Smell the coffee.

Coffee.  Did you start your day with one?  Or perhaps a relaxing one later in the day? Nice.     

But like many foods, do you ever stop and think how it got to your cup?  Not just its physical farm to fork journey.   

But the processes it went though, the economics of the trade, the tariffs that flood around.   And critically, where on the route to your cup do they provide a sustainable living for the farmer that grew it.    

It is a strange expression that we want people to have a “sustainable living”, as if that is all we expect the people who made the coffee we find such pleasure in should enjoy.  I’m sure if you or I were told that all we could expect from our daily work was a “sustainable living” we wouldn’t be too happy. 

And of course, for them, sustainable living is not a life on benefits.  It’s an extra dollar a day that will help them pay for their children’s already meagre education.   

Now there is a reason why the poor are only able to gain a "sustainable income".   And it’s outrageous.    

Take the example of coffee growers in Africa.  Well, believe it or not, we can point the finger firmly for Africa’s continued poverty at the EU.  Both the Common Agricultural Policy and EU trade tariffs keep African farmers poor and use your money to do it.    

Here’s how it works.

1.      Continental European farmers are subsidised to produce more food than we can eat, distorting the global food market. This means African farmers cannot compete and are forced into subsistence farming, where one bad season brings economic ruin and a couple of bad seasons means starvation. 

2.      Tariffs mean that in 2014 the whole of Africa made just under $2.4 billion from coffee exports, while Germany made $3.8 billion. Incredibly Germany made more money from coffee without growing a single bean than a whole continent which grows vast amounts.

3.      Germany’s coffee producers need cheap, raw beans to make money, so there is no import tariff on green, unprocessed coffee.  That’s why the vast bulk of African coffee exports are unprocessed.

4.      Import tariffs creep in. There are import tariffs on processed coffee because it is in the processing, branding, packaging and marketing that Germany makes its money.  These tariffs protect it from African competition.  If African farmers could do all the value added stuff, their farmers wouldn't be living in "sustainable" world.  They would have more money.  It’s the same story with cocoa.

This is protectionism, pure and simple.  Being done in your and my name by the EU.  That is not an opinion, it’s a fact.   

But why should we care?  Perhaps you feel that Africa’s problems are for Africans to deal with and are not our concern. I would agree to an extent.    

But when the trade systems are so clearly biased by institutions like the EU, we can’t stand back and say to our fellow human beings, you make the coffee for a “substance living” and I’ll sit here in the comfort of my home and enjoy the product of your toil with virtually nothing of what I paid for it going back to the farmer.   

The EU is helping to keep some of the poorest people in the world in poverty. That can’t be right in anyone’s book. And the EU is using YOUR money to do it.     

There is one way to stop this madness and unfairness.  Vote LEAVE.