"“This is seen by many as a direct way by which they can influence the way the world is,"” explains Lawrence Gould, a London-based consumer markets analyst. Fair Trade consumers are buying a story of personal connection, a vision of transparency, and an impression of political influence—not a bad deal for a few extra cents.
That's the story many believe, Fair Trade coffee is not exploitive of third-world workers. As I've written before, I see Fair Trade as not beneficial to coffee growers around the world.
It always struck me as another case of people with their hearts in the right place causing more problems than they're solving. By artificially raising the price of coffee for certain farmers, they're lowering the price for those not in the club. Keep in mind, coffee bean farming is incredibly arduous work that requires long hours. However, it's the only work people can do in certain areas of the world. Fair Trade farmers get better treatment throughout their supply chain, which is a good thing, but it leaves those farmers not approved as a Fair Trade wholeseller out in the cold.
Howley, in a fairly long piece, addresses and confirms suspicionsons that the Fair Trade standard harms the overall coffee market.
This "“second wave"” paved the way for the rise of the coffee connoisseur. Java cognoscenti, and the marketers who sought them, started talking varietals and altitudes. Most significantly, they spoke of origin. In place of French Roast and Breakfast Blend, coffee joints were stocking Ethiopian, Sumatran, Jamaican. For producers, the interest in origin is a step toward developing a marketable identity, which is crucial to expanding their market. "“Everybody knows that in this world of branding, if you are a coffee farmer and you are anonymous, you are in the buyer'’s market,"” comments George Howell, a businessman involved with the Cup of Excellence competition.
The range of prices between high- and low-quality coffees is still minuscule compared to what youÂ’ll find with a highly branded beverage like wine, but it is growing, and consumers have consistently demonstrated that theyÂ’re willing to pay more for better beans. The best hope for farmers lies with consumers demanding better coffee, not just from Starbucks but from the supermarket shelf. This may be inevitable; a generation weaned on high-quality lattes is not going to turn to instant Nescafe as it grows more affluent. But there are signs that Fair Trade, with its predilection for uniformity, is retarding, not accelerating, that process.
"“Fair Trade does not incentivize quality,"” explains Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia Coffee, who has spent the last nine years training coffee farmers in Africa and Central America. Fair Trade co-ops are composed of hundreds of farmers producing vastly different qualities of coffee. Often their output is blended together for sale to roasters, masking any quality improvements one farmer may have felt motivated to implement. Money then flows back to the co-op, not the individual farmer, and is distributed equally among the members. “There is no reward for the guy who works harder than his neighbor,” says Watts. Nor is there much motivation for individual farmers to learn better farming techniques, experiment with new types of coffee, or seek new markets.
The system thus breeds anonymity and mediocrity in a business that desperately needs to focus on branding and identity. Ironically, this mimics the problems brought on by multinationals: Treating coffee as a single commodity, in large undifferentiated lots, prevents any single farmer from excelling and advancing.
By going through the bureaucratic maze that is Fair Trade certification, coffee farmers are signing up to be faceless producers with no incentive (in fact disincentives) to differentiate or make their product better. Thereby, relying on Fair Trade marketing being good enough to ensure their quality of life keeps rising. So far, it's worked, but Fair Trade's heavy handed marketing will eventually wear thin and consumers will begin to shun the brand. And that's all Fair Trade is, a brand. A brand that is not synonymous with quality, only righteousness. Read the whole thing.
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