I’m gonna have to write a whole post about Cindy’s uber-long comment (comment #5), mainly cuz I’m getting bombarded with emails from USC students, TransFair people, and activists incensed by Cindy’s words. While I encourage all of you to respond personally with your own comments, I’ll try to air some of the concerns here.

For those of you unfamiliar with coffee farmer co-ops — and this group, by the way, seems to include Cindy — basically, these co-ops are a group of farmers that come together to pool their resources. This allows them to collect their coffee together to sell it in large units to companies. Plus, those farmers can make financial decisions that benefit the group as a whole — buying better equipment they can all use or building a school or hospital, say — that a lone farmer couldn’t afford.

So why does Cindy say “it is important to note that the $1.26 goes to the cooperatives not the individual farmers”? I suppose that if I were part of a co-op, and as a group, we decided to use a chunk of the money earned to buy new farm equipment, I won’t receive that chunk in cash to spend on, say, organic wine pour moi. That said, I’d get new farm equipment. I’d still consider that money coming to me, although not in cash or alcohol form.

Despite the tactful language, Cindy’s remarks sound like a lot of mudslinging against the fair trade movement in general and against TransFair in particular. “We are asking TransFair USA for the same transparency and documentation we are asking from our other suppliers,” she writes, as if TransFair has duped them in the past. She adds: “Because, unfortunately, not all coop leaders are honest or fair.”

I think TransFair’s aware corrupt people exist in the world — FLO, the international organization of which TransFair is like the US wing, in fact found a corrupt dude once and took the co-op off the register. This is NO SECRET. This is also why FLO and TransFair have stringent auditing procedures in place to spot and weed out such meanies from the fair trade chain — procedures that some consider bureaucratic and expensive (which is the most common complaint from co-ops and companies — NOT corruption) but are, in my opinion, worthwhile.

In any case, this alleged corruption, from everything I’ve read and heard from activists and coffee companies, is hardly widespread as Cindy seems to intimate. Of course, I’m willing to be convinced otherwise — but I need more than Cindy’s hearsay.

What really bugs me is Cindy’s claim that Starbucks gets attacked because of their transparancy. “I know Starbucks will always be a target.,” she writes “… I guess that is the price Starbucks pays for addressing the issues; engaging with our critices and trying to be a leader in the industry.”

Um, only 1.6% of Starbucks’ purchases is fair trade certified. That isn’t exactly leadership. And the small percentage of the coffee bought under Starbucks’ own C.A.F.E. standards — a percentage I’ve requested repeatedly and haven’t received — doesn’t put them in the leader ranks in my book either.

And yes, Starbucks does indeed devote a large chunk of its website to social responsibility. But key facts are missing. The site implies that all Starbucks’ coffee meets C.A.F.E. standards, when that percentage won’t even reach the 50% mark until 2007. The site implies all farmers who sell to Starbucks make fair wages — when in actuality, Starbucks has no idea what some of the farmers receive for their work.

What’s sad is that if Starbucks wanted to, it has all the resources to really become a leader for fair trading practices in the industry. Instead, the mermaid keeps pointing blame, while implying things at Starbucks are better than they really are.

The thing is, Starbucks HAS done some great things for a company its size. The fucks at Nestle don’t even pretend they care about being a “leader” in the industry. But Starbucks loses its “nice” creds when it exaggerates the scope of its current policies and belittles the strides that still remain to be made. Why not really opt for real transparancy, admitting shortcomings while also celebrating achievements?

Sean, for one, whose comment Cindy’s was in response to, wrote to clarify that he’s “very in favor of fair trade” and seems rather horrified that his comment has been twisted “into a self serving sort of way to make the shortcomings of fair trade make it appear they [Starbucks] are doing what’s right when they clearly have a LOT of work to do.”

And a TransFair employee writes: “The more I read Cindy’s post the more incensed I get. She’s dropping a lot of things here and there, casually, that are in my opinion-either plain ignorance or evidence of a deep institutional misunderstanding on sbux part.”

Why doesn’t TransFair weigh in officially, unanonymously? Well — My thoughts on that later this week.

Filed in: starbuckschallenge coffee csr fair-trade fairtrade starbucks

Update, 8/8/06: The NYT says that about 30% of co-op money gets reinvested into co-ops themselves to support administrative and infrastructure issues (i.e. schools, hospitals, etc.) — and points out that the 70% that goes directly to individual farmers is still way more than what farmers would’ve been getting outside the co-op system.

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