Over 400 billion cups are consumed each year. The United States alone imports more than $4billion worth of it per year. It begins in life in the “bean belt,” roughly bounded by the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Among natural commodities, it is surpassed by only oil in monetary value. It comes from countries like Ethiopia, Indonesia, East Timor, Columbia, Guatemala, Cote D’Voire, and Uganda; places many sitting in Starbucks do not know exist. Many of these countries are desperately impoverished.
As our society begins its glacial shift away from hyper-consumerism, we begin to take into account quality over quantity, and with quality, a sense that the people creating the products we consume in our daily lives are getting a “fair trade.” Many factors are contributing to this shift; economic slowdown and the resulting decrease in money to spend is the first obvious one; but many people, (or "consumers" as we are now called) are also realizing that the more “stuff” they buy, the more of an environmental impact and imprint they are leaving on this increasingly fragile planet. Many are simply shifting their mentalities from the belief that more stuff equals more happy, and realizing something larger and more socially responsible in their consciousness.
Where the products we buy comes from is not something that goes through the mind of many consumers as they reach for the shelf, under fluorescent lighting, shopping carts overflowing steel ledges. However, giving a quick thought to this seemingly trivial question before reaching for your wallet could have a lasting impact on the lives of millions. The simplest gesture of humanity, as simple as a 2 second thought, as simple as a gesture of generosity, such as spending an extra $1-2 dollars on a fairly traded product, could impact the lives of millions. Luckily, this fair trade and responsibility movement has been gathering steam, and in every coffee house I enter, when I request 100% fair trade coffee (as you should too-and know that companies are deceptive and will use 1-5% fair trade just to put it on labels--only 100% will do!!!), they smile and nod. People are getting it. People want to care about others, even if its only with their wallets. And this is fine. This is the kind of caring that actually matters at the end of the day.
A wonderful retailer/wholesaler of 100% fairly traded, organic, tasty coffee, is Dean's Beans. Dean personally travels and meets all of the farmers in the developing countries with whom he works, ensuring the right amounts of money is being channeled back to them, and initiates community development schemes in the coffee growing regions where he works. He is a partner in the new trademark license of the regional coffee brand that was agreed to between Starbucks and Ethiopia, with much lobbying by Oxfam, that has already started to pay off for the Ethiopian farmers, with an additional $60million per year going to the people who deserve it most-the ones taking all the risk, and doing all the work. Through this agreement, much higher percentages of final profit will be going to the farmers in Ethiopia, a country which depends of coffee for 60% of its export earnings, and which has 15 million people who directly depend on the trade for their survival. Dean buys from a particular cooperative, the Oromo Group, whose work I have discussed previously.
The main player in the retail field in the US, Starbucks, has built its massive business on being a progressive, socially responsible company; much of this is a marketing falsity. Since the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989, the price paid to farmers is at a 30 year low. You would not know that looking at the prices at your local Starbucks. There is no decreasing trend there. In fact, since 1990, retail sales from coffee have grown from $30billion to $80billion a year. Where is this disconnect, and who is profiting?
Take an average case: there is 80 cups of coffee in a kilo; each cup has a retail value of $2 (high end); that gives a retail value of one kilo of high end coffee = $160. On average, when using regular international trading mechanisms (middle men, wholesalers, and more wholesalers), the farmers receive 8 cents. How can we consume a product, know this is the case, and not want to change the situation for the farmers?
Take one more case in the regular-coffee-chain (commodity priced in NYC and London): the workers sorting low quality beans (for your average Chock Full of Nuts or Foldgers container) at the main processing plant in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, work a full 8 hour shift, sorting beans by hand. They make less than 50cents per day. Another unfortunate link in the traditional coffee chain.
