Justice - From Coffee Bean To Coffee Cup!

The Warsaw Voice reports today that Starbucks are dipping their dirty fingers into the Polish markets' unquenchable thirst for lattes, cappucinos and the like by signing a preliminary agreement with AmRest to establish their first units also in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
AmRest holds franchises like Pizza Hut and KFC and was recently awarded permission to bring more pain to the Polish publics' eyes by bringing Burger King back to Poland.

Starbucks was founded in 1971 and is currently the world's largest chain of coffee shops. As a ubiquitious symbol of U.S. cultural and economic imperialism, it has fallen foul to the anti-globalisation movement due to it's unfair trade policies, environmentally damaging practices and breaching of workers' basic labour rights.


However, Transfair USA, a fair trade certifier has praised Starbucks for making a real contribution to farmers' welfare by introducing fair trade products since 2000. The global proportion of fair trade coffee now sold at Starbucks is 3.7% of their total sales. Starbucks claims that it cannot find enough fair trade growers which to a certain degree may be true as it costs over $20,000 for coffee growers to be certified with the fair trade mark - a thoroughly disgraceful amount of money unreachable by small coffee growers. Then again, Starbucks aren't exactly bending over bacwards to assist people to become fair trade growers either.

The International Workers of the World (IWW aka. 'The Wobblies') in their 2006 Corporate Irresponsibility Report on the coffee retail giant/monster ask the question 'Can Starbucks provide', what it declares in it's underlying philosophy, 'an uplifting experience that enriches people's lives one moment, one human being, one extraordinary cup of coffee at a time' when the reality is it's farmers' families are starving, and its' baristas require public assistance?'

A delegation of IWW workers travelled to Ethiopia in February 2007 to meet coffee growers who supply the beans that produce the commodity so many of us desire. Their analysis seems to me hard-hittingly accurate and a challenge to all who do not demand fairly traded coffee in their own local haven:

"The 'free market' in coffee forces small farmers from the 24 countries who supply Starbucks to compete in a self-destructive race to the bottom". In one of the plantations at Sidamo that the workers visited, "over half of the children between the ages of 5 and 17 work 3o hours a week on their families' farms."

So what does this all mean for us caught up in a cocoon of ignorance and apathy, not having the faintest clue about the cultivation of coffee beans other than our daily morning lifting of a cup to our mouths, after pouring boiling water into our favourite mug whose bottom has being sprinkeld with a spoonful of our supermarket purchased jar of the brown stuff? It means that we should stop drinking it unless we can buy fair trade. It also means that we should demand our local supermarkets stock up or destock. Consumer power is a significant factor to influence those who purchase the goods and have their shelves stocked with Nestle, Maxwell House, etc.

Another question to answer and reflect upon is what sort of education system (the answer is capitlaist by the way) produces people who revel in expoliting their fellow human being, knowingly or unknowingly?

Catholic Worker founder Peter Maurin puts it well in the following easy essay

Shouting With Rotarians

1. The modern man looks for thought
so that he can have light,
and he is unable to find it
in our modern schools.

2. According to Professor Meiklejohn,
"Students go school
not to be directed
but to become business men."

3. According to Glenn Frank,
President of the University of Wisconsin,
"Schools reflect the environment,
they do not create it."

4. Which explains why
shortly after their graduation,
school graduates could be heard
shouting with Rotarians:
"Service for profits",
"Time is money",
"Keep Smiling",
"Business is business",
"How are you making out?"
"The law of supply and demand",
"Competition is the life of trade",
"Your dollar is your best friend".

So please get searching the web for your local fair trade product retailer or else start demanding it be stocked in your local market (and consider avoiding supermarket shopping, your local bazaar or small shop needs more of help up).