Coffee

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Coffee has long stood for both privilege and poverty. Since the time of the colonial coffee booms of the mid 1800s, coffee has been one of the world's most valuable export commodities, and today is second only to oil in gross value of world trade. Worldwide, 25 million people earn their livelihoods from coffee farming, supplying an estimated 500 billion cups of coffee to consumers each year (Public Broadcasting System 2003). However, wealth generated from the coffee trade is not equitably distributed: the price paid for a cup of coffee in the U.S. exceeds half the daily income of many small-scale coffee farmers. Workers on large coffee plantations often earn less than $2.00/day. Typical of the "resource curse" common to oil and gold-producing countries in the Global South, many coffee-producing countries are among the poorest. Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, is one of the world's oldest civilizations. Its quality Sidamo beans can fetch up to $25/lb. at Starbucks. Yet, Ethiopia's 1.2 million smallholder coffee farmers earn less than $2/day and the country's per-capita GDP is $130—one-fifth the Sub-Saharan Africa average.

http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1794

[stimbox]

1. Buy Fair Trade coffee!!!

The good stuff can be had here:
http://www.beantrees.com/
and
http://www.jeremiahspick.com/

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Difficult questions here

The Fairtrade Federation claims that Fairtrade “brings the benefits of trade into the hands of communities” and is a “vehicle for sustainable development” (FLO 2000). Similarly, Transfair states that with Fairtrade prices “farmers can feed their families” and “their children can go to school instead of working in the fields” (TransFair 2000). Fairtrade’s development claims suggest that ethical buying can offset the tendency for coffee to impoverish rural communities and that, given a price floor, coffee production can be an engine for rural development. The challenge, in this view, is to increase the consumption of Fairtrade coffee, thus bringing more benefits to more farmers.

However, many question the ability of Fairtrade to make good on these claims. In a New York Times article, Jennifer Alsever (2006) reported that middlemen are still capturing most of the profits in Fairtrade and that the actual amount being returned to farmers is only marginally above market price, often far below the reported Fairtrade price. In the August 2005 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly, Jenn Goodman and Mark Camp criticized Fairtrade for not challenging the culturally destructive free-market paradigm, pointing out that the system is not truly “fair” because Fairtrade certification places the burden of fairness, sustainability, and transparency on the farmer, not the importerroaster. Farmers—not retailers—must assume the costs of converting their farms to sustainable and organic practices, maintaining their cooperative organization, and obtaining expensive certification.

.....

Social Change and Value Chains How effective is Fairtrade in promoting social change? In 2004, researchers from the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), a nonprofit ATO based in Santa Cruz, California, interviewed coffee farmers and cooperative leaders in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua about the effect certification has on coffee-producing families and communities (CAN, 2007a). They found that Fairtrade Certification did raise the price families receive for their coffee. Farmers were paid an average of $.90 per pound (after co-op operating costs) for Fairtrade Certified coffee—a $.12 premium over the conventional market price, but less than the premium for Organic certification ($.41 over market price) or coffee certified both organic and Fairtrade ($.45 over market price). However, because farmers produced more coffee than they could sell on the certified market, on average they were able to sell only 60% of their coffee at the premium Fairtrade price (Mendez et al., unpublished), and it seems that those farmers were doing well. TransFair USA estimates that farmers who belong to Fairtrade certified cooperatives sell on average only 20% of their export-quality harvest as Fairtrade (TransFair USA, 2005). Hypothetically, if a family produced 10 one-hundred pound bags of coffee (a typical annual production for a family farm), they would sell between two and six bags at the premium price, receiving a real premium of $24 to $72—an important sum, but hardly enough to lift a family out of poverty.

...

Safety Net or Development Strategy? The neoliberal position that markets in and of themselves are sufficient to reduce poverty, end hunger, and promote sustainable development, is a notion that has been refuted by two decades of disastrous corporate-led globalization. 6 Fairtrade marketers who flagrantly claim that Fairtrade “empowers farmers” are in essence claiming certification is the small adjustment needed to make good on the neoliberal promise.

...

These are from a pdf file found at the link in the OP. Lots of good information there.

[druidity33]

4. i get my coffee

from Dean's Beans:

http://www.deansbeans.com/

It's a little like not trusting the USDA Organic symbol for me. Unless i know who's making it and where it's coming from (ie. not a giant corporation), i don't generally buy it. Dean contracts to growers HIMSELF. He negotiates with the farmers directly. And he helps to pay for community efforts in the grower cooperatives.


Know what you're buying...

[druidity33]

6. from Dean's website

They have their Fair Trade contracts independently audited:

We are proud to be the first coffee company in the USA to have our Fair Trade practices independently audited. In August, after six months of designing the audit program, we were visited by an Inspector from Quality Assurance International, an respected international organic and business practices certification organization. The Inspector, Bob Howe, went through all of our contracts, bills of lading and other documentation to examine our claims to be 100% Fair Trade. He also examined all wire transfer and email correspondence regarding our Social Equity Premiums (profit sharing with farmers), People-Centered Development projects and community activism to investigate whether our practices were real and our claims accurate. It was a long and involved examination, and we passed with flying colors!

We wanted an independent outside audit to model the same level of transparency and financial accountability that we in the Fair Trade movement demand from our farm partners. I've always been bothered by the demands some organizations make on third world peoples that they would not demand of themselves.

Also, we wanted an outside set of eyes looking at our claims and helping us to see where we may have made any unclear or confusing statements about our relationships to the farmers and their communities. It makes me crazy how many times I see advertisements from "socially responsible" coffee companies that have blatantly (and I think knowingly) misleading statements around their pricing, the extent of their fair trade practices and their overall behavior in the coffee world.

