Conscious Choice: Fair Enough?

Photo: Wanda J. Benvenutti

“It’s a very important product economically, so making a switch to fair-trade in coffee makes a big impact by itself,” says Clare Butterfield, director of Faith in Place, one of the organizations that formed the committee. Butterfield adds that coffee’s mass appeal makes it a natural entry point for people to start to understand the positives of buying fair-trade products. “This is a place where people can begin to develop a consciousness,” she says. “What are the impacts, economic and human, that everything I purchase has? What am I doing to my sisters and brothers when I buy this?”

Such efforts to educate locals is just one of the group’s missions for 2004. Other goals for the year include lobbying major coffee purchasers in town to switch to fair trade, and engaging in political advocacy so that the Chicago city council and other local governing bodies start to include fair-trade product requirements in purchase agreements. Long-range plans include designing and proposing a Fair-Trade City Ordinance, and launching a local fair-trade label that peddles products produced locally from local ingredients.

June 2004

Fair Enough?

When you’re the world’s biggest coffee retailer, you have to answer the biggest, hardest question: Where’s the organic, fair-trade coffee?

by Bob Condor

Coffee drinkers all around the U.S. walked into their local Starbucks cafés last winter (November 20th to be precise) to ask, “Are you brewing fair-trade coffee today?”

The answer, across the counter and the country, was no.

Next question: Can you brew some?

Again, no, not today.

Or any day it seems. Since last summer, on the 20th day of each month, volunteers from the Organic Consumers Association have been walking into Starbucks stores asking for fair-trade coffee. They haven’t heard “yes” too many times in those months.

The date is not random. “Starbucks posted it on their Web site,” said Ronnie Cummings, executive director of the Minnesota-based Organic Consumers Association. “The company committed to brewing fair-trade once a month, on the 20th. It was a show of good faith [about providing livable wages for coffee growers]. The promise was then taken off the Web site.”

Cummings’ coffee detectives noticed other signs that fair-trade coffee may be a watered-down concept at the world’s largest coffee retailer. Brochures about fair-trade coffee were removed or not restocked. Bags of fair-trade, organic, shade-grown coffee beans were available for purchase but you would have to bend to the lowest shelf to get one.

Ask And Receive

Here’s why we should all care about fair-trade coffee: It’s the humane thing to do. While we happily savor our lattes, cappuccinos and strong home-brewed cups, the world’s coffee farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia are in grave trouble. The world market rate for beans is about 60 cents per pound — down from a high of $3 per pound in 1997 and less than half of the $1.26 price for fair-trade coffee made from conventional beans.

Fair-trade, organic, shade-grown coffee costs $1.41 per pound on the world market. So along with bypassing the pesticides and other chemicals in your own body, you help the families that grow your morning supply of beans.

“Shade-grown” refers to a method of growing coffee that is least harmful to the environment. Coffee plants thrive in the shade of a tree canopy, which in turn provides a habitat for birds and protects soil from erosion and the need for fertilizers. Shade-grown coffee was the standard until the last 20 years, when debt-strapped countries “modernized” growing practices in sun fields for mass production. “The way to help the coffee growers is to buy fair-trade, organic coffee, period,” says Paul Katzeff, CEO of Thanksgiving Coffee, a northern California company he founded with his wife, Joan, in 1972.

For its part, Starbucks spokeswoman Megan Behrbaum, says customers can demand and get a brewed cup of fair-trade coffee in any of its company-owned stores (not including other outlets, grocery stores for instance that brew and sell Starbucks brand coffee but are not owned by the coffee company).

That doesn’t match up with the experience of volunteers from the Organic Consumers Organization. But, hey, if Starbucks says you are welcome to fair-trade coffee at any of its cafés at any time, then let’s make it our collective mission to ask and receive.

Fair enough?

Behrbaum said the 20th of the month plan didn’t work because of unpredictable coffee shipments and a company policy to highlight a coffee rotation. “We consider fair-trade coffee to be one approach of many approaches [for helping the plight of world coffee growers],” says Behrbaum. “We take a holistic view to include social investments and developing other sustainable coffees.”

Behrbaum said Starbucks sold a combined 3.4 million pounds of fairtrade and/or organic and/or shade-grown coffee in 2002 and that this past year’s numbers will turn out “significantly more” when, ahem, all the beans are counted.

Important point: At the retail level, a cup of fair-trade coffee doesn’t necessarily cost twice as much. It’s a matter of adjusting profit margins. One could argue that’s harder to do for a publicly-traded company — or maybe easier if your volume is high.

Katzeff calls himself a social activist and, besides roasting the fair-trade, organic beans to prove it, his company has started “cupping labs” (which allow small growers and co-ops to taste and evaluate their beans as finished cups of coffee to help get the best price) in Nicaragua to further support growers. “Nicaraguan coffee farmers are begging for food at the sides of roads,” says Cummings.

