Fair-trade movement brews new hope for coffee growers
Aozotorp
Fair-trade movement brews new hope for coffee growers
hed Millions of producers in Third World mired in poverty
By Bruce Finley
Denver Post International Affairs Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2001 - UNILDE, Nicaragua - Standing in a cloud forest on
the side of a volcano, Santiago Rivera closes his calloused fingers over green
coffee fruits blushing ripe - future flavor for U.S. consumers.
Santiago Rivera's coffee beans were just starting to redden in mid-September.
Harvesting runs from December to February. Rivera, Nicaraguan coffee grower and
Starbucks icon for free-trade coffee, belongs to a co-op and benefits from
higher, free-trade prices at a time when coffee prices are down because of a
glut on the world market.
He descends a twisting trail, past banana trees and the donkey he fondly calls
"the squirrel," to his adobe house with an earthen kitchen floor and no
plumbing.
He gets by thanks to the "fair trade" deal that gives him 91 cents a pound -
double what most growers here get. In fact, Rivera is the model campesino
pictured on brochures touting Starbucks Coffee's participation in fair trade,
in which companies and consumers team up to get more money to peasants.
But millions of other coffee producers, across Central America and much of the
Third World, are mired in some of the planet's worst poverty. A few hours from
Rivera, women give birth in fly-infested black-plastic shanties without medical
help, and barefoot children grow up on one meal a day.
The survival or suffering of people who produce your coffee is one of many
aspects of today's world that U.S. consumers can control. Today, poverty and
despair are spreading, creating breeding grounds for trouble in a world where
the threshold for violence rose Sept. 11.
Leading analysts, including former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, who recently led
a sweeping appraisal of U.S. national security, say we must confront global
poverty - especially to combat terrorism.
"There must be much more concerted international effort to do what the Army
calls drying up the swamp. The swamp is composed of four things - money,
weapons, shelter and the fourth thing - recruits," Hart said. "The only way you
do the fourth is by ending the despair and offering hope through concerted
economic-development programs."
The emerging fair-trade movement tries to accomplish this within the market
system instead of relying on aid handouts or moving farmers into low-wage
factories. The way it works is U.S. consumers pay 5 to 10 percent more for
products with fair-trade labels. Those additional cents, and savings from
companies buying the products more directly from producers and co-ops abroad,
can give producers in the field a minimum price. Inspectors verify whether the
money gets through.
This movement brought "fair trade" coffee to Starbucks a year ago along with
other coffee shops - Kaladi Brothers in Denver, Coffee Jones in Boulder and
Bongo Billy's Coffees in Buena Vista, among them. Now, movement leaders target
giant corporations that drive world prices - owners of Maxwell House, Folgers
and the like. More than 80 percent of the coffee Americans drink is this
relatively inexpensive canned coffee.
Fair-trade leaders also plan to broaden their strategy to encompass producers
of other commodities - bananas, sugar, chocolate, clothing.
But consumer-led poverty reduction isn't possible unless corporations agree to
offer fair-trade products. Many refuse. As it stands now, few coffee growers
benefit because less than 1 percent, or 2.19 million of the 219 million cups of
coffee Americans drink daily, is certified as fair trade.
Meanwhile, a global coffee crisis caused by overproduction drives millions ever
deeper into poverty.
"We eat only beans," said Paula Mercado, 40, in a dark hillside shack near
Rivera. "We're killing ourselves working, and we can't get a decent price."
Highly traded commodity
Four in five U.S. adults drink coffee, helping to make coffee the world's
second most-traded commodity after oil with $55 billion in annual sales. And
industry experts say the very best coffee generally comes from small-scale
farmers like Santiago Rivera laboring in tropical highlands from Ethiopia to
Indonesia.
This fine coffee grows on shaded plots, under diverse canopies considered
ecologically healthy, where complex flavors develop. Here in the mountains of
northern Nicaragua, brilliant blue butterflies bounce around Rivera's carefully
tended coffee plants.
His classic method and wise, weathered face made him a modern-day Juan Valdez
for Starbucks, which distributes its fair-trade brochures at 3,000 shops around
North America. Soon Starbucks will offer fair-trade coffee worldwide, chief
executive Orin Smith said. "We're going to be a force within our industry . . .
working very hard to make this program work."
It isn't charity, he said. To keep selling top-quality coffee, "we need these
people to survive."
For his role, Rivera gained a public-relations tour of America last year. He
saw "streets made of nothing but buildings - beautiful."
