So we just got a coffee machine as a gift and I wanted to find some good sources of coffee.
I'm painfully unsure of how well to trust fair-trade and certifications, what's bullshit and what isn't.
Something like Zapatista coffee would be amazing, but I can't find anything that ships to the cursed island of Australia.
I know there are some Australian growers, which might be better off from an environmental standpoint but as far as I know they're all owned by and continue to produce profit for millionaires.
Any help would be amazing - if you can get me on it I'll even start trying to spread the word to local cafes to give back.
i would love to know the answer to this as well, ive tried in vain to find some way to get zapatista coffee over here
i definitely dont trust the fairtrade logo, but i currently buy oxfam coffee, which also has the advantage of being easily available in the supermarket
im sure theres plenty of very valid criticism of oxfam as a milquetoast lib organisation (that im sure still doesnt provide the growers with nearly as much as it should), but as an organisation that at least has poverty alleviation as its main aim, i do tend to give it more credence than the other explicitly-capitalist coffee companies who presumably do the absolute bare minimum to be able to shove a fair trade label on the packet
Cheers for the response. I agree on Oxfam being better than an explicitly capitalist endeavour (also happy to be corrected though if someone has reasons). Fingers crossed someone on here can help us out.
I did a quick look up on the oxfam coffee, and found this on wikipedia:
On 28 April 2007 an Australian conservative think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, lodged a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission accusing Oxfam of misleading or deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act in its promotion of Fairtrade coffee.[75] They claimed that high certification costs and low wages for workers undermine claims that Fairtrade helps to lift producers out of poverty. The complaint was subsequently dismissed by the commission.[76]
of course i wouldnt trust the verdict of the ACCC and i absolutely sure as shit wouldnt trust anything the IPA says, i looked up the source article and fucking lol of course thats why the IPA ghouls brought the complaint:
"We're actually much more concerned about the fact that fair trade as a system does not achieve the best interests of people in the developing world as free trade does," Mr Wilson said. "We would like Oxfam to abandon its campaign for fair trade and recognise that free trade actually lifts billions of people out of poverty."
this is also as good a place as any to mention something i think about a fair bit, since at work i guiltily go to the local cafe that uses campos beans
fun story - when campos was just a single-store outfit (and more exclusive to the trendy radlib hipsters of newtown), they used to have a back wall of hoppers of beans of all sorts of different exotic coffees, and one on the end that was their "fair trade" coffee. so there was the almost-explicit question of "how much cruelty would sir like in his coffee?", a bit like how the same company will sell both free-range and cage eggs in the supermarket, but with the additional assumption from the ratio of fair-trade to non-fair-trade that for most people the answer would be "as much cruelty as possible please, if it saves me a few cents". theyve now long since stopped stocking their fair trade coffee altogether lol, so it seems like the IPA free-trade model won out in the free market of the hearts and minds of woke newtown hipsters
God damn. Fucking hipsters, the most radlib of all groups. The amount of hipsters that came and went in my life who were fucking misogynists, racist or simply contrarian for the sake of it. No surprise at all.
Oxfam is a pretty neoliberal NGO. I'm sure their coffee is way better than most brands though.
Would you be willing to import Myanmar hill tribe coffee? I could ask my mates who know this stuff better than me.
Ngl, I buy coffee at the shop next to my place, so I'm not going to preach.
Really depends on the cost to how-many-people-I-could-get-on-board ratio. Don't really have the money for a massive import myself. If I manage to get a crew I'll hit you up.
id be on board as well, if there were enough people and the logistics of shipping it within australia made sense
likewise for the school of chiapas one mentioned in the other post
Sick. If all options fail I might put out a call to the site again and do a bulk order / sell to Aussie hexbears. Not sure how we could do it while still being anon though is the only bit.
yeah its a good point, im not sure what the solution is there
maybe we could just get it shipped to asio head office, and we all just pick up our share when we next come in to meet with our handlers
From my end, I could forward you the information on the seller. Getting it to eat other would be another matter.
Yeah, that'd be the trick. Might have a look around at some local cafes or roasters and see if I can convince them.
Cheers for that. I saw that on the site and wondered whether it's be possible to get enough people together to make it worth it. I'm no coffee fiend, and I'm on a part-time social workers wage so not much capital for a big import myself. Worse comes to worse it could be an option though, thanks!
I buy locally grown coffee generally from this place https://jaquescoffee.com.au/ sure its going to produce profit for millionaires but I live very close to it and I know the conditions arn't too bad for the workers there.
Yeah, buying local (well, other end of the country, but still local-ish) might be a better option.
Fucking lol at their website though. They complain about getting booted out of Tanzania because the country was nationalizing coffee farms. Sounds like they were booted out by the Party of the Revolution.
oh god damn, I hadnt looked at the website really. It really is hard to find a non terrible source for coffee.
Might see if you have some local coffee roasters. Especially the roasters are likely to care quite a bit about where its from and will source their beans appropriately. I've got a local roaster that inspects the farms several times a year during peak harvest season. Not perfect, but if you have it its probably the best option. Honestly the Australian coffee growers aren't the worst option, not really supporting slavery and less shipping, so less carbon impact.
