jmstargirl — If you just shift your eyes over to the left column, you’ll see a link to a list of fair trade coffee shops.

While I agree with almost everything mentioned about globalization and fair trade, where exactly do you think the average small coffee shop (scs)gets their coffee from? Have you ever investigated yours? And should we really support a scs simply because it’s a scs? Not IMHO. A scs that doesn’t use fair trade or organic coffee shouldn’t be patronized simply because it’s not Starbucks.(*$) After all, the prices aren’t any cheaper at your average scs. Although *$ purchases less than 5% of their coffee as fair trade, they are still the largest purchaser of fair trade coffee in North America. That’s significant and not to be overlooked. Yes, they should certainly be purchasing even more fair trade and doing even more to support coffee farmers. I’ll never disagree with that statement. But think about it: Due to the global popularity of *$, there are now many more coffee farmers than there were 20 years ago. Without *$, many of these farms would simply go out of business. Not only due to direct sales, but due to the effect that *$ has had on global coffee consumption in general. And while they have put a lot of small shops out of business, they’ve also allowed a lot of small shops to thrive by creating the current coffee consumption trend. According to their store locater, there are 15 *$ within 2 miles of me. That includes the ones that are located inside of Safeway and the Convention Center. There are at least 13 scs (locally owned) within the same 2 miles radius. I’m sure that there are even more located in various state buildings that I don’t even know about.

Jason — We all know about Cafe Estima, which Starbucks says is avaliable to anyone via request, but often is not. Thus, the Starbucks Challenge, which has been going on for months.

Secondly, Starbucks STILL buys a lot of its coffee — 41% to be exact — through middlemen with no transparency clauses. This means that, even if Starbucks pays what you call “top dollar” (which, btw, still averages out to LESS than the fair trade MINIMUM), there’s no guarantee that this money actually goes to the farmers. Starbucks has ALREADY ADMITTED to this.

Darling, If you’re interested in fair trade, or in Starbucks in general, I suggest reading through some of the Starbucks Challenge posts. You’ll discover that I’ve duly done my homework, not just listened to the corporate spin like “partners” (*cough, you, cough*) have done.