Local traders help bring coffee farmers' product to market. Traders provide growers with credit, sell them foodstuffs, and transport them and their coffee beans to large trade centers. Local traders often are the only source of information for growers about the current market value of their product. These traders collect a commission on the coffee before it is exported.

Sources include: International Coffee Organization; TransFair USA; Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger, The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry From Crop to the Last Drop (New York City: The New Press, 1999); Laure Waridel, Coffee With Pleasure (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2001); Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World (New York City: Basic Books, 1999); Faisal Islam, "Counting the Real Cost of a Cup of Coffee," Manchester Guardian Weekly (Jan. 1, 2003); Nicholas Stein, "Crisis in a Coffee Cup," Fortune Magazine (Dec. 9, 2002); Kim Bendheim, "Global Issues Flow Into America's Coffee," New York Times (Nov. 3, 2002); Peter Fritsch, "Coffee Bean Oversupply Deepens Latin America's Woes," The Wall Street Journal (July 8, 2002); John M. Talbot, "Information, Finance and the New International Inequality: The Case of Coffee," The Journal of World-Systems Research VII, no. 2 (spring 2002).

Photo credits: The photographs on the "Growers," "Local Traders," and "Your Allocations" pages are by Bill Kinzie, courtesy of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

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