When it comes to coffee, I prefer taste, price and convenience over how it is made. I don’t seek out bad quality coffee just as I do not favor only shade-grown, fair trade. I don’t consider my behavior unethical, selfish or cheap.
Rather, fair trade agreements negotiated between farmers in developing countries and buyers in industrialized ones are at best, concentrated charity cases ultimately hurtful to non-privileged coffee farmers, and at worst, exploitative.
Fair trade certification indicates the bean meets certain social and environmental standards while its farmers are paid a “fair wage.” Michael Munger, professor of political science and economics, calls the extra cost of fair trade a “tip for growing better coffee.” Ideally, when we buy fair trade coffee, we are rewarding a poor farmer.
Neither the Web sites of Pura Vida or Larry’s Beans, fair trade coffee suppliers for the Great Hall and both Alpine stores, respectively, clarify how much this reward is. Their Web sites do, however, boast proud pictures of their adopted, beaming farmers from the lush hills of Colombia, the salty heart of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru.
Their photos allow fair trade businesses to create a kind of “lemonade stand” effect, where customers in industrialized nations are lured by the quaint, cutesy novelty of ho-hum coffee farmers. This one-to-one arrangement is only successful as a preferential system that rewards select friends over the nameless masses. But neighboring farmers who witness the astronomical wealth gains of fair traders immediately want it too.
For instance, in 2007, Sam’s Club cut out coffee middlemen to buy straight from coops in Brazil, according to the New York Times article “Fair Trade in Bloom.” One grower said, “Everybody is doing their best to come up to standard… Everybody wants to earn as much as [the fair trade farmer] can.”
But altering pesticide practices and farming techniques is a long and expensive process. Farmers will sacrifice time, money and the opportunity cost of exploring alternative income-generating activities in hopes of gaining fair trade certification.
If they fail, they will have lost precious time and money. If they are successful, the supply of fair trade coffee will boom. Recent data reflects a seismic appetite in the U.S. for fair trade products. Certified fair trade coffee sold in 2006 was more than eight times of that in 2001, according to TransFair USA, an American fair trade certifier.
Eventually however, demand will not be able to keep pace. American consumers may appreciate high quality and exotic flavors. But although they may pay an extra 30, even 50 cents to substitute plain black for a caramely Peruvian joe, they won’t drink three more cups of coffee just because it’s fairly traded. As a result, the global market-clearing price of fair trade coffee will fall, and producers will be able to receive less and less of their promised premium, or reward, for high quality.
In the late 1990s, coffee production was rising at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent, but demand was only increasing by 1.5 percent, according to the United Nations International Coffee Organization. By the early 2000s, world coffee market prices fell to the lowest they had been in 100 years, and millions of undiversified coffee farmers suffered from poverty, social unrest and unemployment. ICO’s Executive Director Néstor Osorio attributed the coffee crisis to new crop expansions in Brazil and Vietnam.
Fair trade market saturation could be years away, but even the eventual collapse of fair trade gains for farmers assumes that fair trade benefits cooperatives. This is a tenuous assumption at best. Today, fair trade offers no hint of incentive reform that can put market power in the hands of producers rather than buyers.
Here at Duke, Chick-fil-A and the Refectory sell 12-ounce cups of certified fair trade java for $1.50. Alpine Atrium, the Great Hall and Saladelia sell similar do-gooder products at 20 to 30 cents more, for $1.80, $1.69 and $1.79, respectively. The extra quarter may or may not go into the farmer’s pocket in the latter three companies. To not know is to take advantage of the customer’s innocence because raising output price doesn’t mean a higher input price, or income, for the producer.
The only way developed countries can fulfill fair trade’s promise to coffee producers in the global South is by pushing themselves to consume increasingly more coffee products. Unfortunately, our demand for coffee is constrained. The allures of fair trade—its mission to “Create Good,” according to Pura Vida—may be no better than a regular cup of coffee.
The best way to help coffee producers is not to drink just fair trade, but to just drink more.
Courtney Han is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Monday.
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