Coffee, Communications and Community

Fighting for Fair Trade

By Carol R. Scott

Coffee, Tea and Nationalism

It may be hard to imagine now – but tea was the beverage of choice and staple of life for early American colonists still under British rule. That began to change when the British parliament under King George III, in an effort to assert control over an increasingly rebellious colonial populace, raised taxes on tea in 1773. People up and down the coast rebelled.

The colonists from Connecticut to West Virginia closed their ports to tea-laden ships that arrived to collect the new tariff placed upon tea. A mob of Bostonians masquerading as Narragansett Indians, boarded three ships, broke open the storage units, destroyed tea crates and dumped bricks of tea into the Boston Harbor. Historically, this became known as the Boston Tea Party, a catalyst for the Revolutionary War culminating in the creation of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It provided a backdrop to what would become a patriotic mandate for the newly liberated United States citizens to switch from tea to coffee.

Tea became associated with unfair taxation and subjugation. The American resisters essentially boycotted tea and promoted coffee – making it a symbol of justice and political and economic independence.

Ironically, a new resistance movement has grown – partly due to grass roots efforts and communications campaigns – to support a system of economic independence and social justice for struggling coffee growers in the developing world. The movement is a system of campaigns that began on local levels such as university campuses and morphed successfully into regional and national campaigns.

I learned about this movement in Costa Rica. Shortly after I retired in 2006, I moved to Costa Rica to become certified as an English language teacher. I settled into an inexpensive but technologically sophisticated and well-equipped tree house high up on a mountain in the jungles near the small town of Quepos, Costa Rica, where I could afford to live, do some writing and teach part time.

At the time, I knew nothing about the Fair Trade Movement – the campaign to support poor coffee growers in their fight to get a better price from coffee processors and coffee retailers. I did know that Costa Rica was a major coffee producer and that the nation’s coffee farmers were struggling.

When I began to do research in 2007 on the economics of the coffee trade and the campaign for fair trade, I found the trade system disturbing because the farmers receive subsistence wages for their labor. However, I was encouraged by the movement for change – much of it driven by communications disseminated by community activists or nonprofit groups in Europe and the United States, which are the largest coffee-consuming markets. For community development advocates who want to globalize their campaign, the Fair Trade coffee movement is a case study in successful cause-related communications.

I would begin this investigation by finding out how much Americans and Europeans knew about efforts to reform the current coffee trading system and by determining the source(s) of their information on the campaign.

Boston Tea Party

The Knowledge Gap

Initially, I began gathering information from expats from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. in Quepos, a town on the mid Pacific coast. I met these North Americans and Europeans through an American-owned coffee shop named “Aromas” and through contacts among the “Ticos,” an affectionate self-described moniker for native Costa Ricans, who were my neighbors, students, local business owners and staff at stores and restaurants.

The Americans I spoke with knew little about Fair Trade. Many believed it was connected to the very controversial Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was approved by the narrowest of margins in a national referendum earlier this year. Some thought it might be a charity to collect money to give to poor farmers in developing countries. Others – the most cynical –believed it to be a marketing ploy for American importers and specialty coffee retailers to add dollars to the already high prices that Yuppie consumers seemed willing to pay for Espressos, Lattes and Cappuccinos.

On the other hand, the Europeans all let me know they were well aware of Fair Trade Certification and frequently purchased fair trade labeled products in their home countries. Information on the coffee trade is available to all on the Internet. It was on the web that I learned that coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world market next to oil. More than 500 billion cups of coffee – half of it produced by 25 million farmers – are consumed every year worldwide. When the coffee market fluctuates 100 million people, which includes the families of these small farm coffee producers, are deeply affected.

In spite of the billions of dollars being made from coffee, very little of it gets into the hands of those who harvest and tediously sort it. Laborers receive as little as four cents for a pound of coffee, which requires tedious and time-consuming work to pick and sort out the best beans. On the other hand, those up the chain – middlemen known as “Coyotes,” roasters, processors, wholesalers and retailers – take the bulk of the profit for that same pound of coffee.

