Fair Trade

 Imagine owning a small coffee farm in the underdeveloped areas throughout the coffee growing regions of the world. Each waking day during harvest season, you ascend small paths on rugged terrain to heights of 2,000 and 6,000 feet above sea level. Your family members tag along because they will provide the only labor you can afford. They also serve to guide burros that carry food and water supplies for the day, and will carry the heavy burlap bags of coffee cherries back to the farm. Each coffee cherry is hand-picked, one at a time, making this a very labor-intense day of work. This is all performed under hot, tropical conditions—but it doesn’t end there.

Once the coffee is brought back to the farm, the beans are washed and processed, dried, packaged and sold—all for pennies a day. Now imagine this is your only livelihood: one for which no standard for payment is set. For thousands of small-coffee-farmers across the land, this is the only source of income they have.

Christopher Bean is adamant about practicing Fair Trade with the coffee farmers of the world. We never take for granted the effort and back-breaking work that goes into producing each bag of coffee we deliver to our wonderful customers. By practicing Fair Trade with farmers, we ensure they are receiving fair wages for the valuable services they provide. Fair wages allows farmers to grow better crops; children under the age of 15 cannot be used for labor; it allows better health care for the families; and provides an all around higher standard of living. At Christopher Bean, we are pleased to be able to contribute to the brighter futures of the hard-working coffee growers of the world.