Tuesday, April 13, 2004


tempest in a cappuccino cup, part ii

"on friday, larry's beans of north carolina split from transfair, the company that holds the u.s. trademark for the term, 'fair trade certified.' at least three other smaller roasters -- just coffee, dean's beans, and cafe campesino -- have followed suit."

long-time readers may recall that i've mentioned the beginning of this discord before.

my response to this current news remains the same: those of us with a joint interest in specialty coffee are never going to gain ground against the so-called "big four" multi-national coffee roasters, the people responsible for the stuff in the supermarket cans, if we fight among ourselves.

the now-four-year-old coffee crisis just doesn't give us time for internecine warfare. why are otherwise well-meaning people playing right into the hands of kraft, nestle, sara lee, and p&g?

paul rice of transfair understands that to effect substantial change means the big four have to participate in fair trade in a meaningful way. that should be part of the goal: to improve the lives of farmers by ensuring they can sell all their coffee at a living wage.

no farmer can make a living off of the higher prices for the small part of any crop that qualifies as specialty-grade or that will be bought by the fair-trade market.

the false purism of dean's beans and equal exchange only undermines their supposed goal, and shows not only pointless egotism, but also -- with all due respect -- seems to show a real lack of understanding as to how the coffee business works for farmers.

look: a coffee farmer who truly cherishes his crop, if the weather etc. participates, can grow good coffee and sell maybe 30% as fair-trade at the US$1.26 a pound price. the remainder will sell for some low, commercial price, maybe US$0.58-0.68 a pound.

specialty-grade quality may fetch more. . . .but again, perhaps only 10-20% of the coffee will qualify for specialty.

since it still costs at least US$0.90-0.95 to grow a pound of coffee, even a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that farmers aren't going to be able to keep themselves out of bankruptcy, pay their workers, invest in quality improvements, and live themselves off the fair-trade or specialty-grade price for that small portion of the crop.

and if the farmers go bankrupt, they stop growing any coffee. that means we coffee-lovers will lose prized specialty origins.

thus, we need the big four onboard so that they can pay a good price for the bulk of a farmer's coffee.

they need to begin to sell commercial-quality coffee that they've purchased at a fair-trade or baseline sustainable price. . . and that's what paul rice and long-time bccy pal kimberly easson are trying to get them to do!

farmers can use the extra funds to improve the overall crop quality. that means the commercial coffee in the cans could taste better. and consumers would barely feel the price increase; certainly in return they would be getting higher-quality java!

posted by fortune | 10:38 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments