Friday, April 12, 2002


you know, all this boring yak-yak-yak about fair trade coffee and sustainable coffee agriculture might be working. . .

the government of costa rica announced that it is beginning a certification program for sustainable coffee. this is when the whole concept will begin to take off -- instead of many small independent certifiers, large governmental agencies work to move a country's entire output in a certain direction. if the costa rican government can offer coffee growers some financial incentives or assistance to actually move themselves into this program and gain the certification, that's perfect.

i don't mean to get off on a rant, but about that oxfam initiative i mentioned yesterday -- those critics of mine who write complaining that i'm anti-global will be heartened by this link to an article in the international herald tribune, where one p. bowring argues that oxfam gets it wrong. (you see, i'm balanced, i'm open to all angles.) and bowring does note some good points.

he argues that the low prices of coffee have nothing to do with the actions of large transnational firms, but are solely due to overproduction based on improvements in yield from the coffee trees: it [oxfam] ignores the role that increased plant productivity -- surely a good thing -- has had.

here's where i depart from bowring. because what if that increased plant productivity may come at too great a price -- to the environment, to the songbirds, to the stability of developing countries, to the world supply of illegal drugs? (those near-bankrupt farmers, pulling up their coffee trees -- c'mon, we know what they are going to plant instead!) and some go so far as to say to the quality of the coffee grown itself. bowring also overlooks the actions of development institutions in encouraging certain countries to overproduce coffee to help them generate foreign capital to pay off their large debts.

when coffee costs, say, just a nickel a pound but tastes like boiled tarpaper, who has benefited? not the producer, not the producer's country, and certainly not the consumer. only the middleman -- the transnational. the mega-firms have no concern for inherent product quality, but only for their short-term stock prices, which can be boosted when analysts glowingly report how much they are cutting their costs. the large companies have followed this strategy for some time -- keep consumer prices constant, introduce lesser and lesser (cheaper and cheaper) coffees into their products.

the result is that coffee consumption in the western world has been declining for the last couple of decades. despite the growth of starbucks et. al., fewer and fewer people drink coffee. because most people are used to simply cranking open a can of nationally-advertised supermarket brand x. and when that doesn't taste good, they don't have the knowledge to say "brand x isn't what it used to be." instead they say, "i guess i don't really like coffee anymore."

the specialty coffee industry -- and the government of costa rica -- needs to do more to advertise its wares, to educate the public. not only on the social issues of coffee, but also on the taste and quality issues. this education has to go beyond simple brand awareness, beyond just teaching people to remember colombian coffee with a cute picture of juan valdez and his happy donkey.

posted by fortune | 6:52 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments