A Fair Trade?

I like it hot, steamy and fresh like a slap in the face. But sometimes I feel dirty after, like I’ve done something to be ashamed of; like maybe I feel like I’ve taken advantage of someone. It begs the question: how far will we go to get that perfect cup of coffee? Can we feign ignorance and wax naive when it comes to the origins of our precious caffeinated beans? Or is it time that we face the facts: each cup of coffee is a one night stand with some poor, third world coffee farmer and each sip is tainted with his over-worked, under-paid sweat.

Over-dramatic? Perhaps. But with Certified Fair Trade beans pouring into Vancouver, there seems to be less and less excuses for purchasing uncertified beans, such as Starbucks, Blenz or even Safeway Coffee. A few questions come to mind: if Fair Trade is becoming so accessible, why aren’t all coffees getting certified; is Fair Trade enough; and why isn’t a huge corporation like Starbucks helping?

So I sat down with progressive coffee shop owner, Greg Lomnes. He owns and operates Think Coffee Lounge, near the University of British Columbia. Think is an all-organic, all fair-trade coffee shop that stands tall as an anti-corporation, anti-globalization hub of students, hippies, business men and local clientele. The motto is “think global, act local”, taking a stand against the Starbucks mentality. “Fair trade coffee,” says Lomnes “would be coffee that is generally traded above the international market rate for a pound of coffee”. He says that coffee, by the pound, generally costs 52 or 53 cents for the farmer to grow it, but that the “international rate was … at about 47 or 48 cents a pound”, so the farmer is actually losing money. “So fair trade coffee says well that’s not really fair for the producer, the person at the beginning of the chain” says Lomnes, and so began Certified Fair Trade coffee. This is a great start because “the farmers do end up getting a fair value for their product, but” says Lomnes, “it’s a pretty limited model. I mean, fair trade only looks at one simple issue in the coffee industry”. He talks about how Fair Trade only tackles one issue of the coffee industry, and it’s not enough anymore; however, it is a start.

So if it’s just one step to a better industry, what is Starbucks doing? Well, of the many downloadable PDF files on the internet, Starbucks claims it is doing everything possible. While they only have one or two Certified Fair Trade Coffees, they have created their own certification called C.A.R.E, “Coffee and Farmer Equity”. While they did purchase 11.5 million pounds of Certified Fair Trade coffee – a mere 3.7% of their total purchases last year – they purchased 76.8 million pounds of coffee through C.A.R.E, a fair amount at 24.9% of their total purchases. Although it does make us wonder – where is the other 71.4% of their coffee coming from? They purchased 312 million pounds of coffee in 2005, leaving 223.7 million pounds of coffee unaccounted for, ethically. What’s more disturbing, while Fair Trade pays the farmer 1.26 per regular pound (and 1.41 for organic beans), Starbucks pays $1.20 – which sounds okay right? Wrong: “Starbucks is not an importer” according to OrganicConsumers.com, “they buy their coffee through importers…the $1.20 is the average price they pay to the middleman, not the farmer. When you subtract out all the middleman fees, the figure is more likely about .80 cents”. Further studies have shown that Starbuck’s number might not include import/export fees either. So in the end, even with C.A.R.E in effect, the coffee farmer is still getting, well, roasted.

Lomnes remembers when he himself worked for Starbucks in 1998. At an annual staff meeting, he approached a National Representative of Starbucks and asked why all their coffees weren’t Fair Trade or Organic. Her reply was that “it would draw all [their] other coffees into question”. But when he thought about it, “what she was saying was that customers might start saying ‘if this coffee is good for the environment, then why are you selling all these other coffees that aren’t good for the environment?’ and the same for Fair Trade”. “Essentially,” he says, “If they educate people, they will have to change everything”. And for a multinational organization like Starbucks, a change like that would be costly and risky, because “they care about image, and they want an image of a responsible company, but in the end they are still purchasing sweat-shopped coffee”.

If Fair Trade is so simple, such an easy step forward, why isn’t Starbucks taking it? They claim they will press a cup of Fair Trade coffee to anyone who requests it. As well, they claim to brew Fair Trade as often as possible. They also claim that their Fair Trade coffees are always available for purchase. I decided to take to the streets and see how these claims held up.

