Better than Fairtrade
Free Trade, Organic and other Coffee Certifications.
Before finalising his roast coffee purchase, Richard in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney had an important question to ask this morning : is Timor Mountain specialty coffee fair trade certified?
Much to my delight, he picked up the phone and called our office in Ermera, Timor-Leste (our number is on the contacts page) to ask directly.
Richard obviously cared enough about his coffee purchase decision to call East Timor and check directly. So of course I was straight with him: We’re not. We’re also not certified organic.
Let me explain …
At Timor Mountain our aspiration is to be better than free trade and better than organic.
Essentially 100% of the coffee farmers in Timor-Leste are organic. This is the default as coffee farmers cant afford synthetic inputs and the government is very much against the concept. Some 40% of Timorese coffee is exported by a free trade and organic certified organisation.
Unfortunately, being organic and /or free trade doesn’t reverse the trajectory of Timorese farmers in terms of family income, farm productivity or soil health. All of these have been trending downward for 20 years. There is no getting around that these are hard entrenched challenges we’re all faced with.
Nonetheless, at Timor Mountain we believe more needs to be done to address these problems.
We believe that prices paid to farmers should be more than free trade mandated minimums – and that farmers should also be supported and incentivised to produce higher value, more sought after coffee.
That’s why we pay farmers over 20% higher prices for cherry than our free trade counterpart.
We believe that the ‘organic by default’ approach to farming is not enough to prevent the erosion, soil acidification, nutrient loss and de-hydration of our coffee farming landscapes. Rather, we need to actively restore soil health by supporting farmers to rebuild fertility, increase soil pH, introduce green manure cover crops and to rebuild soil organic matter.
That’s why we have committed 10% of our roasted coffee sales to support farmers to implement improved farming practices.
We’ve thought about obtaining free trade organic certification – but it would be a costly (US$30,000) and time consuming investment.
At the current time, we feel that in order to achieve the results we want, of restoring strong secure livelihoods for coffee farmers, our priority is to:
a) pay higher prices to farming families and
b) support the take-up of improved farming practices, in both practical as well as financial terms.
I’m very pleased to be packing Richard’s new order now. And if you (like Richard) ever have any queries or questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch…