FAIR TRADE ORGANIC COFFEE

Published March 27, 2006

 Teens try to change the world, one purchase at a time
Youths 'vote' for fair trade, conservation, and natural foods with their dollars - but convenience is also a consideration

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – When classes adjourn here at the Fayerweather Street School, eighth-graders ignore the mall down the street and go straight to the place they consider much cooler: the local natural-foods grocer.
There they gather in groups of 10 or more sometimes, smitten by a marketing atmosphere that links attractiveness to eating well. And when time comes to buy something even as small as a chocolate treat, they feel good knowing a farmer somewhere probably received a good price.

"Food is something you need to stay alive," says eighth-grader Emma Lewis. "Paying farmers well is really important because if we didn't have any [unprocessed] food, we'd all be living on Twinkies."

Eating morally, as some describe it, is becoming a priority for teenagers as well as adults in their early 20s. What began a decade ago as a concern on college campuses to shun clothing made in overseas sweatshops has given birth to a parallel phenomenon in the food and beverage industries. Here, youthful shoppers are leveraging their dollars in a bid to reduce pesticide usage, limit deforestation, and make sure farmers aren't left with a pittance on payday.

Once again, college campuses are setting the pace. Students at 30 colleges have helped persuade administrators to make sure all cafeteria coffee comes with a "Fair Trade" label, which means bean pickers in Latin America and Africa were paid higher than the going rates. Their peers on another 300 campuses are pushing to follow suit, according to Students United for Fair Trade in Washington, D.C.

Coffee is just the beginning. Bon Appétit, an institutional food-service provider based in Palo Alto, Calif., relies on organic and locally grown produce. In each year since 2001, more than 25 colleges have asked the company to bid on their food-service contracts. Though Bon Appétit intentionally limits its growth, its collegiate client list has grown from 58 to 71 in that period.

"It's really just been in the last five years that we've seen students become concerned with where their food was coming from," says Maisie Ganzler, Bon Appétit's director of strategic initiatives. "Prior to that, students were excited to be getting sugared cereal."

To reach a younger set that often doesn't drink coffee, Fair Trade importer Equal Exchange rolled out a line of cocoa in 2003 and chocolate bars in 2004. Profits in both sectors have justified the project, says Equal Exchange co-president Rob Everts. What's more, dozens of schools have contacted the firm to use its products in fundraisers and as classroom teaching tools.

"Kids often are the ones who agitate in the family" for recycling and other eco-friendly practices, Mr. Everts says. "So it's a ripe audience."

Concerns of today's youthful food shoppers seem to reflect in some ways the idealism that inspired prior generations to join boycotts in solidarity with farm workers. But today's efforts are distinct in that youthful consumers say they don't want to make sacrifices. They want high-quality, competitively priced goods that don't require exploitation of workers or the environment. They'll gladly reward companies that deliver.

One activist who shares this sentiment and hears it repeatedly from her peers is Summer Rayne Oakes, a recent college graduate and fashion model who promotes stylish Fair Trade clothing.

"I'm not going to buy something that can't stand on its own or looks bad just because it's socially responsible," Ms. Oakes says. "My generation has come to terms with the fact that we're all consumers, and we all buy something.... So if I do have to buy [food], what are the consequences? Who am I affecting on the planet? What am I affecting on the planet?"

Wanting to ameliorate the world's big problems can be frustrating, especially for those who feel ineffective because they're young. Marketers are figuring out that teenagers resent this feeling of powerlessness and are pushing products that make young buyers feel as though they're making a difference, says Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited, a market-research firm in Northbrook, Ill. His example: Ethos Water from Starbucks, which contributes five cents from every bottle sold to water-purification centers in developing countries.

"This is a very easy way for young people to contribute.... All they have to do is buy a bottled water," Mr. Wood says. "Buying products or supporting companies that give them ways to support global issues is one way for them to get involved, and they really appreciate that."

Convenience is also driving consumer activism. Joe Curnow, national coordinator of United Students for Fair Trade, says she first got involved about five years ago as a high schooler when she spent time hanging out in cafes. Buying coffee with an eco-friendly label "was a very easy way for me to express what I believed in," she says.

For young teens, consumption is their first foray into activism. At the Fayerweather Street School, Emma Lewis teamed up with classmates Kayla Kleinman and Therese LaRue to sell Fair Trade chocolate, cocoa, and other products at a school fundraiser in November. When the tally reached $8,000, they realized they were striking a chord.

"It's maybe not making as much of a difference as it would if we were adults," Kayla says. "But it is doing something."

Some adults hasten to point out the limitations of ethical consumption as a tool for doing good deeds and personal growth. Gary Lindsay, director of Children's Ministries at Grace Baptist Church in Hudson, Mass., encourages Fair Trade purchases, but he also organizes children to collect toys for foster children and save coins for a playground-construction project in Tanzania. He says it helps them learn to enjoy helping others even when they're not getting anything tangible in return.

