Byline: Tim Rogers Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 04/13/2004
(GRANADA, NICARAGUA)Fueled by a popular taste for lattes and cappuccinos and a growing consumer-awareness campaign, the fair-trade coffee movement has tens of thousands of Americans asking for a scoop of social justice with their morning coffee.
Fair-trade coffee - beans purchased from small farmers outside the US
at well above the slumping market price - is hot in the java world: The
amount of fair-trade coffee sold in the US nearly doubled last year.
But as the movement has expanded in recent years to include such brands
as Starbucks, Green Mountain, Procter & Gamble, and Dunkin' Donuts,
dissension is percolating among some smaller roasters. They claim that
the large firms, which buy only a small percentage of fair-trade beans,
are turning it into a marketing ploy rather than an effort to help
farmers.
Now a move is underfoot to create a new model where smaller brewers
purchasing 100 percent fair-trade coffee hope to distinguish themselves
as the real deal among fair traders. The rift demonstrates how some
small companies feel cheated by larger corporations for infringing on
their market niche, even when all parties involved insist they are
working toward the same goal.
Others say the mainstreaming of the movement has helped the cause.
"If a corporate giant roasts a million pounds of fair-trade coffee in
one year, they are still doing far more than some of the smaller
100-percent roasters will in their entire history," stresses Paul Rice,
CEO of TransFair USA, the group that audits the US fair-trade industry.
The fair-trade model seeks to ensure livable wages as well as
environmental and cultural sustainability for small farmers in Latin
America, Africa, and Asia by establishing a base purchase price of
$1.26 per pound - about $.75 more than the current market price. Since
TransFair formed in 1998, fair-trade coffee sales in the US have grown
exponentially, totaling 19 million pounds last year, according to Mr.
Rice.
Several smaller 100-percent fair-trade coffee roasters in the US have
broken from the establishment in recent months, claiming they can do
more to raise consumer awareness by going it alone.
On Friday, Larry's Beans of North Carolina split from TransFair, the
company that holds the US trademark for the term, "Fair Trade
Certified." At least three other smaller roasters - Just Coffee, Dean's
Beans, and Cafe Campesino - have followed suit. All the details of
their new association have yet to be worked out.
"Without people outside the increasingly corporate-friendly TransFair
system pushing for the original vision of a better model, [the
movement] will be watered down into nothingness," says Matt Earley,
cofounder of Just Coffee in Madison, Wis.
Under the current system, chains like Starbucks can call themselves
fair-trade friendly by purchasing just 1 to 2 percent of their coffee
from certified growers.
Starbucks, which brews fair-trade coffee once a month as its "coffee of
the day" in the company's 7,834 worldwide shops, and has bags of it for
sale on its shelves, acknowledges that fair-trade beans are only a
small percentage of its total purchase, but explains that there are
other ways to ensure farmers are treated justly.
Sue Mecklenburg, vice president of business practices for Starbucks,
says the company purchases all its beans - fair-trade certified or not
- at an average price of $1.20 per pound. She says that last year the
company bought 2.1 million pounds of fair-trade certified coffee,
double the amount from the previous year, and sold 28 million cups of
fair-trade coffee as its cup of the day in 2003.
"Starbucks doesn't purchase 100 percent of its coffee as fair-trade
certified, but 100 percent of the coffee we buy is under conditions
that are fair to farmers," she says, noting that fair-trade certified
coffee is still a relatively small market, representing 670,000
smallholder family farmers, out of an estimated 25 million coffee
farmers around the world.
Another sticking point inside the movement are the requirements for
being certified. Germany's Fair Labeling Organization (FLO), which
certifies all fair-trade coffee in the world, charges farmers $2,431 to
certify plus an annual base of $607 for recertification and $.02 per
2.2 pounds of coffee sold under the fair-trade label.
Stuck in the middle of the controversy is the rural Nicaraguan coffee
cooperative of El Porvenir, located on a 2,000-acre swath of land in
the volcanic highlands. This village of 255 people produces a modest
45,000 pounds of organic coffee beans in a good year and has been
trying for three years to get certified as fair trade by FLO.
Mike Woodard of the Nicaraguan ecumenical organization Jubilee House
Community, says he helped the village fill out a certification
questionnaire in 2001, but never received a response. FLO did not
answer questions about why they have not visited the community, but
spokesman Simen Sandberg says that seldom do they certify producers who
harvest less than 44,000 pounds per year - almost the exact amount El
Porvenir harvested last year.
Rice downplays criticisms that the movement sold out by inviting the
multinational's on board. He says his mission is to get as many
roasters and retailers involved as possible.
But some are still wary of the bigger brewers. Robert Everts,
co-executive director of Massachusetts' Equal Exchange, the largest
100-percent retailer of fair-trade coffee in the US, applauds efforts
to bring in larger firms, but says he stands with the defectors. He
says that "the verdict is still out" whether the fair-trade
establishment can support both the big and small roasters under the
same tent.
(c) Copyright 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Original Article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0413/p01s02-woam.html