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Coffee shops: a load of old froth?
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Time was when a cup of coffee meant a cheap jar of instant. Now it's a multimillion-dollar industry, a lifestyle, and a moral minefield. The high street chains are rushing to offer us Fairtrade brew.
If your head isn't already buzzing with ethically sourced caffeine, it's crowding on to the supermarket shelves, too, with the likes of Percol, Café Direct and Nestlé's new Fairtrade instant. But does Fairtrade coffee necessarily mean that the coffee chains and makers are trading fairly?
The move has attracted the rapt attention of skeptics. Starbucks promises freshly brewed Fairtrade coffee, certified by the Fairtrade Foundation, in every store in the UK, every day in Britain. But when the coffee chain made a similar pledge in the United States last year, it provoked bloggers to launch the "Starbucks challenge", encouraging customers to ask for Fairtrade coffee in their local branches. Judging by the blank stares that some bloggers say they received, not all stores were on-message.
Fairtrade works by fixing a price for producers, such as coffee growers, regardless of fluctuating world market prices. For example, a farmer selling a pound of Fairtrade Arabica coffee is paid $1.26; lower-quality Robusta coffee fetches $1.06. At last week's world market price, Arabica was selling for $1.10 a pound and 55 cents for Robusta.
The Fairtrade price includes a five cents "social premium", which is invested back into community projects.
Last month, a consumer rights monitoring organization, concluded that of all the ethical-certification schemes that companies have adopted, Fairtrade offers the most tangible benefits for growers.
So does this mean that one chain's Fairtrade coffee is as fair as another? Pretty much, although there are a few things to look out for. Check the store's level of commitment: Some retailers make it hard for customers to choose Fairtrade. If you have to ask for it, or if you can get only a certain type of coffee, such as filter coffee, it reduces the chances of people bothering. The gold standard is a place where all the hot drinks are Fairtrade.
Starbucks could certainly do better, as could many of the other biggies. In the last financial year, only 3.7 per cent of the coffee it sold globally was Fairtrade, though this is up from the 1.6 per cent of the previous year. Nescafe's Partners Blend, the Fairtrade option launched by Nestlé, accounts for only 0.02 per cent of its total coffee sales.
Back on the high street Costa Coffee offers a Fairtrade option on all its coffees, at no extra cost, but you have to request it. Pret A Manger offers only Fairtrade filter and decaf, so forget all those cappuccinos and lattes that fuel our working lives.
As well as this apparent tokenism, there is confusion about the pricing of Fairtrade products. You might cough up considerably more for a certified cappuccino at one place than at another, but don't think that you are lining impoverished farmers' pockets. The only bit controlled in the Fairtrade system is the price a farmer is paid for produce. After that, mark-ups are determined by the retailers and middlemen.
This has prompted the criticism that little of the money made by a product is seen by the farmer. Controlling the prices is against the law. Fairtrade has to work commercially for everyone. Retailers have to feel confident that they can make money from Fairtrade in the same way that farmers do.
But fair trading alone won't convert many skeptics to Starbucks. Many people interested in coffee and coffee-trade are as concerned about the chain's domination of the high street as its coffee.
But Fairtrade advocates say that if you're worried about the plight of coffee growers, you'd do better to choose the chain-café's Fairtrade option than a non-Fairtrade equivalent from a colorful local eatery. One neat solution is to request Fairtrade coffee in your preferred independent café - backed by threats to defect to Starbucks if they don't deliver.
Such threats only reflect global reality. In the coffee market, the Fairtrade Labeling Organization, which oversees the system globally, claims that powerful players such as Nestlé and Starbucks are a powerful vehicle for spreading the message of ethical trading and increasing the demand for it; Starbucks buys about 10 per cent of Fairtrade coffee sold worldwide - five million farmers are being helped.
But as only 1 per cent of the world's coffee is Fairtrade, there is still a long way to go.
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