"When we're benefiting, how much are we really giving? Is it really sacrifice?" Mr. Lindsay asks. Of Fair Trade products, he says: "Those things are great when we're given opportunities like that once in a while. But I think for us to expect that we should get something out of everything we do is a very selfish attitude to have."

Others say that the Millennial generation was destined to bring their concerns to bear on food products as a result of the way they grew up. And justice in the fields isn't always the foremost concern.

Through child safety seats and other protective products, "this generation has been made to feel so special and so important that they are very concerned with themselves and what goes into their bodies," Bon Appétit's Ms. Ganzler says. "They believe, 'I'm unique, and I deserve to have food that is good for me.' ... I'd venture to guess [concerns about farm workers are] lower on the priority list than what actually impacts themselves."

Although Equal Exchange prices its products competitively with other premium brands, the ethical consumption trend is most visible among the financially comfortable. Bon Appétit doesn't serve public college campuses, she says, because they don't provide enough latitude for the firm's teaching mission. Even on private campuses, many students don't seem motivated to advance a cause.

"The number of students who care about these issues is certainly growing, but it does remain a vocal minority," Ganzler says. "It is not the majority of students that are engaged in related issues.... Most students are going about their business worrying about finals."

Apathy and finances aside, image still matters in junior high and beyond. And in some circles, food is a big part of it.

"If I were to come into school with a Coke, I wouldn't feel as cool as if I came in with a mango-tango smoothie," Emma says. "Looking healthy and being healthy makes you, like, feel good and feel like you look good."

Published March 8, 2006

 SWEET REVENGE: FAIR TRADE CHOCOLATE
Alan Pell Crawford

The truth about how cocoa beans are grown, harvested and sold can make a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates a guilty pleasure—regardless of calories:

*90 percent of the world’s cocoa—the main ingredient in our favorite indulgence—comes from farms of 12 acres or less, mostly in poor Third World countries in West Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America;

*200,000 children in West Africa alone are sold into slavery to work on cocoa farms, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund;

*Family farms scrape by on about $30–$110 per family member per year—the kids, working alongside their parents, rarely attend school;

*Tens of thousands of child laborers on West African cocoa farms work in dangerous conditions, clearing fields with machetes and applying pesticides.

No one has been looking out for these children or their families—until the past few years.
But today, thanks to a loose coalition of international, largely nongovern-mental organizations, the lives of many cocoa farmers are beginning to improve. The tasty twist is that these improvements are being financed through the sale of “fair trade” chocolate—and not just any chocolate. The products whose sales are easing the burden of these farmers contain a higher percentage of cocoa than that of better-known rivals, giving them a seductively rich
flavor.

That’s why you pay a little more for fair trade chocolate—and one reason the higher price is worth it. The second reason is that participating farmers keep a greater share of the profits, some of which goes to improve labor conditions and to build schools and install sanitation systems. The third reason is the most important: The chocolate is made from cocoa beans that come from farms where children are not enslaved.

A GROWING MOVEMENT
Behind these efforts are the groups—humanitarian organizations, farmers’ co-ops and chocolate producers—that make up the growing fair trade movement. Although the movement has existed for more than 40 years (coffee from the Netherlands was the first fair trade food product), fair trade chocolate products didn’t exist until 2000, when Equal Exchange, an employee-owned, for-profit company in West Bridgewater, MA, began to sell hot cocoa mix under its Equal Exchange label. The product was a success, and the company began to expand. In late 2004, it introduced three new chocolate bars, including Fair Trade Very Dark, which contains 71 percent cocoa—meaning it has a far richer flavor than most commercially available competitors.

“The basic idea of fair trade,” says Rodney North of Equal Exchange, “is for companies to buy only from farming co-ops so that small farmers, banding together, can command a higher price for their product. Unless they organize, they have no bargaining power and must accept whatever offer they get.”

Co-op farmers can also decide how to divide up the profits through democratic means. “They might fund schools and clinics, or hire organic specialists to teach them more about sustainable agriculture,” North says.

In 2003, in the Ghanian village of Akomaden, for example, the 35,000 farmers of the Kuapa Kokoo collective opened the Nana Frimpong School, named for the co-op’s founder.

As awareness of the plight of cocoa farmers and the quality of fair trade chocolate has increased, demand has mounted. “Now that there’s a proven demand for fair trade products,” North says, “the bigger companies, such as Starbucks and Proctor & Gamble, feel obligated to make at least a token effort, which we regard as a huge success. We want Mars, Hershey and everybody else to adopt this model.”

LOOK FOR THE LABEL
All the players are in place, which should make it easier for the rest of the chocolate industry to get on board. And chocolate consumers can now see by a label that the cocoa bean source was a farm co-op that has been inspected to determine that farmers have the freedom to form unions, that there’s no slave labor, and that certain health and safety precautions are taken.

Use of fair trade labels is a relatively recent development. They didn’t exist until 1989, when coffee became the first product to carry a fair trade logo. Within 10 years, 17 different labeling organizations, each with its own logo, had sprung up. In 1997, they got together to form Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), a German-based umbrella group that works with 45 countries. (FLO’s American affiliate is called Transfair USA.) Besides coffee and chocolate, FLO also certifies tea, rice, mangoes, sugar, honey and fruit juices. Cut flowers, fresh fruit, wine, nuts and oils are under consideration.

