Information about Café Campesino and fair trade coffee.
What is fair trade coffee?
Fair trade coffee is purchased directly from coffee growers / cooperatives at a price three to five times
higher than they can get by selling their coffee on the conventional market. Traditionally coffee is
purchased by wholesalers who sell it to exporters who sell it to the roasters. By bypassing a string
of middlemen, the fair trade coffee movement seeks to pay a fairer price to growers in order to
improve the quality of life for the farmers and their families.
What is Café Campesino?
Café Campesino is a coffee roaster dedicated to creating and expanding a fair trade market for
small-scale coffee producers.
What kind of coffee are we offering?
The coffee we are selling is produced from quality beans, on par with coffee sold in gourmet coffee shops.
Most of it is organically grown under shade. While higher yielding hybrids have been developed for cultivating
under full sun in deforested fields, traditional coffee is a shade plant. Trees and other plants which provide shade,
such as bananas or plantains, help maintain a more diverse ecosystem, preserve the topsoil, provide wood for the
family kitchen and can be a secondary source of income.
Why are we, the East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church youth group, marketing this coffee?
Our youth group first traveled to southern
experience included visiting
various projects around
The Café Campesino staff talked to us about global markets and how fair trade is different from normal importing
businesses. Since we are always looking for ways to raise money to fund the activities that we do, such as attend
the Mennonite Youth Assembly every other year, a number of us became interested in doing a fund raising
activity that would also help make markets more just and give better prices to coffee farmers for their products.
Tips for making a good cup of coffee: