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Actions & Transactions for the Savvy Coffee Consumer

Friday, April 18, 2003
Do the Right Thing!

As North Americans we can't avoid the consumer focus of our economy nor our status as benefactors of this system. Less obvious but quite as important, is our power as individual consumers. What we purchase can, with a little effort and attention, begin to affect the lives of workers around the world who supply us with our needs and wants. The point is already proven in the case of coffee, thanks to the people who have succeeded in making "Fair Trade Certified" coffee a major force for good among the world's coffee growers and processors.

Given our PML hearts, it is coffee growers and workers in Nicaragua whom we most care about. For several years, the coffee industry in Nicaragua has been in deep distress and even near being wiped out. This has occurred in a country where, for decades, coffee has been a major source of jobs and export income.

Even so, farm workers, struggling cooperatives and the stressed-out coffee estate families of Nicaragua are still growing high quality coffee in largely environmentally friendly conditions. But, given intense competition in the global coffee market and the vagaries of governmental policies in Nicaragua, their market share is not assured. Prices are still alarmingly low. The government support mechanisms, only recently applied, are neither comprehensive nor assured to remain in force.

We all can help. How? Buy Fair Trade Certified Coffee. We have a where-to-buy list and welcome your feedback. E-mail us at advocacypml@hotmail.com if you find Fair Trade Coffee someplace we do not list. Multiply your effectiveness by considering additional actions listed below.

Guidelines for Savvy Coffee Consumption

Avoid purchase of standard coffees

These are the sort found in cans on grocery store shelves, sold by the cup in most cafes and virtually all gas stations, and the kind we drink reluctantly from office coffee pots. Standard coffee is the cheapest, worst tasting, and, currently, the coffee most in demand. Standard coffee is often grown without shade, at great cost to the environment, and usually the growers and harvest workers of this coffee are, in the end, cheated. Buying standard coffee saves us coins but robs the nearly empty pockets of Nicaraguans and helps line the silk pockets and designer bags of corporate stockholders.

These are the coffee giants who make huge profits buying cheap and selling in high volume. Their sales account for 68% of the coffee consumed around the world. Kraft (Maxwell House, Sanka, Nabob); Nestle (Nescafe, Hills Brothers, Taster's Choice); Sara Lee (Douwe Egberts, Maison du Café); Proctor & Gamble (Folgers and Millstone).

Buy Fair Trade Certified coffee

All of the Twin Cities food co-ops, the Kowalski's stores, and Bibolet Shops carry Fair Trade coffee wholesaled and roasted by Peace Coffee of Minneapolis. Some, but not many, Starbucks shops buy and sell Fair Trade Certified coffee, but you must make a point to ask for it and keep asking. It is not difficult for a Starbucks outlet to keep Fair Trade coffee on hand but most of the shops do not do so, and will not do so if we don't keep asking.

When you buy Dunn Bros. coffee, make a point to ask if it is Fair Trade Certified

You can expect to occasionally find pure, specifically Nicaraguan grown coffees among those in the rotation of featured coffees in Dunn Bros. shops. The Dunn Bros. Company sells only the most premium, never blended coffee brew and beans, which they roast themselves. They select and purchase green beans only from small estates, some of them in Nicaragua. However, none of their Nicaraguan coffees are yet from cooperatives in Nicaragua and thus cannot be Fair Trade Certified.

In restaurants, ask your waiter, "Who roasts your coffee?"

Many Twin Cities "up-scale" restaurants do make a point of purchasing premium coffee from roasters like Bull Run Roasting Company and Black and White Roasters, as well as Peace Coffee. Your interest in what coffee you drink encourages these restaurants and these roasting companies to continue their justice-centered purchasing policies. Bull Run Roasting Company is not yet Fair Trade Certified. In a conversation with their buyer, we learned they are seriously considering the issue. They have a personal relationship with their main source of beans in Costa Rica where they do monitor the conditions on the plantation for the workers and the land.

Expect your grocers to know what level quality of coffee beans they sell and who are their roasters

All large grocers now provide organic fruits and vegetables. They will make an effort to get fairly traded premium, even organic, coffees on the shelves if we consistently ask for it. At Lund's and Byerly's, ask about the coffee. Recently at Byerly's, we had the opportunity to inform the manager about Fair Trade Coffee, of which he had not heard. Ask at the customer service desk. If the manager is not there, leave her/him a message. Tell them you want origin labels on the coffee bags and that you only want to purchase Fair Trade Certified coffee. Ask, too, at Cub Foods and Rainbow Foods or wherever you shop for groceries. Rainbow markets a bean labeled "Nicaraguan Mountain Morning Mist." These are not Fair Trade Certified and we are waiting for a response from Proctor and Gamble to learn where in Nicaragua these beans come from.

Multiply PML's influence

Within the Oxfam America web site, click on "What's that in your coffee?" and find an advocacy email device where you can send a message to the coffee giants telling them you'd like them to pay a fair price to their suppliers.

Remember: What you demand, you will get.

More information about coffee

 
Authored by Carol Bidon