Basically, she was more than ready, and able, to write a _much_ longer piece that would have laid out both the similarities and difference between the various certification & labeling systems. BUT, as is the way of journalism, she has no control over how much space the paper will make available to her. I’m sure that like all good journalists she would have loved to have more room to share what she had learned. And from our trip I, too, learned alot.

For example, only during the trip did it really come home to me that of all the environmental-focused certification systems (Rainforest, Bird Friendly, organic, and dual certified organic/Fair Trade) only the last - dual organic/Fair Trade coffee _ensures_ the grower of a price premium, let alone a higher guaranteed price. Put it this way, what is the guaranteed premium for any of the others? To my knowledge its zero. Yes, there is usually a premium thanks to market forces, but not always.
By contrast, what is the premium for organic/FT coffee? answer: 20 cents (20 cents over non-organic/FT coffee)
What is the guaranteed floor price for the other systems? None.
What is the guaranteed floor price for organic/FT? $1.51 (or $1.56 from either Equal Exchange or Cooperative Coffees).

As for Dylan’s Q - Starbucks doesn’t buy directly cooperatives because - I surmise - because its too much work. That’s why they typically have no more than 2 designated exporters in each coffee producing country who do this for them. (read the fine print of their C.A.F.E. standards and I think you’ll still find this “2 exporters per country” clause). I assume the attraction is that this simplifies their work. When Elisabeth Malkin and I visited the AMSA officers in Tuxtla Guiterrez it was evident that AMSA was doing a lot, such as keeping tabs on how all the different Starbucks growers were doing according to the C.A.F.E. criteria.

Which lead to another realization/theory of mine: that is that the C.A.F.E. system - combined with the obvious desire of growers to sell into the ever-growing maw of the Starbucks machine - enables Starbucks to largely externalize the cost of better social and environmenta practices onto the growers (even while taking lots of the credit for the results) How? The C.A.F.E.’s point system creates a kind of competition that prompts the growers to invest more and more in social and environmental programs BUT does not match these investment with proportionately higher prices. Let me put it this way, say there are a 100 growers in country X seeking to sell to Starbucks. The C.A.F.E. system pits them all against one another in an admittedly virtuous way where, all else being equal, the one with the best social/environmental practices goes to the front of the line to sell to Starbucks. This creates a kind of “practices arms race”. Which is kind of exciting - EXCEPT that while growers are digging deeper and deeper into their own pockets to get to the front of the C.A.F.E. line the price they stand to get doesn’t necessarily change.