Fair Trade Coffee

It isn't exactly "justice in a cup" as some would have us think, but it's a start. A lot of hype has been spun around Fair Trade products, with coffee at the forefront. überculture recognizes how problematic it is that corporations have co-opted Fair Trade for marketing purposes and have encouraged the ultimately disengaged "consumer activism" phenom of the 21st Century consumer-based society. Buying Fair Trade coffee is a good thing to do, but it's a small thing too. Getting involved in Fair Trade groups, cooperatives and related socio-economic justice and rights movements is a much more ambitious level of involvement. But if all you want it is a cup of coffee, here's why it's better to be fair than not: •Fair Trade certified coffee is bought directly from farmers' cooperatives, eliminating exploitation by multinational corporations and middlemen. •Cooperatives must be democratically organized and use collective strength to set up strong communities. Community development takes place in the areas of transportation, education, health care, and environmental protection. •Cooperatives must use environmentally sustainable methods of production. This protects the ecological integrity of the land and contributes to a quality product. •A minimum of $3.90 per kilo is paid to members of cooperatives to help reach the standards set for Fair Trade. The average price for a kilo of non-Fair Trade coffee is 44 cents, currently below the cost of production. •Cooperatives have long-term agreements with their purchasers and can receive fair loans to help them get up and going. Background Since the recent fall of world coffee prices to record-setting lows, 15 million small coffee farmers and their families are struggling to survive. Facing huge debts, loss of their farmland, and even starvation, their outlook is bleak. Likewise, coffee pickers who work large corporate coffee estates have seen their already miserable wages plummet below subsistence levels. While this is taking place in the developing world, corporations in the overdeveloped world are rejoicing. Roasters such as Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee, and specialty retailers like Starbucks and the Second Cup, are seeing their profits skyrocket: as the consumer price of coffee continues to rise, their buying costs continue to plummet. The world coffee market is just one example of how our current trading system perpetuates injustice and poverty, and is working to increase global inequalities. The corporate culture purveyors want us to just sip our lattes and not worry about the Southern Hemisphere sustaining and developing its own cultures. However, there is a glimmer of hope in the coffee biz, namely the fair trade movement. This global movement - based on a commitment to justice and human rights - has begun offering millions of consumers a choice: coffee produced under sweatshop conditions and starvation wages, or a product based on the principles of Fair Trade, a product which offers coffee farmers a guaranteed minimum price per pound, paid directly to organized farmer cooperatives, not to middlemen. Fair Trade has significantly improved the lives of more than 500,000 farmers organized into 300 cooperatives in 20 countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia. Most farmers, however, continue to be exploited by their corporate foes in the North, a situation that we at überculture collective are fighting to change. We also recognize that Fair Trade does not solve the problems of trade inequity, and acknowledge an urgent need for a re-evaluation and extreme reform of the World Trading System. Consumers in North America do have power to force corporations to support more equitable trading systems and partners, but this move must be accompanied by a greater discussion in the public sphere on North American over-consumption. Speaking with dollars is only powerful if it is joined with the speaking of the pen: letters to our trade ministers and other government officials to forgive third world debt and end state support of poor working conditions and poor pay must accompany our purchase of goods. Better yet, we could just not purchase the goods. Perhaps the idea that developing countries' economies should produce for themselves first, before manufacturing mobile phones and beans for Lattes is a better vision of a global economy. Supporting Fair Trade initiatives, coupled with active political involvement in change of policy toward change, is however, a more realistic start. Rob Maguire and ezra winton are the co-founders of überculture.