Corporate Pig-dogs v. Enlightened Beer Drinkers
Beer can, and is, helping to change this. But it's a pitted battle between the global macro brewers and enlightened beer drinkers.

On the one hand, bigger and bigger corporate mega mergers are threatening to reduce the world's entire beer culture down to cheap, mass marketed, barely drinkable fizz-water. In this scenario, the dollar rules all decisions. Beer is brewed and consumed for the express purpose of lining the pockets of corporate CEOs.

An alternate vision is a world where homebrewers, small craft breweries and brewpubs create a thriving and diverse beer culture, relying on local ingredients, celebrating local customs, and using profits to enrich the local community.

Fair Trade Is Brewing
There is an unusual third way that complements this vision. The brewing industry is now taking some baby steps toward fair trade.

Fair Trade practices include the following:
> Build long-term trade relationships
> Provide low-income artisans & farmers with a living wage
> Offer opportunities for advancement
> Provide equal employment opportunities for all people
> Support environmentally sustainable practices
> Remain transparent and accountable to the public
> Provide healthy and safe working conditions
> Providing financial and technical assistance to producers

Fair trade is best known for its impact on the coffee industry. In a few very short years this ethical system of trading has been embraced at least to some degree by even the biggest players, like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, each of who are now offering a limited amount of fair trade certified products.

But just as fair trade coffee began with small pioneering companies, so too the first fair trade beers are from visionary upstarts like Mongozo and independent breweries like Charles Wells.

Conventional trade is usually dominated by strong rich countries buying raw materials from developing countries at meager prices. Value gets added by the rich country and they make big profits, but the producers, farmers & artisans who provided the main ingredients eek out just enough to survive, or less. Fair trade attempts to make these trading relationships more equitable, so that economically-weak countries have more clout and can earn a living at what they do.

With coffee, this fair trade approach seems to be working. Importers, roasters and reatilers are participating. And consumers are buying more and more of it. This is good news for the world's millions of coffee farmers. Tackling the inequities in this industry is no small endeavor though. Coffee is second only to oil as the world's most traded commodity.

However, beer is different. The main ingredients in most of the world's commercial beers are malted barley, hops, water, and yeast. Wheat, rice, corn, oats, and a few other adjuncts contribute a small share as well.

Brewing water, the primary ingredient in all beer, is almost always local, and therefore relatively unimportant in terms of trade issues. (This is likely to change soon, in a big way. Many experts expect water wars to be the world's next big round of conflict. But for the moment, brewing water is not a traded commodity as such.) Yeast is usually propoagted right at the brewery, so again this has no real impact on international trade.

Likewise, rich countries don't buy brewing barley from poor countries. In fact, the reverse is actually true. Europe and North America grow and malt their own brewing barley and export it to developing countries. Hops comprise a fairly small part of the final product of beer, but these too are grown in Western countries and exported to the global South (although Australia and New Zealand are notable exceptions to this geographic rule). And herein lies the problem.

Does Local Equal Backwards?
The brewing industry does not exploit peasant farmers in developing countries buy paying low prices for their produce. It exploits them by ruining their indigenous brewing traditions and replacing them with watery pilsners made by international brewing conglomerations, which are monopolies in some countries. These companies import raw ingredients from the West, brew them in the market country, and then work hard to eradicate traditional local brewing styles. These industrial beers always cost more than local homebrews, but brewing companies rely on the power of marketing to convince locals that drinking industrial brew is a symbol of sophistication and success in the modern world. This powerful marketing, combined with other socio-economic factors, persuades many people that "Western = Better" and "Local = Backwards."

But fair trade holds some hope. Current trends in commercial brewing are showing an increase in internationally traded beer. Big and small brewers alike are experiencing an upsurge in export demand. Perhaps this is an opportunity for fair trade beers from developing countries to help counteract the contemptible corporate brewing practice of ruining indigenous brewing traditions. As a beer drinker, I look for interesting new products to try, but corporate brewing is doing its best to destroy the world's beer-o-diversity. Fair trade might provide a strategy for helping to protect and celebrate indigenous beers so that beer drinkers can enjoy them around the world.

The Potential Is Delicious
Mongozo and Charles Wells are brewing beers with fair trade certified bananas and palm nuts. These are unusual ingredients for unusual beers.

But other fair trade ingredients are available that are slightly (very slightly) more common in brewing. Coffee, chocolate and vanilla are all included in some of today's most exciting and adventurous beers. Coffee and cocoa have grown enough in popularity as a brewing ingredient to merit their own category in the World Beer Cup competition.

Dogfish Head uses organic coffee in their gold medal-winning Chicory Stout, and Thunderhead Brewing of Kearney Nebraska brews a gold medal winning Black Sheep Espresso Stout. The Boston Beer Company, maker of the Samuel Adams beers, brews the award winning Chocolate Bock. The Puget Sound Vanilla Porter earned accolades from the experts in a recent issue of All About Beer magazine. Charlie Papazian, founder of the American Homebrewers Association and author of the Complete Joy of Homebrewing, called it "Simply delicious." Roger Protz, founder of Britain's hugely successful Campaign for Real Ale, described it as having "A tempting aroma of cappuccino coffee, vanilla and dark grain." Charles Finkel, founder of Pike Brewing Co. and Merchant du Vin, went even further, declaring it's "kiss of cocoa and mocha" as "sensational and seductive."

Unfortunately, none of these beers use the fair trade ingredients that are available to them.

When it comes to transforming the economy to be more just and sustainable, craft brewing is part of the solution. There is no doubt about that. So why complain? Why not appreciate the good these small scale breweries are doing and leave it at that? Because it is up to the good guys to blaze the trail. No one is expecting to see a Fair Trade Chocolate Espresso Stout from Coors. But maybe Sam Adams or Dogfish head would be willing to go the extra step and source fair trade chocolate or coffee.

Here's something to encourage them. The fair trade movement is spearheaded by thousands of student groups across the country. Guess what they like to drink?

So who is going to quench the thirst for justice and make America's first fair trade beer?