In college, I was an avid coffee drinking, partly because I love the stuff, but also because it didn't sound quite as cool to say, "I pulled an all-nighter on 10 cups of tea and an unbreakable reserve!" I still love it and drink it not to stay awake, but because I really, truly enjoy it.Given coffee's unrelentingly increasing popularity in American culture, I've always been cognizant of labels like, "fair trade," "shade grown," and "rainforest alliance" on my coffee. The positive feeling I get when I purchase coffee is directly proportionate to the number of such labels I see; it makes me feel I've purchased responsibly. However, after reading Dean Cyon's Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee, I'm really not so sure how I feel about those labels.
Dean writes of his travels across Asia, the Americas, and Africa in search of ways to help the farmers who produce the coffee he buys for his business, Dean's Beans. His accounts of the hardships farmers face, the disparity between what fair trade means and what it actually is, and how life and death for the farmers and their families can be determined by bureaucrats half a world away, show his passion for truly understanding the origins of his coffee. Between healing land mine vicitms in Nicaragua to helping build irrigation and freshwater systems in the Americas, Dean illustrates the impact one well-meaning person can have. And while some companies tout their involvement in the third-world, in Javatrekker, Dean shows we can never really tell how deeply those companies are truly involved in and interested in supporting the lives of their coffee producers.
Bottom line: the book really made me think, and wonder, about what's really in my morning cup. When companies say their coffee is fair trade, is it really? We never truly know what goes on behind the scenes, which Dean clearly illustrates. We all need to do our homework, and truly commit to understanding what we eat and drink, where it comes from, and what is involved in its production. I think this is a fantastic book for anyone with any interest in coffee or human rights, and Dean tells his stories with cyncism, wit, and humor that made the book difficult to put down.