cooperatives are at a point where they can afford such things. One new development that is important in the Fair Trade Movement is the Responsible Sourcing Project, a collaborative effort between Walmart, Sam's Club, USAID, TransFair USA, and several Brazil non-profit organizations. The partners of the project committed to giving $1.9 million in investments and technical support to help 5,000 farmers from the Brazilian states of Sao Paolo, Minas Gerais and Espiritu Santo increase coffee quality, improve cooperative management and enhance marketing between 2007 and 2010. In Brazil, there are many small coffee farmers, but the large majority of exports is controlled by large companies. This project hopes to help the small-scale farmers by providing them with the tools they need to access more international markets. In addition to helping with the investment money, Walmart has also launched "Sam's Choice," a Fair Trade Certified coffee brand that includes three Brazilian Fair Trade coffees. More information on this project is available here. There are also pictures posted of one of TransFair USA's trips to Brazil to visit the cooperatives that are receiving part of this investment money. These are available on TransFair's Flickr, and they seem to complement this video on coffee growing well. So, with that in mind:

2) There's a really great discussion on Fair Trade that began with a post on the GoodEater blog. If you scroll down, one of the responses to this great blog post is also really interesting. Feel free to add to that conversation! There's definitely more to be said! GoodEater Blog Post

These two points both bring up the sometimes thorny situation of corporation involvement in the Fair Trade movement. Obviously, there are pros and cons about this, and this blog will be touching on some of those later. In the meantime, what are your THOUGHTS on the involvement of corporations in Fair trade? Is it a good thing? A necessary evil? Selling out? Helping out? Let us know what you think!