However, many charitable organizations, NGOs, and governments are struggling with budgetary constraints and skills shortages. Only a handful of developed countries meet the UN’s stated target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid projects. Skilled foreign aid workers not only improve information exchange and help modernize technology and operational methods, but they serve as advisers in matters relating to fair trade and worker advocacy.

Without advice from impartial experts, coffee cooperatives and coffee plantations struggle to secure the best price for their crops on the global market. Indeed, coffee industry workers can end up short-changed when no one is advocating for their right to fair working conditions and reasonable pay.

Charting The Emergence Of A Multi-Billion Dollar Industry

Coffee cultivation has changed dramatically over the years. The first widespread preparation and consumption of coffee are known to date back at least 600 years, with credible evidence that Yemeni societies enjoyed the drink during the 15th century. Although the beans were picked and roasted at this time in an approximately similar way to today, roaring international trade in the crop didn’t gather steam until later.

Today coffee is a global industry with retail sales in the USA alone totaling over $5bn. Indeed, while accurate estimates are hard to come by due to the informal nature of laboring jobs in the developing world, it is believed that hundreds of millions of jobs globally are supported either directly or indirectly by the trade in coffee.

Despite all this change, the art of picking ripe coffee cherries and roasting the beans stays largely true to the ancient art practiced centuries ago. Most plantations and cooperatives today employ teams of coffee pickers who spend as much as 12 hours each day carrying out the laborious task of gathering the crop.

While coffee picking has stayed largely untouched in many parts of the world, consumer tastes have evolved rapidly in line with industry efforts to brand their product as sustainable, premium tasting, and ethically sourced. Nevertheless, an enormous number of coffee workers live in poverty. Child labor and unfair remuneration are rife. Incidentally, the inadequate representation of plantation workers was in large part behind the schism between the two key North American fair trade bodies: Fairtrade International and Fair Trade USA.

While Fairtrade International has long stayed true to the principle that worker cooperatives offer the best deal for ordinary laborers, Fair Trade USA pioneered a more all-encompassing approach that aimed to secure a fair deal for workers on large plantations as well.

Considering A Career In International Development

International development workers in South America, Asia, and Africa typically work alongside coffee-growing cooperatives rather than large plantations. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, plantations are operated as profit-generating businesses and as a result, tend to have greater access to technology and global markets than smaller worker-owned firms. Secondly, worker-owned cooperatives offer greater opportunity for poverty alleviation because profits are shared among community members rather than landowners. Although some argue that the monetary rewards enjoyed by large plantations ‘trickle-down’ to the workforce and community at large, many analysts feel that exploitative labor practices and a lack of organized unions trap plantation workers in ongoing poverty. In effect, the workers are locked out of enjoying the rewards of the wider growth in the global coffee boom.

If you’re interested in a career in international development there are several key points to keep in mind:

• Although specialist degrees in international development and related areas (such as this one from King’s) can be useful; technology, engineering (and indeed any STEM field) is in high-demand as expertise in this area helps fuel capital accumulation in target countries. These gains can be realized in the form of both new technology and the development of human capital.
• NGOs, governments, and charitable organizations vary from one to another in their hiring practices but many will employ various forms of aptitude testing and assessment centers in order to identify top candidates. Competition can be fierce and prior experience may be required.
• While work in international development involves a great deal of foreign travel and can be emotionally fulfilling and intellectually stimulating, it can also be taxing and physically exhausting. Proper mental preparation is a key part of readying yourself for your role.

Opportunities For Agricultural And Coffee Industry International Development Work

• Bond.org.uk is a UK based network for organizations involved in international development. Their website offers an excellent tool to carry out highly customized searches for vacancies in this area.
• Skilled engineers are in particularly high demand in the coffee sector and opportunities for aid work overseas are offered by charities including Engineers Without Borders (this informative article contains many other links to organizations that match engineers with international development positions). EWB organizes a highly-regarded program known as Engineering Service Corps and interested individuals are able to apply online.
• Skillshare is a UK based careers advice website that also offers opportunities for aid and development workers in African and South American coffee enterprises. They also offer some insight into the mechanical aptitude test that is a common and recurring feature of the interview process for engineering-related roles in any industry. Modern coffee processing plants make use of a great deal of cutting-edge equipment and engineers are particularly suited to work assisting in production line deployment and improvement. You will, therefore, be required to have a baseline understanding of engineering techniques as measured by a standardized test to do industry placements involving this kind of technology.
• Although much of the development work in coffee is hands-on, there is also a great need for staff with deep knowledge of the various fairtrade certification programs and the ability to clearly communicate this knowledge to local workers and cooperatives. Helping small farmers access these programs and understand their requirements can boost the pay of local people and create meaningful change in the quality of life of communities. Roles of this nature can be sought, among other places, with the Foreign Agricultural Service, and on the UN Jobs website.

