When you hear the topic ‘trade,’ what do you think about it? Do you think that trade is not a familiar topic for you? Our group and I made a podcast about food trade as our action project. We invited two speakers, Stan Sorscher, who is from Washington Fair Trade Coalition and Joseph Maurey, who is Husky Grind and UW Coffee Education Head. Two speakers had different perspectives but we learned from both of them that what we eat or drink every day is produced, processed, and transported by a lot of people.
Source:https://u.osu.edu/coffeebeanscommoditychain/
One of the examples was coffee trade. Historically many slavery labors were used in coffee industry and it has still been racialized and many women have been involved in coffee production. At the same time, coffee are grown in high mountains and coffee beans have to be picked up manually, which means that coffee industry is labor intensive. Although slavery was abolished so many years ago, negative heritages still remain today. One of negative heritages in coffee industry is the racialization and there is another example that Joseph mentioned. We pay less to coffee farmers in Uganda than Hawaiian coffee farmers, which means that countries which were colonized or are in global south are sacrificed and farmers are paid less than they deserve. One of the reasons why they cannot get proper wages is the lack of labor union. Coffee farmers in Hawaii have a strong union but in Uganda, there is no labor union to speak out the unfairness.
Source:https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/special-reports/as-india-gains-strength-so-does-its-coffee/
How much we pay for a certain food is our choice which has huge impacts on those who are involved in the food such as farmers and workers in ports. Two speakers told us some tips which students can do for fair international/ global trade. One of them is to pay attentions to where those foods came from and how they came. Our choices can change trade and the conditions of workers who are involved in food industry. That is the biggest takeaway for me from our action project.
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