Fair trade today

I don't know about you, but coffee gets me going. Knowing that something so tasty and warm and quick is capable of relieving the present fatigue infuses me with almost a ritualistic worship of the drink. Rushing toward the coffee shop, $3.50 in my anxious hand…\nI didn't question the insanity of such a price until I was fortunate enough to be told the truth by Oxfam America, one of the world's strongest not-for-profit humanitarian organizations. This statistic affected me more than any other:\n"A latte costs $3.00…The coffee farmer makes less than 1 cent."\nHow can this be possible? If I pay upwards of $3.50 for my daily drink, and the farmer who produced it receives no more than a single penny for his efforts, who is profiting from the remaining $3.49? That question led to another: who is this "farmer" that I hear so much about -- the one who garners disparity from my daily morning cup? \nThe complexities that surround the answers to these questions find their roots in the unstoppable enigma that is globalization. Despite the fact that a word like "global" tends to conjure forth images of remote vistas where a Bloomington resident would never find herself, YOU are causing this global coffee crisis. Thanks to the recent explosion of an international marketplace, your daily cup of coffee is directly perpetuating the poverty-stricken conditions of a family in Nicaragua, or Guatemala, or even Vietnam.\nThe coffee market is failing.\nDue to rapid rates of overproduction of the coffee bean, corporate giants (Proctor and Gamble, Nestle and Sara Lee, to name a few) are able to select and choose who to buy their coffee from. And because they can pick from more than 25 million small families who rely on their money for survival, the result is devastating inequity for countless individuals. Greed in one part of the world is causing desperation in another. \nOxfam has given me the tools to bring these crucial global issues to the forefront of your awareness. \nThere are alternatives. This does not have to be an issue that you skim by. "What can a student do?" is in no way the anthem for this campaign. Tangible choices you make in your everyday life can alleviate the suffering of coffee farmers. You have an enormous amount of power.\nFair Trade products ensure that farmers are organized into cooperatives where they can vote and have a say in the amount of money they are paid for their productive efforts. Several layers of middlemen are removed, and farmers ultimately receive two to three times more than they would on the conventional market.\nThe issue of fair trade is not understandable and manageable only by the academic elite or U.N. representatives. You can participate in the acceptance of fair trade policies simply by using your consumer power to purchase fair trade products. And to start, think about that daily cup of coffee.\nI am starting an Oxfam-affiliated Fair Trade group on campus this semester. Please contact me with any questions or comments: augevans@indiana.edu or visit the following incredible sites: www.MakeTradeFair.com and www.oxfamamerica.org