I heard once that there are enough Starbucks in Vancouver, that in any direction, you are always headed towards one. I started by entering my address in the “Starbucks Locator” section of the Starbucks website (starbucks.com), and it returned 89 locations within 5 miles, and 130 locations within 10 miles of Kitsilano. This puts Vancouver at the top of the charts, according to a website where people are competing for Starbucks Density, running behind London, New York and, of course, Seattle. It’s not surprising, considering there are 12,440 outlets in the world, as of November 2006, and Starbucks is aiming for 40,000, putting even Macdonald’s to shame.

I checked out ten Starbucks locations in the Kitsilano/ Point Grey area. Nine of them were not brewing Fair Trade coffee, nor did they offer to press me a cup – one claim down already. All locations had the one Certified Fair Trade coffee, so that claim held up, but most of them didn’t have them shelved out front, and none of them advertised the Fair Trade option. I received some note-worthy responses: one location, near Kits Beach, offered me an eloquent reply of “we have one fair trade coffee, but the rest are … um … like … paid … like above equity value … like … but not … certified”; the woman at the Dunbar location laughed at the question; and a worker at UBC said “not this week” (so much for the claim of brewing as often as possible). Only one location was brewing Fair Trade, and that was the second location at UBC. All it takes is a few students to figure out that serving Fair Trade would probably up the sales of the Fair Trade coffee, and maybe, raise awareness of the issues. Go figure.

So what are our other options? “Well there’s Utz Kapeh,” says Lomnes, “it was actually was started up by someone who started up Certified Fair Trade, and got disenchanted with the whole model of Fair Trade, realizing how limited it was at making an impact”. He continues: “If you really want to change living conditions in the third world and try to raise standards in the third world, coffee being the 3rd highest traded commodity, it’s a commodity that could really have a huge impact. So Utz Kapeh says we want to take a more holistic approach. We don’t just want coffee that’s bought and sold at a fair trade price, but we also want to have principles of being an organic product, address sustainable issues…so for a farm plantation to be certified as Utz Kapeh, they have to have on-site housing and on-site health clinics and facilities for migratory workers children.”

From here, I called up Michael Oughtred, owner and operator of Oughtred Coffees, “the Canadian representative of Utz Kapeh” (which means “Good Coffee” in Mayan). Oughtred says Utz Kapeh is different from Fair Trade in “…a number of ways. The biggest difference is that fair trade only deals with one issue – dealing with paying above a certain level. They don’t bring in additional dollars for pickers and growers. Certified responsible coffee does adhere to Fair Trade standards, but does so many things more”. Fair Trade being a good and important first step, Utz Kapeh goes farther, considering “environmental, social and the economic reform agency – all aspect of the coffee growers. As well as farm techniques, preservation of rainforest, and of course, social – the rights of an employees, freedom of religion, etc”. When asked if Fair Trade is enough anymore, “Absolutely not,” he replied, “I think the model that Utz Kapeh has developed is the future of the coffee industry”.

So what about Starbucks? “They help and they hurt,” says Oughtred, “They help in the sense that they are a wonderful marketing company. They also enhance the profile of some of these problems, in a mass marketing way.” Starbucks doesn’t try to hide the issues in the world, they have done a lot for exposure of the coffee industry – whether directly, by introducing a Fair Trade coffee, or indirectly, just by getting so many people interested in coffee. “But the hurt is endless,” he continues, “because of their size and dominance they can manipulate the system. They can bully coffee farmers around and buy their product for cheaper”.

If Starbucks made Fair Trade their new campaign, it could rock the western world’s coffee industry. Fair Trade could be the new “Not Tested on Animals”, a mandatory label for all coffee. Will it become the norm, the basic certification for all coffee? It comes down to if the public cares enough to ask for it, to demand it from their local coffee shop – whether it’s Starbucks or Think. If that could happen, we could progress to Utz Kapeh, which would mean buying coffee would actually help people, would help build schools and support organic and environmentally-friendly grow-ops. If we give our caffeinated one night stands a call back, it just might begin a beautiful, Fair Trade, responsible relationship.