Why should it have? This is akin to wishing that getting a university degree would make one better in bed.

To some extent it may work. While getting one’s degree, one typically spends time in bed with various persons. But normally this is not considered a part of the curriculum per se.

Similarly, Fair Trade addresses the financial and social problems in production. It was not designed as a quality control system. Quality has to be built in the production process by some other means. Education of farmers, for which Fair Trade might give the means, may be one of the steps.

So – this is not a reason not to get FT certified, but it may be a reason to require an extra certification, formal or informal, or to build a close relationship with known good quality suppliers. (I do not think that ISO 9001 is applicable to small farmers.)

Also, “quality” ought to be defined better. There are at least three ways in which you can look at quality. First, you can think of quality as a “premium”. Expensive, exclusive. Second, you can think of it as “quality guarantee”. This means that the quality is stable, one shipment very close to the previous one. If one shipment is on a required level, a high quality supplier consistently provides the same level of quality. Third, this can mean “value” – whether you get value for money.

As for the first definition of quality in FT, this is a regional issue. In Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence 2004 competition, many of the winners were also Fair Trade coffees.

As for the second one, this 2004 Coffee Review article talks about FT coffees being of consistent quality.

Third one, value for money, is very subjective. The added value of sustainable development must be counted in here. Businesses can make an objective assessment by subtracting the expenses from income. But for end customers, this measurement is rather fluid.

(Maybe I should really be blogging this.)

Alteration of the entire process is needful, imo. Alteration of our attitudes as consumers, alteration of how buyers think of coffee and coffee farmers and alteration of the criteria required for certification.

Thanks for following up on the meeting with Groundworks!

As long as fair trade concentrates solely on the value provided to the supplier rather than on that provided to the consumer, it will remain little more than a sad footnote in the history of commerce.

Consider the organic movement. We don’t spend twice as much on organic milk than on regular milk because we think organic farmers are somehow more deserving than the non-organic cooperatives in, say, Vermont. We spend twice as much on it because, rightly or wrongly, we have been convinced that it tastes better and is better for us. Whereas fair trade coffee is marketed solely on the basis of where the money goes rather than on the basis of what the product is. That’s a losing proposition.

Not only don’t I particularly care where my money goes when I buy a cup of coffee, but even asking me to think about it is demanding far too much of me before I’ve had my first cup of coffee of the day. It’s a cup of coffee. This is not exactly a high-impact item; it’s not a car, or a house, or a major investment in a mutual fund. So fair trade coffee as marketed to the consumer is doomed to eternal marginalization, fundamentally, because it is asking the consumer to consider a nonsequiteur when performing a trivial purchase. The mere fact of thinking about that issue increases the transaction cost on the part of the consumer. Who will respond by telling you, with their dollars, that they don’t care.

The way I see it, there are exactly two ways for fair trade coffee to make an impact among anyone other than people who don’t actually care about how their coffee tastes:

(1) Turn fair trade into a guarantee of some minimal standard of taste and quality, in which case the consumer will actually care, or
(2) Market fair trade at the corporate level. If your fair trade coffee isn’t going to taste better, then I, the consumer, don’t care at all. But you might convince a coffee shop that they care, because they can then pass that on to the consumer: “Hey, we only sell fair trade coffees, and here are the ones we recommend.” This increases the impact of the transaction on the fair-traders, and simultaneously eliminates the psychic transaction cost to the consumer of choosing between fair-trade coffee that tastes ok or non-fair-trade coffee that tastes better. All the consumer has to decide is whether she or he likes the coffee shop.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts.

one part of the solution might be instituting another fair trade certification, one that would include individual farmers, etc. but in the meantime, i think siel is doing exactly what needs to be done – get the discussion going on the consumer and retail level, develop “brand recognition” for the fair trade designation, etc.

by the way, a lot of consumers will buy fair trade coffee just because of ethical concerns as to how it’s produced and there are a lot of people (like me for one) who buy organic solely because it’s better for the environment not because we think it tastes better or is healthier. this is especially evident in the demand for organic cotton textiles, which is solely an environmental issue – nobody wants organic cotton clothes because they look better than regular cotton. one indication of the consumer demand for organic cotton is the fact that nike has responded with an organic cotton line.

This can work if the worker organizations deal with the issue globally, and have a global attitude to labor.

i hope you were being rhetorical in your 4th paragraph.

-coffee is not a trivial purchase for a lot of people. $1.75/day ads up over the year.
-people do care where the money they spend goes. look at the anti-sweatshop movement and other consumer boycotts
-Fair Trade Certified goods focus on more than just the value sent back to the producer. Non-organic certified Fair Trade Certified has high standards for pesticide use (higher than the US EPA and the EU) and in ’06, GMOs will be banned. The majority of FTC goods in the US market are already certified organic.

Personally, I will buy organic produce when I can, because I know it’s better for me personally and it’s better for the world. It’s a simple decision and statement and a simple decision. Numerous studies have been done to show that consumer loyalty to organic brands is very high. Furthermore, a few studies have come through to show that out of all “cause coffees”, Fair Trade Certified has the highest conversion rate-i.e., when a customer becomes aware of Fair Trade, they are most likely to convert that awareness into a purchase. More than TWICE than organic. SO, the key would seem to be building consumer awareness…