Being a grad student and working at home really has its privileges — I roll out of bed, turn on the coffee machine, and turn on the computer. Instantly, I’m at work. I was gonna post a picture of myself to illustrate my indolence, but after looking in the mirror, I changed my mind. Also, I don’t have a digicam.
Another benefit of my lifestyle: I can talk to Jay, the “green coffee buyer” for The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, for as long as I can keep him on the phone. Now, The Coffee Bean doesn’t carry ANY fair trade coffee. Here are Jay’s argument as to why not:
1. The Coffee Bean deals with special coffe, which, as I discussed before, generally compensates farmers fairly.
2. Fair trade certification costs money (true), which could be better spent on compensating farmers or lowering prices for consumers.
Jay seemed totally passionate about improving lives for coffee farmers. And it does seem like The Coffee Bean is working towards this — Their website boasts pictures and detailed stories of the benefiting farmers.
The problem here, though, is — How the hell would the consumer know this?
Jay’s argument: if the consumer’s really interested, Jay’s totally avaliable to talk with them — and The Coffee Bean can help them get involved and will even work with them to visit coffee farms in Guatamala and stuff.
Okay. I totally appreciate Jay’s openness — I mean, the guy gave me his cell phone number, and took an hour out of his day to talk to me, an individual coffee drinker.
However, I’m not sure I buy his argument that every coffee drinker who cares about where their coffee comes from should have to put forth the time and energy I did to find out that their coffee wasn’t made through labor exploitation.
Where does consumer activism end and corporate responsibility begin? Sure, as a slacker grad student, I have the time to research this stuff, go to FT conferences, and gab with Jay for hours on end during peak business hours, then blog about it. But is it really fair to say that if consumers “really care” about fair trade, they should take trips to Guatamala to find out what’s going on first hand?
I mean, isn’t this why we have independent auditors to begin with? Individual consumers have their own bills to pay, and can’t spend a big chunk of their time personally examining The Coffee Bean’s supply chain up close. A simple convo with the company doesn’t really cut it either. The Coffee Bean’s privately owned, and as one corporate director notes on today’s Christian Science Monitor, “It’s not credible if somebody is monitoring and reporting on themselves … you [also] need an independent monitor who has got integrity and is outside” the company.
The FT label, according to CSM, is assurance that coffee was grown in shady conditions that bode well for the land and that everyone in the supply chain actually got paid as promised. That little sticker lets consumers drink non-exploitative coffe while keeping their jobs and paying rent and putting coffee on the table for their family and friends.
To Jay: Enough excuses. Get stickered.
July 28th, 2005 at 10:50 am
Yes. Well said. It’s not such a small thing to get that little sticker - heck, even Starbucks has a Fair Trade offering (though how “fair” it is, one does wonder) on the shelves.
Have you discovered http://www.ravensbrew.com Ravens Brew Coffees? Great coffee, great ethics. Love them.
August 20th, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Checked out Ravens Brew — But I don’t think they do Fair Trade — Am I missing something? Glad that they’re organic and shade grown though :)
November 26th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
Well said! Still browsing your blog! Lots of great stuff! Mind if I ask….what do you do from home?
May 18th, 2006 at 9:54 am
It is strange that Coffe Bean wouldn’t make a bigger effort to show how they compensate well for their specialty coffee. I imagine it would take one big company to make an intentional effort to deal with issues of fair trade and consumerism in America to put them at the forefront of these issues. Off topic: When I think of all the plastic bottles of gatorade, pepsi, etc., sitting in grocery stores right now that will end up in land fills, I get sick to my stomach and overwhelmed with a sense of “what can I do?” I would love for a larger company to say, “we will put forth the effort and research to develop a product that cuts down on the wasteful consumerism in America” This would be costly and risky, but it is similar to the research Toyota put into alternative fuel technology fifteen years ago. Now they are the leaders in the Hybrid market. I am not necessarily a full supporter of the Hybrid, but I am impressed with the intentional effort to put time and money into something well before its time.
May 18th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
What’s even sadder is that back in the day, soda bottles were not just recycled, but reused! There’s a v. informative article in the LA Times today about the death of wine bottle reuse — If a Californian organic winery or brewery developed a reuse program, I’d seriously become a life-long loyal customer…
December 26th, 2006 at 9:52 am
I work with coffee producers in Latin America and Africa. Some of our cooperatives sell to Fair Trade, but only when better buyers are not present. The reasons are as follows:
1. Fair Trade pays a single price regardless of quality. So, when prices are good, we sell our good coffee for prices that are higher than Fair Trade’s. Then we sell the leftovers - coffee worth $1.26/lb or less - to Fair Trade.
2. When prices are really low, we also sell to Fair Trade. The problem is that out of the 10 containers we produce, Fair Trade will only buy two. So either the price premium is shared among all the farmers (and diluted to almost zero) or it ends up in the hands of the cooperative’s leaders. The latter is the more common outcome. Either way, the premium does very little to the average farmer.
3. Fair Trade’s insistence on cutting out the middlemen makes it hard for us to work with multinational exporters and other large companies that offer economies of scale. Yes, more money stays within the cooperative this way, but more money also gets wasted in the supply chain. The result is less money for farmers.