The cost of a cup of coffee

On our Learning Tour to El Salvador in July 2009, w e spent Sunday morning walking the mountainside with Fatima, a single mother of four young children. She lives in Las Americas, a village of families who until now had lived in champas —shanties built out of whatever was available and put anywhere there was a bit of blank space. The people had petitioned for eight years for a real home, and now with the help of groups like our partner Iglesia Bautista Emmanuel, were finally moving into 2-room cinder block homes. Believe me—to these folks, small is beautiful.

That Sunday walk was a nice morning stroll for us—during the coffee picking season, it is anything but that for Fatima . Like most others in the community, her economic life revolves around coffee. Unlike us, that doesn't mean she can't to work in the morning without a cup…it means that the majority of her meager income comes from the coffee plantation. She's illiterate—which doesn't help—but there are few other jobs other around anyway.

Coffee-picking goes like this: the workers sign on for 15-day periods, out of which they work 12 days (no work on Sundays—and the owner makes sure to include three). From November to as late as February, they rise early and pick all day. Their food is limited to what they bring with them. Only the ripe (red) beans are picked off each stem on a bush, so it's it doesn't go that quickly. How much do they earn for picking the second most-traded commodity in the world (after petroleum)?

They're paid three to five dollars per 100 pounds, which can take all day. (And lest we think “things are cheaper down there,” a chicken costs $7.00; a pound of beans $1.00.)

In the off-season, Fatima sometimes is hired to cut weeds in the plantation, using a machete. She says it rubs her hand raw. She earns $40 per 15-day contract.

I asked about the wages and the way the workers are treated. “No, it's not fair,” she said with a look of disdain I've seen on the faces of women around the world in similar situations. “It's hardly enough to feed my family and keep my children in school. But it's the only work we have.”

That's what we might call “the economics of desperation”—a job, but not a job with dignity or opportunity.

Is Fair Trade fair?

Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world after petroleum. It touches the lives of billions of consumers and millions of producers. Economies of coffee-growing countries can rise or fall on the price of their coffee exports. Small farmers or pickers often have few other income-producing options, and thus are at the mercy of buyers or plantation owners—they have to take what they are offered.

Fair Trade is often held up as a positive way forward in helping people in the Poor World have a bigger cut of the action for commodities like coffee or cocoa or clothing. FT does provide a guaranteed base price for producers often above the market price for a commodity like coffee or cocoa. Plus, FT companies work with cooperatives, ensuring community-based decision-making and a level wage scale. Often these companies send some of their profits back to the communities to be used to build schools, etc.

Some of the limitations of Fair Trade are noted in the book Confessions of an Eco-Sinner. Author Fred Pearce was accompanied by a buyer for Cafedirect—a Fair Trade coffee company based in Britain—on a visit to coffee growers in Tanzania who are part of a Cafedirect cooperative. They earn a guaranteed price of $1.46 per pound for coffee sold under the Kilimanjaro label. (Currently the average world price is $1.12 per pound.)

After a brief presentation by the rep in which he noted the volatile nature of the coffee market and the role of Fair Trade in providing a set price, an older farmer with a weathered face rose to speak. “I speak for the farmers,” he said. A hush fell over the room. “We'd like to know how much our coffee costs in a coffee shop where you live.”

Caught off-guard, the rep held up a pack of Kilimanjaro coffee and replied, “This pack is half a pound and sells for around $6—so coffee goes for about $12 a pound.” Turns out a Tanzanian coffee farmer's family could live for about a week on what a pound of their coffee is sold for in the Rich World.

Of course Cafedirect—or Equal Exchange or Ten Thousand Villages—incur costs to roast, package and market their products. And they are providing a stable if not extravagant income for the farmers in their network.

But the fact remains that selling coffee gives a lot of people a good living—and makes quite a few rich—just not the ones who do the hardest part of the work. They are the ones who plant, weed, fertilize, pick, carry, depulp, dry, transport, weigh, and bag the coffee beans in the first place. The typical Tanzanian Fair Trade producer with a 5-acre plot might make $1000 a year.

Why is it this way?

• It's a fact of life that providing a commodity, whether it's coffee or cocoa or cotton, never pays as much as what comes next—the “value-added” stage of preparing the product for market and actually selling it.
• The US government and other countries actually put a tariff (tax) on imported finished goods (like cloth), while not taxing the raw material (like cotton) in order that their corporations can be the ones to make the real money.
• Many people in the Poor World are ill-equipped to step up the economic ladder due to things like illiteracy or the lack of access to capital or land.
• US consumers like the idea of Fair Trade, but aren't really ready to pay enough to ensure the growers will receive a fair wage. “We want our ethics on the cheap,” writes Pearce.

What can we do?

• Buy Fair Trade as an interim step until we can move beyond this to something better.
• Support efforts by local farmers and workers to create local markets so as not to be dependent on the global market, which can be fickle at best and unjust at worst.
• Help women like Fatima have other options by supporting NCP's Give a Girl a Chance fund for girls' education and women's development. How about donating a quarter for every cup of coffee or cocoa you drink to GAGAC—small change may just bring big changes! Get others in your household, office, congregation or school to do the same. El Salvador Learning Tour participant Emily Matteson has made a pledge that every 15 days (mirroring the 15-day contracts they work under) she'll pray for Fatima and others in Las Americas and donate $5.00 (the amount they earn for picking 100 pounds) to NCP's work in El Salvador.
• Join one of our Learning Tours to see these things and meet these people for yourself.

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We believe the challenges facing this earth and its people can best be met and addressed by people of courage, conscience and commitment  joining together within and between cultures to build a new community  of respect for all life.