The Fair Trade (FT) movement began as a way to address this injustice: cut out the middlemen and direct a bigger chunk of the profit to the actual producer.

The Dutch were the most familiar with the term “Fair Trade.” They could describe at length how they learned about this social justice movement. I learned that their churches promote Fair Trade and that their schools emphasize its moral significance in standard school curricula. Also, they told me that government and non-governmental organizations have purchased time and space in newspapers and on commercial television and radio for public service announcements encouraging citizens to buy Fair Trade-labeled items such as coffee, tea, chocolate and lumber.

In addition, I learned that in-depth news coverage of the movement also provides Dutch citizens with information on how farmers in Central and South America, Africa and parts of Asia benefit from the purchase of these Fair Trade-labeled goods and why.

Curious as to why Europeans and the Dutch especially knew more about the Fair Trade movement than Americans, I looked for an answer.

The Netherlands, I learned, has been in the forefront of the Fair Trade movement since the mid-20th century. As early witnesses to the unequal pay and brutal treatment of the farmers and workers in countries colonized by the Dutch, some traders bought products directly from these producers and sold their products through churches, clubs, social organizations and specialty shops. These alternative traders were quite effective in getting the word out – so much so that there was a high public awareness of the very low wages small-scale producers received in comparison to the large profits of roasters, wholesalers, and retailers.

The Dutch would become the first to introduce a method of labeling products that promised buyers that the product they had purchased was from an individual producer who lived in a disadvantaged Third World community who would receive fair wages for her/his efforts.

The idea originated with a Dutch missionary priest, Frans Van der Hoff, who lived in a poor farming community in Mexico. Dependent upon an unpredictable coffee market for their survival, villagers clearly wanted to earn a living wage for their work rather than accept charity during difficult times. Responding to their concerns, he helped launch the first Fair Trade labeling initiative in 1988 – promoting it by assisting in the establishment of the Max Havelaar Foundation, named after a mid 18th century fictional character who opposed the exploitation of coffee and tea farmers under the colonial system in the Dutch East Indies.

The aim of the Foundation is to create standard criteria by which buyers would be assured that every labeled product originated from a small-scale producer who worked under optimal working conditions and was fairly paid. It would also encourage responsible use of the environment and a democratic structure that would enable owners, workers and their families to determine their own future.

The foundation communicated its message in a variety of ways – creating video statements and mini-documentaries of their awareness-raising events, producing photos for media circulation, printing publications and sponsoring ad campaigns.

The campaign was a success, drawing support from across the political spectrum in Holland. The campaign for certified and labeled Fair Trade coffee was quickly embraced and emulated thereafter in Belgium, Switzerland and France.

The movement is now global. The Havelaar Foundation promotes Fair Trade projects involving a variety of crops grown in poorer countries. The nonprofit is also a Dutch member of FLO International, which unites 23 Fairtrade producer and labeling initiatives across Europe, Asia, Latin America, North America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

The U.S. Fair Trade movement was late in comparison. However, in 1998, TransFair USA was formed to promote the movement and the organization began to certify (for labeling) Fair Trade coffee in 1999.

The Tico coffee-producing farmers live mostly in Costa Rica’s central region, where the volcanic earth provides the perfect growing soil for coffee bushes and the cooler climes in these mountainous areas provide an amenable environment.

There are 72,942 coffee growers in Costa Rica. However, about 45,000 of them are small operations of about 12 acres or less and belong to cooperatives. (Only coffee beans produced by small-farm owners are eligible for FT labeling.)

The largest cooperative is the Consortium of Coffee Growers of Guanacaste or COOCAFE, a group that supports several thousand farms associated with the consortium’s membership of nine smaller coops. Founded in 1988 – the same year the Dutch Fair Trade labeling initiative was launched – it was originally formed to create an economy of scale large enough to provide marketing and other services to the nine coop members.

Democratically structured – farmers have a say in where the money goes – COOCAFE supports a major educational foundation called Hijos del Campos, along with women’s development programs and rainforest reforestation efforts.

Coffee processing equipment at Sarapiqui, a coop affiliated with COOCAFE.

