The low price on brazilian coffee is not that akward knowing that their coffee isnot produced on high altitude, therefore their quality is less, but this gives them also the opportunity to work totaly mechanized. On hilly slopes this is not possible.

My experience with this diffirential is exactly the same. I work for a small holder cooperative in peru, chanchamayo and we see that conventional coffee at this moment are sold for better prices then fair trade. Because they do not adabt to this diffirential.

Your opinion on charity is not entirly true. Thanks to a minimum price which fair trade gives us our members are not forced to abandon their fields when prices are so low that even for production can not be paid. On the other hand when prices are good fair trade only costs a lot of work for nothing.

But this is not everything they also help us making plans to improve quality and productivity and to reduct harm to the environment. This is not just fairtrade but most labeling organization.

We would rather work just with importers or rather toasters, but the current way of bussiness leaves us with no other way then work with labels. Because the improve quality and productivity you need money. We do not have this capital to invest in education and agricultural inputs.

I hope you can do something with my input

I run the espresso club at work (which mainly means keeping us stocked with beans) and due to price constraints have had to use fairly cheap coffee. For a while now I’ve had a feeling I should switch to fairtrade, if only for image reasons, despite the fact that almost without fail all fairtrade coffee I’ve tasted has been inferior.

At home I generally roast and drink Hasbean. I know you guys pay a good price for a good product so I have no reason to choose my coffee based on some fairtrade stamp. As a result, I get the best coffee there is, and my conscience is clear.

In most cases fairtrade seems to be a half-arsed attempt by mediocre suppliers to prove that they aren’t being complete bastards. I view it as a PR stunt that, as a side effect, happens to be somewhat good for the supplier too.

While I’m at it: for some reason most people seem to be unable to distinguish between different ‘good’ choices like organic, fairtrade, local produce (I know, a rare thing in your business!) and instead take them all to mean ‘good quality’. But the best coffee, or any other product, is one where the producer’s main goal is quality, not ticking the right boxes and getting a stamp for the effort.

Great work guys! Keep it up!

Again the prices are set by the markets so a market within the commodity market (as I understand it)

Who sets these levels?