Fair Trade Coffee Exchanges and Community Economies

Despite the shortened commodity chain created for coffee through fair trade, there still exist a number of actors within certified commodity exchange. This chain is populated by disproportionately engaged actors, from a consumer looking for the certification seal, to coffee roasters working directly with coffee producing cooperatives, to producers striving to keep up with the standards for certification. Despite such disparities, connections are made between the roasters and the growers of coffee at multiple sites, from community-based projects to the transfer of knowledge and storytelling beyond the communities where coffee is cultivated. These connections suggest that fair trade exchanges potentially go beyond the sale of a commodity, the creation of surplus value and the connecting of producer and consumer. In this paper, I draw on the expanding literature on diverse and community economies to examine fair trade exchanges. The heterogeneous space of the community economy provides a platform for considering the diversity of exchanges happening within, outside, and alongside capitalism. In this paper, I focus on fair trade certified coffee, moving beyond current explanations of fair trade as “alternative” and working toward a multiplying of our understanding(s) of what fair trade is. Utilizing data collected in Chiapas, Mexico with two coffee producing cooperatives and their U.S.-based partner roasters, as well as analysis of the, 2016 celebration of Fair Trade Month, I reframe fair trade to examine the power and privilege in certified exchanges and consider the broader fair trade network as a site of community economies.