Drink Coffee? Read This

Since the arrival of the venti half-caf latte in the '90s, Americans have gotten used to the idea of the $3 (or more) cup of coffee. Designer coffee is still booming -- Starbucks Coffee company profits totaled $181 million in fiscal 2000, and the company now has 5,688 locations from Indonesia to Spain to the U.S.

But the tide of expensive lattes has not lifted all boats. North America's morning Joe sits atop a growing crisis, according to Oxfam America, which has just released a report entitled "Mugged: Poverty in Your Coffee Cup," detailing the scope of the global coffee crisis. (The full report is available here.) The farmers and workers who actually grow coffee beans in regions from South America to Vietnam are faced with the lowest prices in years, prices that do not cover their costs. Farmers are slipping into dire poverty, pulling their children out of school, unable to afford medicine and struggling to eat. Mass coffee farming practices are also destroying rainforest ecosystems.

This week, there are two major activist pushes to raise awareness and promote fair trade and organic coffee, to protect both the farmers and the environment. The two campaigns, one by Oxfam America and one spearheaded by the Organic Consumers Association, agree on the problem if not the solution. Both see an international humanitarian and environmental crisis. Both encourage consumers to demand Fair Trade certified coffee whenever they buy coffee.

The two campaigns diverge when it comes to Starbucks. Oxfam America is going after the coffee giants Kraft (Maxwell House), Procter & Gamble (Folgers), Nestlé (Nescafé) and Sara Lee (Real Coffee). The big transnationals are certainly ahead of Starbucks, as bulk buyers of beans. And they have shown a relatively complete indifference to the plight of small farmers, as coffee prices fall and corporate profit margins go up.

Oxfam, in other words, is targeting the big fish. Besides demanding better prices for the small farmers, Oxfam is demanding that the coffee giants and rich country governments help fund the destruction of at least five million bags of coffee stock, in order to help stabilize the price. They also want the companies to create a fund to help poor farmers find other ways to make a living, so that they will be less dependent on one volatile commodity.

The coffee campaign is part of Oxfam's larger Make Trade Fair campaign, an international effort to make trade more fair to poor and developing countries -- including calls for an end to agricultural subsidies in the first world and a more democratic World Trade Organization. The campaign also included a shindig on Capitol Hill, and a public service announcement co-produced by the certifying body, TransFair USA and featuring actor Martin Sheen.

"I was told that Kraft has actually agreed to one of our recommendations," says Adrienne Leicester Smith, media director at Oxfam (at press time, Kraft had not responded to inquiries). "I think it's important to remember that this is bad for business, too," Smith continued. "These very very low prices right now will correlate to very very high prices later. When it fluctuates this much, it creates instability for everybody."

Sustainable is still the buzzword. Oxfam, Starbucks and the Ford Foundation entered into a pilot program to help support small farmers using sustainable techniques in Oaxaca, Mexico in July. "Starbucks is stepping up to the plate in a lot of ways, so we don't apologize for applauding them," Smith says. She points out that Starbucks counts for less than 1 percent of the coffee market, so "we're going after the big guns, we want all organizations to be responsible corporate citizens."

But the Organic Consumers Association says Oxfam has got it all wrong, and that by giving Starbucks its support, Oxfam is helping Starbucks "greenwash" its image. The giants are relatively unabashed about their disregard for the environment and labor, says Ronnie Cummins, OCA's director. "Just look at their behavior for the past 20 or 30 years."