Cool Stuff that Mama Loves

Organic Coffee

• Fair-trade: fair wages for workers and guarantees foreign producers a fair price for their beans.
• Few pesticides: At an average of 3.1 cups of coffee per day, coffee drinkers who sip organic avoid the risk of consuming pesticides.
• Saving birds. Shade-grown coffee means farmers let trees grow on their farms, giving migrating birds a place to stop and smell the coffee.

Try these organic coffees

• Equal Exchange French Roast - flavorful classic blends.
• Beantrees Classic Espresso - a tasty, rich espresso.
• Jim's Happy House Blend - has a smooth, robust flavor that's anything but bitter, even if you take your coffee black.
• Café Humana Peruvian Swiss Water Decaf - a great dark decaf.

Fair Trade Tea

Historically, tea was cultivated without the use of chemicals or artificial fertilizers. Tea estates depended heavily on tea workers for such tasks as weeding and gathering cow manure to use as fertilizer. However, much like coffee and cocoa, tea producers have similarly undergone a trend in technification since the 1970s - adopting more chemical-intensive fertilization and pest control techniques. While yields increased in the short term, they began to decrease shortly thereafter both in quantity and in quality.

Nearly 100% of Fair Trade Certified tea in the U.S. is organic. Over the past decade, several estates that have adopted organic cultivation have been able to reverse the decline in yields caused by technification. More importantly, they have been able to offer a better product: tea that tastes better, is better for the environment, and that doesn't put tea estate workers at risk of exposure to dangerous chemicals. For estate owners, tea estate workers, and tea drinkers alike, organic tea cultivation is an important step toward environmental stewardship.

Information about fair trade tea reprinted from TransFair USA. Visit the TransFair USA website at www.transfairusa.org.

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