Fair trade coffee like 'organic coffee' is just a marketing excercise aimed at the cappuchino drinking middle class that frequents coffee shops in our capital cities and want the additional buzz that comes out of the feeling that they are about contributing to a 'Fairer trade' and drinking a supposedly healthier coffee.

'Organic' and 'coffee' is a contradiction in terms since any cup of coffee will contain a concentrate of 'natural' pesticides and insecticides that will overwhelm all 'unnatural' and synthetic pesticides by 1000 to 1.

It has been calculated that one cup of coffee contains the equivalent of one years consumption of the traces of synthetic pesticides on our vegetables, cereals , and other food stuffs.

Fortunately the human liver is eminently well suited to detoxify all the nasties you find in coffee so I am happy to drink one cup of coffee a day but pay extra for organic produce is plain silly.