Liquid Justice

While it may be obvious to say this, it's sometimes hard to remember: Our food, everything we eat and drink, comes from somewhere, not just the back room of the local grocery store. Coffee, in particular, has to get from the coffee tree somewhere else in the world to my coffee cup every morning or my day doesn't go well. Yet, like everything else in my life, the liquid in my cup is connected to more then just the start of my day but to the lives of people I'm never going to meet. The choice I made last week to buy a pound of coffee for my morning has implications for the people who grew it, harvested it, shipped it, roasted it, bagged it and placed it on the shelf in the store. Out of all the people in that supply chain, my choice effects the farmer most of all.  

My morning coffee may come from one or several several different places in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, or the Caribbean. Coffee grows on a tree that is indigenous to Northern Africa. It was imported to the Americas as part of the European Colonization in the 18th Century and became a major crop in Nicaragua in the 1870’s. It is one of the primary Nicaraguan exports and a critical source of income for the farmers who grow and harvest it.  

Because coffee fruit on the same branch ripen at different times, it is often harvested by hand. An experienced picker can harvest about 200 pounds of coffee cherries in one day. However, the green been needs to be extracted from the fruit which involves time, water, and both human and mechanical work and yields about 50 pounds of beans from that starting point of 200 pounds of fruit. 

Once the farmer has harvested and extracted the green coffee beans, the beans are  often sold to a local exporter who consolidates and exports it to roasters and distributers around the world. Often, those are mega-food corporate entities like Kraft Foods which owns the Maxwell House label* or Starbucks and sometimes its the local micro-roaster/coffeehouse down the street in the cute little bungalow with free wireless connections. 

This particular food chain tends to follow the classic human desire to buy at the lowest possible price and then turn around and sell at the highest possible price. Like way too much of the rest of the farming business, the lowest possible price is not linked to the actual cost of growing and extracting the green coffee bean. It is not linked to the cost of growing and extracting the bean or the cost of feeding the farmer and the farmer’s family and the cost of clothing the farmer and the farmer’s family or the cost of housing the farmer and the farmer’s family or the cost of educating the farmer and the farmer’s family... which is one of the reasons why the local name for the one who buys coffee from the farmer is coyote and its not a term of endearment. 

But the coyote is not the only predator in the chain of commerce between the farmer and my coffee cup. CAFTA-DR, (Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement), is one voracious coyote of corporate power and market control that keeps the price of coffee beans at a level that is barely livable for those who grow and sell the green coffee beans. While the Office of the United State Trade Representative (part of the Executive Office of the President) praises the CAFTA-DR as “...creating new economic opportunities...” Nicaraguan Eddy Guiterrz Zavala wonders who is actually benefiting from those new opportunities because he isn’t seeing it where he lives. 

Last week, Guiterrz was in Louisville Kentucky to talk about the price of coffee, CAFTA-DR, the life of a farmer, and hope. After a formal presentation, Andrew Kang Bartlett of the PCUSA Hunger Program sat down with Guiterrz to talk about coffee and those who grow it and those who drink it. Guiterrz simply and eloquently reminds us that we are connected to the people who grow our coffee even if we are unaware of that connection. Then Guiterrz asks for our assistance. Perhaps surprisingly, he asks for our assistance not only with large corporate entities but also with coffee that comes to us via the Fair Trade certification process. 

Although the historic precedents run back further in time, communities of compassion and faith in the 1980’s started to challenge the “free market” model of setting coffee bean prices by developing alternative farm-to-market sales path. Fair trade coffee advocates deliberately paid an artificially higher price to the farmers, who often banded together in co-ops, and tried to minimize the costs of shipping and sold through volunteer and non-profit organizations such as congregations or service organizations. The Presbyterian Church (USA) participates in this alternative sourcing for our coffee through the Presbyterian Coffee Project. 

Guiterrz suggests that while the Fair Trade model is still very important and useful, there is a need to make sure that the voice of the small farmers and co-ops is not lost as the Fair Trade model matures.

  One place to start is the TransFair USA website which sets a  Fair Trade minimum price that doesn’t seem to have changed since 2007 even while costs of production are rising. Contact information for TransFair can be found here. 

Anitra Kitts lives, writes, and drinks coffee in Northern California. A graduate of SFTS, Anitra is a Certified Candidate for the Ministry of the Word and Sacrament in the PC(USA).

-------------

*Or at least Kraft owns Maxwell House at the time of this writing, because apparently Kraft is selling Maxell House to Sara Lee Corp. so that Kraft can raise enough money to buy Cadbury PLC. Why am I reminded of those childhood hours spent playing Monopoly?**

**Speaking of which, the game that we know now was published by Parker Brothers pre World War II was bought by General Mills in the early 60’s. In the 1980’s Parker Brothers was merged by General Mills with another company called Kenner which was then sold to Tonka in 1987. In 1991 Tonka was bought by Hasbro which is where you can find Monopoly now. All of which is to say it isn’t just coffee beans or Illinois Ave. that are bought and sold as commodities.