Other job sources exist besides those mentioned above. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to discuss this area in greater depth.

In one corner stood Fairtrade International (FLO International), an umbrella organization with dozens of members operating certification schemes in countries around the world, and in the other, Fair Trade USA, another nonprofit organization led by Paul Rice.

The main point of contention in this dispute wasn’t the need to support the communities around the developing world that rely on coffee cultivation, but the appropriateness of different coffee growing business models for participation in a scheme designed to empower small-scale farmers.

Fair trade has traditionally been a certification scheme for cooperatives – small associations of local people who receive a premium for their product on international markets. These organizations operate democratically, with the extra 10 to 20 cents per lb raised from certification invested back into raising the standards in local communities (e.g., schools).

Paul Rice of Fair Trade USA took the bold step in 2011 of resigning his organization from the wider umbrella body of Fairtrade International. His argument, in the simplest terms, is that the cooperative model is too restrictive and disenfranchises the very poorest of participants in the coffee farming industry.

He argues that the size and scope of the program can be expanded greatly by allowing the larger coffee plantation operators to participate. In theory, this will increase the ubiquity of the certification program in the consumer conscience while also securing a higher chance of fair pay for plantation workers unable to participate in a cooperative because, for example, they do not own any land.

Some outlets have written informative albeit outdated articles on the state of different coffee certification programs, such as this one from NPR in 2013.

In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at the state of the different ethics bodies in the coffee industry as of 2017, and what they each represent from both an independent retail and consumer perspective:

Fair Trade USA

Fair Trade USA is run by Paul Rice, a lifelong social entrepreneur with deep experience living and working with Central American farmers. He spent over a decade helping small-scale farmers access higher prices for their products via an export cooperative. In effect, the organization brought thousands of small farming operations together to cut out middlemen and allow a more direct line of access to global markets.

However, in 2011 Paul made the polarizing decision to end his organization’s membership of the wider umbrella body, Fairtrade International (FLO). Paul’s logic, while controversial, was based on the desire to empower plantation workers rather than just small-hold farmers. His critics contend that certifying plantation grown coffee as fair trade runs against the founding ethos of supporting small farming operations.

Key statistics:

• Leading certifier of fair trade produces in North America.
• Reached the milestone of 1 billion lbs of certified Fair Trade coffee in 2014, 16 years after being founded in California.
• Farmers earn approximately 80 cents/lb above the standard price in “futures” contracts, as a result of more direct access to buyers, quality premiums, and consumer awareness of the important role of buying Fair Trade (59% of American consumers are familiar with Fair Trade and its purpose).

Fairtrade America

Fairtrade America emerged to fill the gap left by the departure of Fair Trade USA from the global parent body FLO. In effect, this schism created two parallel fair trade certification bodies each working with similar but separate principles to improve outcomes for coffee farmers.

Fairtrade America represents the ethos of FLO, which is first and foremost to work with farming cooperatives – associations of small-scale, local growers. Unlike Fair Trade USA, they do not certify coffee plantations. They do work with flower, tea, and banana plantations, but this is primarily because very few cooperatives exist in these industries.

Key statistics:

• Fairtrade farmers operate small farms – an average of just 3.7 acres of cultivated land each.
• Around one-quarter of all fair trade farmers and workers are female.

Rainforest Alliance

As one might expect, the Rainforest Alliance places a particular emphasis on the environmental sustainability of coffee farming practices. It also supports the social and economic development of coffee growing areas around the world.

Its program has won the favor of major companies like Nescafe (used in its Nespresso range) and is the fastest growing third-party certifier of coffee products in the world, more than quadrupling certified produce in the five years between 2007 and 2012.

Starbucks C.A.F.E

As the world’s largest retailer of specialty coffee, Starbucks is uniquely empowered to enhance the lives of the millions of individuals that directly or indirectly participate in their supply chain. Starbucks customers tend to be somewhat less price sensitive than those of rival chains, giving the chain further scope to pay fair prices.

Crucially, Starbucks work with Conservation International to ensure 100% of coffee sold in its stores is ethically sourced. It has also invested heavily in a multitude of programs, including efforts to finance farmers in farm renovations and adopting better sustainability practices. Starbucks has also invested in carbon-reducing initiatives.

The chain’s boldest effort to date – The Sustainable Coffee Challenge – is an effort to make coffee the first fully sustainable agricultural product in the world.

Smithsonian M.B.C ‘Bird Friendly’

Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center runs a smaller and more niche certification program focused on promoting the adoption of bird-friendly farming practices among growers.

The center certifies only around 10 million pounds of coffee each year, far less than the other bodies featured in this list. However, the program requirements are also the most stringent.

For this reason, Smithsonian M.B.C approved coffee attracts higher prices on the world market than even organic coffee products. Not only does the coffee meet organic standards but it is also grown by farmers who commit to boosting the environment for birds through tree-planting initiatives.