Despite Starbucks’ big ads in the NY Times, the mermaid’s far from being a worker-friendly and ethical company, Starbucks makes token green gestures here and there — then spins the hell out of them via its PR machine.

Now, an investigative piece in the Sacramento Bee’s calling Starbucks on its bullshit. SacBee’s Tom Knudson spent 3 weeks in Ethiopia and found that the very Ethiopian farmers Starbucks purports to benefit are in fact living in poverty, forced to settle for a little charity here and there instead of receiving a fair price for their coffee.

Take the 3 footbridges Starbucks built in Ethiopia in 2004. By spending a mere $25,000 on these projects, Starbucks got to laud its forward-thinking charitable work in Ethiopia. But as Tadesse Meskela, a farmers co-op manager (and the star of the coffee film Black Gold) points out in the SacBee article: “If we are paid a (coffee) price which is decent, the people can make the bridge on their own…. We don’t have to be always beggars.”

Activists have been pushing Starbucks to become a better corporate citizen for years by making a more significant commitment to fair trade coffee — a move Starbucks continues to resist. Of course, Starbucks is always quick to point out that it pays $1.42 a pound for its coffee, 16 cents more than the fair trade minimum. What Starbucks doesn’t point out is that it’s comparing apples and oranges. Fair trade is about making sure the end coffee producer benefits, so the fair trade minimum price is strictly the amount that goes directly to the farmer co-op. Starbucks’ $1.42, on the otherhand, is the sum Starbucks pays to — someone. That someone’s usually a middleman in a long chain, not the coffee farmers.

In fact, Starbucks seems pretty hell bent on putting middlemen where none are needed; after all, paying the middleman saves Starbucks the costs of directly working with the farmers — while inflating this $1.42 figure Starbucks likes to put on its press releases. SacBee reports that in Chiapas, Mexico, Starbucks tried to get coffee farmers to sell to an exporter, instead of directly to Starbucks. The farmers cut off relations, saying that going through an exporter would drain their profits; Starbucks’ claim is that the farmers “were unable to manage it.”

Starbucks puts the same squeeze even on fair trade farms, as the NY Times exposed. Instead of paying the fair trade price to the Comon Yaj Noc Pic co-op in Mexico, Starbucks chose to forego the fair trade label, instead going through a middleman who paid the co-op just $1.23. Of course, if asked without specificity, Starbucks’ll state that the price they paid was $1.43 a pound and thus “better than fair trade,” without noting that that’s the sum they paid to the middleman, not the farmer.

Prices aside, Starbucks’ll often complain about fair trade certification itself, arguing that inspections for certification are shoddy or not thorough. Thus, the mermaid pushes its self-made CAFE Practices program as more comprehensive. What the SacBee investigation found, however, is that this CAFE system’s rather half-ass. No one from Starbucks or Scientific Certification Systems, the company Starbucks pays to oversee its CAFE program, visited an Ethiopian coffee farm that got CAFE certification, for example. An Africa-based company was hired to do the job — and apparently didn’t do it very well, because when SacBee started investigating, the inspector person got fired for doing a bad job.

What’s a coffee drinker with a latte habit to do? Stick to fair trade coffee. I’m working on putting together a US-wide list of coffee shops here. Among big chains, Noah’s Bagels has the fair trade Tribeca Blend brewing, while Tully’s and Dunkin’ Donuts use fair trade for their espresso drinks.

And if you’re stuck at Starbucks, try taking the Starbucks Challenge. Ask for a french-pressed cup of fair trade coffee, which baristas should provide for you at no extra charge per Starbucks’ company policy.

Tags: fairtrade, coffee, starbucks, starbuckschallenge, cafepractices

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