COOCAFE supports the nine coops on every level – providing culling equipment for harvesting and roasting ovens for product preparation. The consortium also handles the packaging and labeling of the coffee and relays it to distributors. In addition, COOCAFE promotes the product – producing a newsletter, advertising posters, brochures and touting its coffee and Fair Trade via its website (http://www.coocafe.com/home.htm).

Most of the communications are aimed at the consortium’s major markets – Holland, Switzerland and the United States. Only a very small portion of coffee is distributed in Costa Rica.

According to Michelle Filloy, who was marketing director of COOCAFE when I visited their operations in 2007, each farmer producer receives 60% of the price of their packaged coffee while the coops themselves get 40% to be used for community projects determined by member votes. This money had been used to build schools, community centers and churches and to pay for computers and scholarships and state of the art equipment to improve coffee production in environmentally safe ways.

Through connections with one of cooperatives, I was invited to visit the Fernandez family on their 1.5-acre farm located in the San Miguel de Sarapiqui area just north of the Costa Rican capital of San Jose, a breathtakingly beautiful section of the country that attracts white water rafters from all over the world.

Here is how the Fernandez family lives. With the exception of rice and beans and the rare

Elpidio Fernandez and his wife.

meat they eat, their food comes from their small garden and the hens and chickens they raise. The coffee they sell through a local co-op is enough to survive but not thrive. A good crop, not always to be relied on, brings in only $200 a month. Hired help is out of the question. Elpidio Fernandez works the farm with his wife. An adult son, who lives independently helps with the heavier work and provides some relief to Elpidio who walks with a cane and pronounced limp.

The Fernandez farm is one of 300 farms affiliated with Coopesarapiqui, one of the nine member coops of COOCAFE. From the Fair Trade premiums received, the coop was able to purchase their own coffee processing mill and water treatment plant. It also owns two grocery stores now and is currently building a cafe to attract tourists and increase income to the coop. In addition, it recently built several large cement fish tanks to raise tilapia that will be sold to local groceries, an enterprise designed to augment the income the Fenandez family and other coop members.

Communicating Fair Trade in the United States

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in and knowledge about Fair Trade Coffee in the United States. So much so that between 1999 and 2006, the United States traded 100 million pounds of coffee with the fair trade label and now more than 500 corporations including Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, MacDonald’s and now Walmart’s Sam’s Warehouse stores also carry Fair Trade coffee.

It is clear that communications campaigns devised by enthusiastic student activists – including the use of the Internet – was a key to getting major corporations to offer FT coffee. Groups such as United Students for Fair Trade (http://www.usft.org) continue to exert pressure on wholesalers, retail shops and roasters still resistant to carrying Fair Trade labeled coffees.

Considering that there has been Western sympathy for poor farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia for decades, the Fair Trade movement was slow to gain traction. The consciousness of some in the U.S. public rose after World War II, when churches began programs to help poverty-stricken refugee communities find markets and fair prices for their hand-crafted products and – later – for agricultural commodities such as coffee, bananas, chocolate, tea and a host of other products.

These church-based activists consider Fair Trade to be a social justice issue. An easy alliance developed between farmers and cooperatives and religious groups such as Catholic Relief Services, the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Lutheran World Relief. Word of fairly traded products spread quickly through church sermons, at fellowship hours where directly purchased coffee was served and through mailed newsletters to congregation members.

The turning point began in the 1960’s when more and more young people from Europe and the United States – many of them college students – began to travel to Third World countries for language-learning immersion programs, to do research on biodiversity or to provide aid through church programs.

They lived in the homes and communities of the hosting country and became witness to the inequality and poverty of the farmers that produced the coffee they drank every morning – particularly growers in poor Central American countries such as strife-torn Guatamala and El Salvador. When they returned to their homes in U.S., the young people would be the early messengers – relaying information on how little of retail price of coffee goes to farmers and calling for a fairer system.