At least one roaster/importer understands what you are saying. The website has an excellent section where you "meet the growers"...



I'd start questioning Fair Trade when Wal-Mart and Starbucks really get into the act.

:shrug:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

8. The Mainstreaming Fairtrade Debate

The Mainstreaming Fairtrade Debate

In the wake of the recent extraordinary market expansion of Fairtrade—and in the midst of a mild rebound in the coffee market—the Fairtrade movement is being criticized. Last year, in an ideological broadside against ethical, organic and local markets, The Economist (2006a) questioned the quality of Fairtrade coffee, alleged violations of Fairtrade practices, and claimed that price premiums paid to farmers were actually hurting producers by exacerbating oversupply. The Financial Times interviewed coffee pickers in Peru who were paid below the national minimum wage to harvest Fairtrade certified coffee—a violation of Fairtrade standards—and used that evidence to smear the entire movement (Weitzman, 2006a and b). Attacks from the neoliberal marketeers of The Economist and The Financial Times are probably to be expected, but student groups, social justice groups, and some Fairtrade roasters, are also questioning the development claims, the "fairness," and the future of the Fairtrade coffee industry, but for very different reasons. Farmer organizations, such as Via Campesina and the Brazilian Landless People's Movement (MST), have called Fairtrade's market approach to development itself "neoliberal," and challenge the Fairtrade movement to work politically for structural change (Montagut and Vivas, 2006; O'Nions, 2006).2 At this year's United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) convergence in Boston, Massachusetts, students asked, "How will the involvement of large corporations change fair trade standards?" and "How do you get the scale and keep the values?" The activists who have been pushing Fairtrade products into their campus dining halls and cafés are now asking: how fair is Fairtrade?

Many ethical consumers and Fairtrade activists are also uncomfortable selling Fairtrade products through multinational corporations with unfair labor practices and monopolistic market power. Is Fairtrade providing a public relations cover for globalization's race to the bottom?

These questions reflect the growing disagreement among Fairtrade advocates over whether it is advisable to "mainstream" Fairtrade through the very corporations and market structures that provoked the coffee crisis in the first place. Is the goal to help as many peasant farmers as possible by selling as much Fairtrade coffee as possible? Or is the goal to transform coffee's historically unfair market structures?

Are markets the engine for social change or are social movements the force to change markets?

.....

http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1794

[druidity33]

12. to answer that bolded question

why both of course!

Dean essentially agrees with Foodfirst's assessment. Check out the link on People-Centered Development at the website.

Buy Deans Beans!


disclaimer:
i am not employed by Deans Beans but i am certainly a fan of their beans and practices. Plus for me they are a local company, independent and righteous.

:)

[lame54]

14. Trader Joe's has a lot of great Fair Trade coffees

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5561565665179751904

[Quantess]

3. Kicking, mostly just because I love coffee, and

it's been an interesting discussion so far.

[malaise]

5. Great post

K & R

[DFW]

7. Spectator sport for me mostly

I prefer tea

[stimbox]

9. That's it, I'm moving to Kona and growing my own! n/t

[DCKit]

10. Coffee, bananas, cocaine, diamonds, sugar, gold, pineapples....

If it comes from a third world country, you can bet it's "free trade" and not "fair trade".

[DangerDave921]

19. Free and Fair

Maybe it's the lawyer in me, or just my contrarian streak. I just can't understand what "fair" trade means. Isn't fair in the eye of the beholder? Who gets to decide what is "fair?" And what criteria are they using to make that determination?

If a trade is legitimately "free" then it means it is voluntarily agreed to by both sides. No coercion, no lying, no fraud, etc. To me, that is fair in the sense that both sides have chosen to enter into the trade. So in one regard, free trade is fair trade. The problems arise when the two sides don't have equal bargaining power, i.e., I've got a truckload of water, you're dying of thirst, and we "agree" to trade $100 for a bottle of water. Some would argue that is free trade, but it's not actually "free" in the sense that most moral people would use the term. So who gets to step in and decide what is a "fair" price for the bottle of water?

[DCKit]

20. You explanation is adequate, but you fail to mention a "living" wage...

consistent with the economy of the sourcing country. That is what best determines fair trade.

[magellan]

11. We buy Pura Vida

Site here: Pura Vida

[mike_c]

13. sweet marias....

http://www.sweetmarias.com/

I buy most of my coffee from Sweet Marias-- they are an importer and seller of green coffee beans directly to consumers. Their sources range from single estate deals with individual growers to coops to market auction beans, depending on the region of origin and the prevailing market practices there, all of it VERY high quality, cupped and reviewed. In some cases there are relatively few links between growers and consumers, in other cases more-- but at least the additional links are always in the locale from which the coffee derives, not in America. Ten-cents profit on a pound of coffee means a whole lot more to a grower's coop in rural Nicaragua than it does to a reseller in New York or Los Angeles.

[lame54]

15. Here's a fun book about coffee

smuggling coffee

[zanne]

16. Now that would be putting my principles to the test.....

A coffee boycott. Could I learn to like tea? I gave up meat.
A long time ago, I gave up drinking. Five years ago, I gave up smoking. I've recently given up soda. If I made myself stop drinking coffee, could I still live a full and productive life? Could you?

[stimbox]

17. Give up coffee? Not a chance. You'll have to pry my mug from my cold, dead hands. n/t

:donut:

[robinlynne]

18. I would love to jump on that pile of coffee beans and just smell them.

I love coffee.