I drank a lot and stayed over at my friend Jen’s last night, and this morning when I woke up my eyes were swollen shut. Alcohol immediately turns Jen firetruck red, but it has longer-term, more neferious and mysterious effects on my system. I didn’t feel normal until after 1.5 cups of coffee over a plantains-and-enchiladas brunch in Marina Del Rey.

Feel being the operative word. My eyes are still totally swollen shut, but the coffee de-comatosed me, at least. Those cups o’ joe, however, were probably not fair trade. If only I could order fair trade coffee at restaurants and coffee shops — kinda like the way I can ask for decaf or soy milk.

Of course, fair trade has its naysayers. Who are these capitalist meanies, you wonder? Surprisingly, not all of them are heartless, and many agree that yes, there is a coffee crisis going on, and it sucks for those farmers. I think it’s that many of these anti FT-ers just don’t quite understand what fair trade does, exactly. And I can’t say I blame them — It’s a little complicated, and under-reported in the media.

But first — I wanna clarify again that the problem is the gross coffee. Good coffee — usually called specialty coffee — makes pretty good money, usually because they require long-term contracts between growers and buyers — which means buyers have to play nice with the growers — to ensure the quality of the product. Thus specialty coffee — and this includes the stuff at Starbucks and The Coffee Bean — is not really the problem (though I still think they could make some changes). It’s the Folgers-Nescafe Frappe crap that’s perpetuating poverty.

The anti-FT argument, put simply, is that fair trade encourages farmers to grow MORE bad coffee by offering them more money than their coffee is worth. In theory, this kinda makes sense — If there’s so much coffee in the world that the beans are only worth 50 cents a pound, but we pay a livable wage of $1.26 a pound, the overcompensated farmers could, in a giddy fit, make even more worthless coffee for good money.

The problems with this theory: The $1.26 floor price is only ONE of many requirements for fair trade certification. To get that fair trade sticker, these farmers also have to put programs in place to improve the quality of their coffee AND diversify their crops. This means that FT farmers have to: 1) grow yummier coffee, and 2) grow other stuff (meaning less coffee). So as “altruistic” as FT sometimes sounds, we fair trade peeps are not just blindly handing out cash. You can get the nitty gritty details of FT requirements here.

Update, 2/4/06: In fact, part of the reason some coffee’s gross tasting is the coffee crisis itself! Desparate farmers are forced to pick their coffee cherries early, in order to sell the stuff for money before the banks come after them. Of course, this means that these farmers are making gross tasting coffee — and selling it for disgustingly low prices.

Lastly — FYI to the lone commentor on my last post: Kona coffee is grown in a region of Hawaii, which, as Jen hates having to point out to “mainland” people sometimes, is a part of the US. I’m not sure what that really has to do with my point in the last post, but there you go — and thanks for reading –

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