Fair trade is starting to answer many of the complex questions involved (I will no delve into the commodities markets at this point), but they are doing it basically by acting as a bridge between farmer's cooperatives and domestic roaster (who sells the end product tot he consumer, ie: Dean's Beans), ensuring the farmer is getting a fair deal for their work and risk, and ensuring the consumer is getting a premium product, fresh from the fields. It is eliminating the commodities traders and middlemen, who continually work for their own profit and welfare, not for the welfare of the poor farmers. Fair trade organizations also establish a price floor for the product, a safety net for the producers, who often invest their entire livelihood in the crop. It is giving a fair price to increase the development of poor, rural communities in the coffee growing regions of the world. These farmers are not desirous of new cars and televisions; they require money to feed their families, access clean water, and be able to send their children to school. Fair trade is ending a decades long process of exploitment in the developing world by major multinational corporations. We all need to be a part of this change, to be the change we wish to see in the world.
Only recently has Starbucks started to respect the growers and farmers who supply their “black gold” from around the developing world. The consumer needs to enact this change; they are the only voice, the voice of the consumer, that is listened to by a large multi-national; next time you go into Starbucks, just ask for 100% Fair Trade Coffee (not the 1% they currently use as a clever, greedy marketing tool...try THAT on for size...rather than actually paying their farmers a fair wage, and creating a responsible business model, SOME of these big multinationals would rather deceive the consumer and reap in yet more profits by advertising fair trade and selling 1% fair traded coffee blended in with the usual, while the farmer get driven further and further into poverty with decreasing market prices!) When you buy coffe, make sure it has the Transfair USA Label, a group that certifies coffee exchange transactions. Also look for the Fair Trade Federation logo; they are a responsible business outfit working in the field. Its that easy to make some positive change, next time you go for your Caramel Mochiato. Deans Beans is truly an inspirational social business model, and the coffee is awesome. He sells in Whole Foods, many smaller shops, and online. And its no more expensive then the zero-% Fair Trade Chock Full of Nuts garbage rotting on the shelf of the local A&P. So, take the smallest step; the most basic deed; ask for fair trade wherever you buy coffee; if they don’t have it, request it; stores will honor the needs of customers. This is business 101. Consumers are the ones who will bring a change.
Please give a damn. It could be a life saver. This is the link for Deans:
www.deansbeans.com
Additionally, I have recently viewed a documentary on this topic; the awareness the is sprouting into the fair trade movement represents a wonderful moment in time; a small shift in a potentially larger paradigm shift of the modern consumer nation. Black Gold details the fair trade coffee movement in startling manner, following Tadesse Meskela, the manager of the Oromia Coffee Growers Union in Ethiopia, a union of over 73,000 growers in the south of the country. In one particularly startling scene, the cameras traveled to Sidana, Ethiopia, where Starbucks's Ethiopian coffee is grown. The cameras were following aid trucks, traveling to the relief feeding center for the region; the area was on the brink of famine for the first time. The scenes were startling; the market price for coffee had collapsed, and the many people who depended on it were not able to feed themselves or their families; they were at the bottom level of the coffee growing chain, completely forgotten. No price floors; no fair deal; no fair trade. Middlemen, wholesalers, and multinationals still making billions; farmers starving. An extreme case, to be sure, but reality, nonetheless.
Information breeds activity, activity breeds change. Be the change.
“Sitting there, I felt that all I’d seen and done, and all that I’d been through, was wrapping around me like a cloak, warming me throughout, reshaping me. As a result of being more patient and more perseverent than I had ever been, of trying to follow my path regardless of its difficulties, I had gained a remarkable feeling of strength and clarity and contentment that I had not known before.”
-Kevin Kertscher, Africa Solo
“When you begin to peel away the layers of the onion, when you begin to strip the stuff from the being, the attachments, the distractions, the styles, the manners, remote reasonable norms, the clean and the grit, you start to get a picture of mankind as a universal race, unhindered by difference. Only when these layers are removed can the core be observed; in its raw form, unmolested by accessory, a beating heart, a warm hand outstretched, a white toothy smile. Layers can only serve as a distraction, a distraction which spirals and builds and consumes, reinforcing itself into perpetual differences, distracting the simple truths. Peel, simplify, listen, observe.”
Me