Individually and in groups they brought the narratives home: stories of farmers and their families in deep debt and living in extreme poverty, portrayals of people dependent upon a crop in an unpredictable market; reports of children working in the fields instead of attending school and tales of large-scale farming practices involving chemicals harmful to nature and to the people who harvest coffee.

The U.S. movement was further sparked in 1995 when students joined delegations for stays in El Salvador organized partly by Equal Exchange, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, which is dedicated to sustaining the environment and promoting social justice by building strategic and financial relationships between consumers and farmers.

When FairTrade USA, opened its first office in the Bay Area in 1999 in the Bay Area, many students were supporters. The group was able to quickly convince many Bay Area retailers and restaurants to sell Fair Trade-labeled coffee.

The mainstream media gave only scant coverage to Fair Trade campaign. However, the protest movement grew largely because of the coalition’s creative communications tactics. The partners used mobile phones, Internet, streaming technology, wireless networks and high quality publishing and sharing capacities across the web to communicate and disseminate their protests and organize new activism.

For example, one of these partners – the Organic Consumers Association – criticized Starbucks, contending that the chain used genetically altered soybeans and branded it a bad practice that could be associated with other environmental issues such as the farming practices affecting songbirds. The Organic Consumers Association operated a popular website that made it possible for Starbucks customers and potential customers to email their indignation directly to Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and many of the chain’s top executives. The web content also informed viewers on how they could join more active protests.

Finally, a big breakthrough occurred in 2000 when Global Exchange, a social justice organization that had helped organize protests in individual cities, used the web to

promote plans for demonstrations at Starbucks in 29 cities. Starbucks agreed to sell Fair Trade coffee and the organizers cancelled the protest.

The movement continued to gain momentum in 2001 when the Ford Foundation awarded a grant for “Promoting Ethical Consumer Choice in the United States” to Oxfam, an organization known world wide for its hunger relief efforts and dedicated to addressing issues such as poverty and injustice.

Under the grant, Oxfam helped train students on 225 U.S. campuses to be organizers for the advocacy of fair trade and fair trade coffee between 2001 and 2003. In 2003, United Students for Fair Trade was formed during an Oxfam organizer training session in Seattle – the home of Starbucks.

The movement generated more momentum in 2003 when Dunkin Donuts, America’s largest retailer of coffee by the cup (then and now), became the first national brand to sell espresso drinks made exclusively from FT certified beans.

Rob Stephen, then Dunkin Donuts product development manager and currently president of the board for the activist organization Coffee Kids www.coffeekids.org says Dunkin Donuts had always been ahead of the curve in their commitment to social justice causes and that by selling Fair Trade Coffee they would forge good relationships with farmers in Latin America and get good quality coffee.

The Fair Trade advocates continue to use new media to promote the cause, posting information on popular sites such as My Space and Facebook to relay information and the location of retailers selling FT products. Also, the United Students for Fair Trade has blogs on its website and Fair Trade USA has sponsored video-making contests related to the issue that have been posted on YouTube.

Meanwhile, organizing activity on campus continues. While many activists use new media, some also communicate through older media avenues such as documentaries – hosting screenings of films on the plight of coffee farmers. Many of these documentaries, financed by foundations in some cases, have also been broadcast on PBS stations. Among the films are Birdsong and Coffee: A Wake Up Call and Black Gold. One activist group – Coffee Kids – actually became the subject of a 2005 PBS documentary Working with the Coffee Kids.

Communications Options: Lessons Learned

It has taken a long time for average Americans to put aside their early bias and recognize the benefits of purchasing Fair Trade Certified coffee. Many still hold on to their suspicions that Fair Trade is simply another gimmick to sell coffee at highly inflated prices.

The European coffee consumer learned early of this social justice issue largely through mainstream media and the political establishment.

In the U.S, a highly competitive capitalist society, the government has never officially sanctioned Fair Trade and the corporate media provided little coverage.

Still, the agents of agents of change faced off against corporations with huge advertising budgets and other resources. Using the Internet and other creative grass roots communications methods, they have succeeded despite daunting odds.

Scott at a hotel in Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica.

She hosts and interviews a Dutch tourist in her former Costa home, a treehouse in Quepos.