Now back home he struggles, perched on a wood chair teetering on an uneven
floor, weighing his finances. His wife, Ermelinda, brings him a cup of his own
coffee - one of the few luxuries in his life. His earnings as a coffee grower
aren't enough even to afford Nescafe instant from the village store, let alone
an $11.45 bag of his beans in America.
He collects 91 cents a pound because he's part of a cooperative - Prodecoop
based in Esteli - that sells 60 percent of its coffee at fair-trade prices -
$1.26 a pound for fair-trade beans and $1.41 for beans also certified as
organic. Directors said farmers usually receive about $1 a pound depending on
deductions for transport, processing and community projects.
Rivera's 91 cents means his six children can attend school and, at this time of
drought, eat store-bought rice and corn. He still relied on aid handouts after
Hurricane Mitch to repair his roof and an outhouse.
Yet his struggles are minimal compared with those of neighbors around him who
must sell their beans for 45 cents a pound. They beg regularly to let them join
his co-op. Rivera must say no until demand grows - which torments him.
"You should be able to work and have a better life," he said.
Sales are still low, but the volume of fair-trade coffee imported by the United
States has more than doubled since 1999, said Paul Rice, director of the
TransFair USA organization that coordinates monitoring and labeling.
"U.S. consumers are a sleeping giant," Rice said. "As it awakens, corporate
America has to sit up and listen."
But fair traders face an uphill battle.
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Also:
http://www.thehumanbean.com/hbmain.html
I have traveled in Central America and Mexico for over 25 years. In June of
1994 I was in Chiapas, Mexico, six months after the uprising by the Zapatista
Army of National Liberation. There I became aware of the threat to indigenous
peoples and peasants all over the world posed by the NAFTA and GATT "free
trade" agreements. These are being imposed upon the people, by the force of
arms, by the United States, the large multi-national corporations and the
corresponding "governments" of these countries.
I had to ask myself, "What kind of free trade agreements are these that have to
be forced upon indigenous peoples by dirty wars and low-intensity-conflicts?"
The question answered itself. They are not free trade agreements at all but
merely the latest in a long string of "manifest destiny" policies that the US
has used to end indigenous people's cultures and to move those peoples off
their lands and to convert those peoples into mere "urban consumers" and, that
failing, to eliminate them. With the cold war over the US government has turned
it's eyes on the neo-colonization of the South.
Being an artist and an independent video producer I made some documentaries to
show others what I had seen and so that others could hear the words of the
Mayan peoples of Chiapas, Mexico who are living under a state of siege by
60,000 Mexican federal army troops who are there to assure "foreign investor
confidence".
While in Chiapas I was told by indigenous leaders that one of the important
factors in the long term struggle for indigenous self-determination was the
development of direct markets for the products from the indigenous communal
villages. I began to think about the idea of a business that would incorporate
a type of "free trade" that included the indigenous peoples values or, more
specifically, would put human values ahead of profit values. I knew that was a
pretty big ideal and it probably wouldn't be easy to accomplish but, regardless
of the odds, I decided to start the Human Bean Company.
In Chiapas the shopkeepers normally pay what amounts to slave wages to the
indigenous people for their weavings. These shopkeepers then compete with each
other to give "bargains" to the relatively rich foreign tourists who come to
Chiapas. I thought about this and realized that this amounts to stealing from
the poor (the indigenous) to give bargains to the rich (the tourists).
Importers in the United States normally pay as little as possible to the
producers in Mexico and then double that amount (called keystoning) to sell it
wholesale in the US. That wholesale price is then doubled, or keystoned, again
or even quadrupled to sell that product to the retail buyer. In both of these
systems the indigenous producer does the most work and makes the least
"profit". The traditional culture of indigenous communities is often eroded
when the US importer requests more "commercial" designs.
What the Human Bean Company proposes, and what we have already initiated, is to
pay the indigenous producers approximately double what they are normally paid
for their weavings and the fair market price, or higher, for their coffee.
Since we are establishing direct markets for the products we feel that we can
still offer fair prices to the end buyer. We are working in partnership with
the producer and when there are profits they will be used to help develop
community projects in the indigenous communities at the direction of the people
in those communities.
And by saying that we will put "human values before profit values" we mean that
in addition to and above the commercial aspects of this company we will always
include social, cultural, political, educational, environmental, democratic,
justice and human rights elements in the conduct of this business. And we are
attempting to develop markets for the authentic, traditional weavings of the
communities. We hope that you agree with this philosophy and will try some of
the following products. We welcome your comments, suggestions and
communications.
Kerry Appel, director, the Human Bean Company
We have Chiapas coffee, audio tapes, posters and photographs, hand-crafted
textiles, dolls, and many other items.