All about your tea, your coffee, Fair Trade and how to grow your own

Dear Tucker Lovers,

While this post has come from the newsletter of a company, I am not promoting nor am I benefitting from this company. I do, however, like to share good stuff and that can come from anywhere.  I hope you find this as enjoyable and informative to read as I have.

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The tale of how coffee was discovered is an intriguing one, apparently about 1,000 years ago in the hills of Ethiopia a goat herder found that his goats would keep him awake at night after they had been feasting on the red coffee berries.  The story goes that the goat herder shared his discovery with a local monastery and it was the monks who first brewed the beans into a hot drink. The beans were traded into Yemen where coffee culture flourished and the Arabian Peninsula became a hotbed for cafes, known as kaveh kanes.  Coffee was introduced into Europe in the 1600's and cafes quickly became popular social meeting places just as they are today. 
Coffee is vital to as many as 25 million small farmers who grow and sell the beans for a living, however as many as 500 million people are employed by the coffee industry worldwide. Coffee is the world's second most valuable commodity - oil being the first, so coffee has become more popular than ever before, coffee shops, internet cafes and the expansion of fashionable eateries that specialize in coffee see us consume 400 billion cups of coffeeevery year, there is however one drink that is more popular than coffee and that is tea.

 After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world. It is drunk as a hot drink that is enjoyed for its cooling and slightly bitter flavour. Camellia sinensis is a tree that will grow to 16m if left undisturbed; however it is usually pruned to waist height to make harvesting easy, the name sinensis means "native to China".  There are six different types of tea that are processed from the tea plant, white tea, yellow tea, green tea, oolong, black tea, pu-erh, the difference between them is way the leaves are processed.  The most unusual type of tea is possibly Monkey Picked Tea; the story goes that Monks trained monkeys to gather the tips from the top of wild trees, today Monkey Picked Tea refers to the best quality Oolong tea available, it is not however picked by monkeys.  It is only the fresh new tip of the tea plant that are picked, the leaves are then wilted and bruised to promote oxidation, they then go through fermentation, fixation, sweltering, rolling, shaping, drying, aging and curing before they are packaged for the pot.  Tea bags were invented in 1907 by a merchant who wanted to distribute samples of his product; they did not take off until 1953, when Tetley launched the tea bag. Black tea is the most popular of the different types of tea and there is a culture that surrounds the brewing and serving of this well-known favourite beverage.  Black tea is usually brewed at around 99°C, since the temperature of boiling water drops with increasing altitude it is very difficult to brew black tea in high mountainous regions.  Experienced drinkers of tea insist that the tea should not be stirred while it is brewing, this does not strengthen the brew but only releases tannins in the same way that the tea bag should not be squeezed, if a stronger brew is desired use more leaf in the pot. 

 

Fair Trade & Growing Your Own

As consumers become more aware of where our money goes we face economic and social decisions every time we spend our hard earned money.  Both tea and coffee are industries that are controlled by big business that exploit local communities and their farming land, we do however have a choice to support fair trade companies such as Trade Winds , by choosing a fair trade product  you will ensure that your money is going back to support a farming community and that the farmers are being paid a fair price for their product and labour.

The other option is to grow your own tea and coffee.
Here is a link to our blog describing how to produce tea at home
http://blog.daleysfruit.com.au/2011/11/tea-production-home.html

A quick and easy technique for making coffee from your home grown beans can be found in the 2009 Rare Fruit Review.

Daleys Fruit Tree Nursery
Phone: (02) 66 321 441 

Fair Trade is getting fairer: Tim Tams are moving it ahead.

Arnott’s ensure Tim Tams are free from child labour October 29, 2010 
Josette Dunn 

World Vision Australia today welcomed Arnott’s announcement that it will source ethical cocoa that has not been made with the use of child labour for all of its chocolate-based products, including the iconic Tim Tam biscuit.

In response to a public campaign by World Vision earlier this year, Arnott’s said on 30 March that it was “committed to playing its part by sourcing sustainable cocoa that avoids the use of child trafficking and unacceptable forms of child labour” by the “end September 2010″.

World Vision’s CEO Tim Costello met with Arnott’s last night and said he was pleased to hear the company had now committed to ensure its cocoa supply chains were free from child labour.

Arnott’s sources 24 percent of its cocoa from Ghana in West Africa where there is widespread use of child labour in the cocoa industry. As CEO of World Vision I have visited the cocoa fields in West Africa where kids use dangerous machetes and pesticides, work long hours and often don’t go to school, he said. World Vision understands that Arnott’s has signed an agreement to source its West African cocoa until 2012 through Fairtrade’s independent certification scheme. We are very pleased with Arnott’s commitment to source ethical cocoa. The lack of a fair and stable price for cocoa farmers is a root cause of the exploitative labour problem. Farmers typically receive only a very small proportion of the final retail price for their cocoa, which means they are forced to produce it below the fair cost of production. It’s these conditions that often lead farmers to use child labour. By sourcing its cocoa through the Fairtrade certification system, Arnott’s is helping farmers get a fair price for their cocoa. It will also protect Arnott’s supply chain from exploitative labour practices.

The US Department of State’s June 2010 Trafficking in Persons report said a majority of modern slaves were in agriculture and mining and that forced labour was prevalent in many products including chocolate.

The report also said reputable companies could profit from abuse when they did not protect their supply chain from modern slavery. World Vision Australia’s Don’t Trade Lives campaign is calling on the global chocolate industry to guarantee farmers a fair price for their cocoa and to eliminate all exploited labour from cocoa production by 2018. “If you want to enjoy your chocolate guilt-free, join World Vision’s Don’t Trade Lives campaign or contact chocolate manufacturers and ask them to commit to buying cocoa that is independently and ethically certified,” Mr Costello said.

Cadbury and Green and Black’s recently agreed to clean up their cocoa supply chains. The Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate block is now Fairtrade certified and 90 percent of Green and Blacks product's will be Fairtrade certified by the end of 2010.