The use of different labels can be confusing, though it will become less so soon, since the different organizations have settled on one European label and one US label.

GROWING CONCENSUS
Today, even the biggest chocolate-producing companies in the world at last acknowledge that the farmers need help. “No one denies these problems,” says Bill Guyton, president of the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), formed in 2000.

It includes among its members such heavyweights as Nestlé, Hershey Foods and Mars as well as Ghirardelli, Godiva and Starbucks. Although WCF is not part of the fair trade movement, it, too, works to improve conditions, with an emphasis on methods that will increase member company’s profits. “We’re working with 40,000 farmers in Southeast Asia to teach them
sustainable agriculture and more sophisticated marketing methods,” Guyton says.

Even free-market economists who believe that prices should be established solely on the basis of supply-and-demand find little to criticize in fair trade’s efforts. “My only objection is the implication that anybody who isn’t part of the fair trade movement is part of a dirty, despicable business,” says Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. “If you
demonize the industry, you reduce demand, hurting the very farmers you want to help.”

That dire outcome is unlikely for two reasons. “First, fair trade chocolate will probably always be
a niche market, and, second, there are companies that are not part of this movement that are still socially responsible,” says Michael Sheridan of Catholic Relief Services, who compares the market outlook to that of gourmet coffee. “The potential is great because of the product’s quality.

When people buy candy bars to raise money for a high school band, they’re used to paying extra for a huge bar of chocolate that really isn’t very good. They gladly sacrifice quality to support a cause that they believe in. But with fair trade chocolate, you can support a cause and get
high-quality chocolate.”

As North says, “In marketing, the product can carry the message, but the message can’t carry the product. In this case, we have a product of such superior quality that it can create serious demand.”

CHALLENGES AHEAD
The fair trade movement faces two challenges now. First, it needs to persuade more consumers to try the products, and the products can be hard to find. Second, more and more farmers must be convinced of the advantages of sustainable agriculture and of the wisdom of
producing higher quality beans that command a higher price. “Farmers have already gotten much more sophisticated about their role in the marketplace,” says Pauline Tiffen, acting director of the Fair Trade Federation, an industry trade group.

Tiffen is a co-founder of the Day Chocolate Company, which produces Divine Bars. “We arranged for the Kuapa Kokoo farmers to receive a share of the profits from all sales, and we make the fact that the beans come from Ghana a brand attribute, so people will want to buy it the way they want wine or tea from a particular region. This was an outlandish notion when we introduced it into the chocolate world, but it’s not so outlandish anymore.”

As cocoa farmers become savvier and consumers realize how good the chocolate is, will fair trade solve the problems of the cocoa-farming world? Unfortunately, no. Will it help? Yes. Will it make people more aware of the problems, turning up the pressure on the chocolate industry to do more for the farmers? You have to hope so.

Finally, does fair trade offer an appetizing alternative to that gaudy, heart-shaped box of
dime-store candies made with beans raised in the cheapest possible way at the lowest possible price? An alternative that tastes rich and goes down easy?

Oh, yeah.

Published March 1, 2006  from Phil Lembert's Coffee Chat News 

TREE TO CUP: Fair Trade

One of the benefits of being the country’s top coffee retailers (over one billion cups sold yearly) is the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those who grow and harvest our fine coffees. That’s why Dunkin’ Donuts champions Fair Trade Certified™ coffees.

What is “Fair Trade”? It’s your guarantee that coffee farm workers receive fair treatment, that coffee farmers earn fair prices for their harvest, and both retailer and farmer pledge a commitment to excellence from the bean to the cup.

Fair Trade polices help the coffee farmers in other ways, too. The smaller farmer can, through cooperative ventures, improve their access to international markets, increase their business capacity, and have the funds to invest in growing even better-quality beans. Best of all, many farmers no longer live in fear of losing their lands to conglomerates or super-farmers because they can sustain the land, preserve their farms, and support their families in ways they never before thought possible.

The life of the coffee farmer will never be easy; beans are still a hand-picked harvest, but with an increase in income they can afford life-changing services like better living conditions, education for the children and health care for themselves and their families.

Dunkin’ Donuts, the first national brand to sell 100% Fair Trade Certified™ espresso, uses this premium coffee in all its delectable lattes (like Mocha Swirl and Caramel Swirl Lattes) cappuccinos, and Turbo Ice. For those who take your espresso unadorned, rest assured that Dunkin Donuts has the purest, the highest quality, the best.

Dunkin’ Donuts works with TransFair USA, the only independent certifier of fair trade products in the United States. Together with international suppliers, they are working hard to make “fair” a guarantee for coffee farmers throughout the world. To learn more about Dunkin’Donuts commitment to fair trade, visit https://www.dunkindonuts.com/aboutus/credentials.

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