Katzeff, of Thanksgiving Coffee, isn’t sympathetic for those of us who compromise on ordering fair-trade, organic, shade-grown because we are rushed for time or short on convenient local fair-trade coffeehouses. “When you go into a place with no fair-trade coffee, just say to yourself, ‘I’m outta here,’ “ he says. “And tell the café manager why on your way out. If you need a cup of coffee so bad you sacrifice your usual standards, you are totally lost.”

Changing Minds One Cup At A Time

Fair-trade roasters like Katzeff are attempting to change people’s minds one delicious cup at a time. Better yet, the smaller fair-trade suppliers are supporting local economies in both the growers’ and roasters’ hometowns. “When you buy our coffee, you get more than a great cup of coffee,” says John Sage, president of Pura Vida Coffee, another fair-trade roaster. “You help a farmer sustain his family. We are especially dedicated to helping the children in coffee-growing cultures to build more hopeful futures.”

Pura Vida is a Christian charitable organization that envisions business as the engine for social change. There is distinct power in faith-based social justice initiatives (See “Fair Trade in Chicago,” page 22). Catholic Relief Services has linked with the Interfaith Coffee Program of Equal Exchange, Inc., a fair-trade company based in Massachusetts. The program, which already includes Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist groups, welcomes some 19,000 U.S. parishes into the virtual café. It will urge purchases of fair-trade coffee and educate churchgoers on the struggles of coffee growers.

“If we could get every Catholic in the country to drink fair-trade coffee, for instance, that would be a huge market right there,” says Paul Rice, president and CEO of TransFair USA, the only fair-trade certification organization in this country. “But it’s the ripple effect — getting all those people up to speed on what fair trade is all about and getting them to ask for it at their local stores — that’s going to have a much broader effect on the market.”

No Small Drip

Starbucks has reeled off 12 straight years of increased sales, topping $4 billion in 2003. The world’s biggest coffee retailer purchases one percent of all coffee on the globe, but less than one percent of that is fair-trade. To the company’s credit, that’s more than a million pounds of fair-trade beans annually and fully 10 percent of all the beans certified last year by TransFair. But fair-trade organizations, including the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, contend Starbucks should be buying at least five times that amount.

Starbucks has just completed a two-year pilot program to encourage vendors to be socially responsible. It “scores” potential suppliers on 10 factors related to environment and labor. Rice at TransFair says the self-regulating, social responsibility index is heavy on environment (not a bad thing) but leaves open fair-trade questions.

For his part, Katzeff admits the million-plus pounds of Starbucks fair-trade coffee is no small drip, but he said he feels the specialty coffee giant gets equal credit for doing one percent fair-trade coffee to Thanksgiving Coffee’s 100-percent commitment. In fact, some might contend Starbucks’ aggressive marketing campaign calls even more attention to its social responsibility to walk its talk.

“We roast and sell 200,000 pounds of fair-trade coffee each year,” says Katzeff. “Our revenues are about $4 million. Starbucks does billions. Does it seem right they only do five to 10 times more fair-trade coffee than our company?”

It’s “a form of greenwashing,” says Katzeff, “because Starbucks makes most of its billions in annual global sales on non-fair trade coffee.” Katzeff is an equal-opportunity activist. He said TransFair could play a more significant role by demanding “that Starbucks and Green Mountain [which did 9 percent fair-trade coffee at last count] continue increasing their market share with each year.”

Stronger Than Imagined

“TransFair doesn’t realize its own strength,” says Katzeff. “The flaw is there is no system for growth. Every certified fair-trade coffee provider [there are now about 300 in the U.S.] should be required to keep increasing its fair-trade coffee amounts. Even half a percent can be a lot. Plus, I say if the company is not transparent about its fair-trade practices, then don’t let them sell it as certified.”

Ronnie Cummings is a grassroots organizer of consumers, so he sees first-hand the impact of point-of-purchase decisions. Nonetheless, he says the world’s compromised coffee growers would benefit most from the U.S. government rejoining with other governments to regulate the world’s supply of beans. “We pulled out during the Reagan administration and allowed agribusiness companies like Sara Lee, Proctor & Gamble [which recently made a significant commitment to fair-trade in its Millstone line], Philip Morris and Nestlé to control the market,” says Cummings. “I think those companies would like to keep it that way.”

Cummings raises an intriguing point about Starbucks’ push for cafés in Latin, European and Asian markets. “A big part of the company’s strategy is to grow internationally,” says Cummings. “But eventually the pressure overseas will be so great on the fair-trade issue that Starbucks won’t be able to expand without making concessions.”

Anything less than a firm and increasing commitment to fair-trade “won’t be tolerated in Europe, which is ahead of us on the issue,” says Cummings. He notes Starbucks is already facing substantive demands about coffee sources from Latin American countries where Starbucks would like to establish its usual firm grip on the retail market.

While some observers might say Starbucks doing something is better than nothing, way better, others such as Cummings contend it is time to move our local coffee giant out of its comfort zone. At the least, demand a fair-trade cup — or find another place to sip and socialize. “The Starbucks brand sells a cozy environment and brews up strong coffee,” says Cummings. “It’s alluring. But independent coffee shops will brew up fair-trade coffee every day without you having to ask. The local independent shop gets my business.”

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