By Diana Gee-Silverman
Who’s growing your coffee? Easing the poverty and misery of farmers continents away could be as simple as changing your brand allegiance — purchasing fair-trade-certified coffee makes a big difference in the lives of coffee producers and communities worldwide, activists say.
“Buying is voting,” Michel Menezes says.
Menezes, a fourth-year international development student at the University of Ottawa, recently organized a ‘fair-trade fair’ featuring small businesses and non-governmental organizations, all active in the fair trade movement and anxious to get the word out.
Fair trade offers better trading conditions for producers and workers in developing countries by bypassing the middle-men. Menezes says the main reason to buy fair trade is to positively impact the lives of food producers, namely coffee growers.
“We’re trying to find solutions for landowners and people who cultivate coffee,” he says. “They don’t make money. Fair trade money goes back into the community.”
Menezes isn’t alone. Oxfam, a leading U.K.-based NGO, is spearheading an international Make Trade Fair campaign, featuring celebrities such as Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. The group has gathered six million signatures worldwide on a petition they intend to present at the next World Trade Organization meeting in December in Hong Kong.
Oxfam notes the price paid to coffee farmers has dropped 50 per cent in the last three years, to a 30-year low.
They cite two major reasons for the change — a massive oversupply of coffee beans in the market and an increase in the trade of low-quality beans.
Twenty-five million coffee producers and another 100 million of the world’s poorest who are indirectly dependent on the coffee business face economic ruin.
Oxfam says families pull children out of school and have difficulty paying for necessities such as food and medicine.
Oxfam Canada calculates Canadians drink 15 billion cups of coffee per year. That translates to $600 million spent on home consumption and another $12.2 billion annually at local coffee shops.
But it’s not just about coffee. Fair trade food products include coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa, chocolate, and rice.
Transfair Canada is the only non-profit independent certification body in Canada for fair trade products. Since 1997, the group has licensed 130 companies from across Canada to use the “fair trade certified” logo.
Hundreds of products already qualify, and the range is always increasing, now including sports balls (the first non-food fair trade product to be certified in Canada), says Chantale Havard, Transfair’s education specialist.
“There’s still many people who haven’t heard about fair trade, even though awareness is increasing,” Havard says.
A Transfair survey showed that among adult coffee drinkers, 17 per cent had heard of the product, but only eight per cent actually bought it.
The certification process takes less than a month and includes regular monitoring. Companies with certified products have to report every three months, declaring what they’ve bought, from whom, at what price and how much they’ve sold.
Havard says ensuring fair trade is really fair requires monitoring at all stages of the production cycle, from growers’ cooperatives to the Canadian distributor (Transfair’s part).
“The monitoring system is the guarantee behind the label,” she says.
Transfair Canada also organizes producer tours where members of growers’ cooperatives from the global south come here to speak to the Canadian public, describing how fair trade is affecting their lives and communities. The latest visitor was a tea picker from Sri Lanka.
“I think it’s really important for people to realize they really can make a difference by what they buy,” Havard says.
Havard says many consumers are willing to buy fair trade products but can’t find them at their local supermarket or corner store.
To encourage more stores to stock fair trade products, Transfair prints postcards for customers to leave with store managers.
Havard and other activists note that the price of fair trade products is often misunderstood. They say to make a fair assessment, fair trade products should be compared with other ‘gourmet’ food items because all fair trade certified products are top quality.
Despite the NGO activity, fair trade is still a business. Transfair’s statistics indicate that in 2003, fair trade coffee sales in Canada totalled $19 million.
One year ago, after a career at Nortel, Guy Talevi started the Human Beans Coffee Company, a machine coffee service for local offices and cafeterias. The business, he says, will soon be turning a profit.
Talevi says his fair trade service is unique in Ottawa, thanks to a special machine that can produce coffee from beans instead of the usual pre-ground — no more stale coffee.
He also sells chocolate, sugar and fair trade tea in bags. To build awareness — being a fair trade “missionary,” as he puts it — Talevi maintains a website and has a pocket for pamphlets on the sides of his machines.
“Fair trade is the number one thing that gets people initially interested,” Talevi says. But “everyone loves the coffee.”
And then there’s the price. Talevi’s coffee is just 50 cents for a regular cup, $1.25 for specialty (such as cappuccino).
The big coffee companies are also starting to come around. In 1984, Bridgehead was the first company to offer fair trade coffee in Canada, selling fair-trade exclusively at its name-brand coffee shops.
Since then, Starbucks has started selling one fair trade coffee (sold in bags and brewed as the daily special on the 20th of every month, or on request). Timothy’s World Coffee has three fair trade certified products. Fair-trade coffee at these chains is priced equally to other bean types.
At Carleton University, the Ontario Public Interest Research Group’s Fair Trade working group is lobbying to have campus coffee shops sell fair trade products.
They’ve targeted student-run shops as a first step. Rooster’s, already selling the coffee, is being asked to make it their default product.
Fair trade coffee sales there have already picked up since it was introduced, says Allan Dykstra, an OPIRG member.
“It’s becoming more trendy, especially in the university,” Dykstra says.
Dykstra and his colleagues are also working on an Ottawa-wide alternative consumption guide that will includecontacts and tips on buying.
“In Ottawa people still get confused with free trade,” Dykstra says.
Fair trade groups are popping up all over the city. Carleton’s started in September, and the University of Ottawa started a similar group in March.
The newly revived Ottawa Fair Trade Network, a collective of students, businesses, and other concerned individuals, also hopes to increase awareness by taking part in the yearly national fair trade weeks from May 1 to 15.