-Caveat Lector-
http://worldpress.org/Europe/786.cfm
From the December 2002 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 49, No. 12)
Crisis in a Coffee Cup
Who's Paying for That Latte?
Phil Pennington, The Press (conservative), Christchurch, New Zealand, Sept. 23, 2002
Are coffee drinkers being ripped off, or is their habit ripping off
Hong Kong, Oct. 30, 2002: Vendi Arelia (top), an Indonesian, helps launch an Oxfam
campaign to highlight disparities in growers' prices for coffee and the price
consumers pay
(Photo: Antony Dickson/ AFP).
others? The answer is a bit of both. When Lyn Savill sits down for a latte at her
favorite
café, Roasted Addiction, a short hop from her work in Mount Roskill, Auckland, she
resists a
pang, not of thirst but of conscience. Shes aware of the issue of coffee and price and
fairnessan issue paraded by Oxfam protesters leading donkeys laden with sacks of
coffee
to the London Stock Exchange on Wednesdaybut as a mere drinker, well, what can she or
anyone do?
Theres no option. If you enjoy coffee you just have to go with it, says Savill, 32,
who
goes three times a week to cafés. You cant say, Can I have a fair-trade coffee?
They
dont have it.
Oxfams broadside against the perks of big business in a report titled Mugged:
Poverty in
Your Coffee Cup is the latest push in its long campaign to get the worlds four huge
buyers
of coffee beansall multinationals, the biggest of which is Swiss food giant Nestléto
pay
more. Otherwise the prospect looms of 25 million growers starving and many leaving
their
land, and so making a shaky industry shakier.
New Zealands burgeoning number of café owners and coffee bean importers will insist
that
theyre not part of the global squeeze on poor farmers, that theyre paying a high
price for
top- grade coffee. Trade Aid campaign manager Simon Gerathy insists they are a part of
the problem then again he has reason to, since his organization is in the coffee
trade. It
has enlisted Kiwi celebrities, including actor Sam Neill and broadcaster Chris
Laidlaw, to
push its certified fair trade coffee.
Its in the supermarket, though, that the issue really brews down to. Here, the
shopper not
only has little real choice but, according to the Consumers Institute, is paying too
much
even for instant coffee. But Consumers Institute chief executive, David Russell, like
Lyn
Savill, can only shrug about what to do. Were paying far too much for our coffee in
relation to what the grower gets, says Russell.
Its well stitched-up internationally. The only realistic thing that the New Zealand
consumer
can do is stop drinking coffee.
Fat chance of that. New Zealanders are the new Italians of the south. We love coffee,
plowing through 150,000 big bags of green beans a year in cups of the real stuff,
not to
mention piles of instant coffee powder (a lot of which is brought in ready-made from
overseas). But Oxfams research suggests were drinking deep from the cup of inequity.
Developing-country coffee farmers, mostly poor smallholders, now sell their coffee
beans
for much less than they cost to produce, says the report from the British-based aid
agency.
Farmers sell at a heavy loss while branded coffee sells at a hefty profit. The coffee
crisis
has become a development disaster.
It says the big four coffee roasters, Nestlé, Kraft, Procter Gamble, and Sara
Leewhich
with German giant Tchibo buy almost half the worlds coffee beans each yearare making
big profits on coffee brands, each worth US$1 billion or more in annual sales. It
estimates
Nestlés instant-coffee profit margin at 26 percent and Sara Lees at 17 percenthigh
in the
food and drink field.
Oxfam blames primarily a free-market system and poor countries being encouraged by the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund into cash crops like coffee, and away from
traditional agriculture. It is advocating a Coffee Rescue Plan and an international
rescue
meeting in late Sept- ember. Its plan is that roaster companies pay farmers a decent
price
and that stocks of coffee are cut partly by destroying at least 5 million bags. And it
wants
roasters to promise to buy 2 percent of their beans under certified fair trade
conditions.
Nestlé is suggesting the United States and Europe get rid of massive farm subsidies to
make it worthwhile for poor farmers to switch to other crops.
All in all, its enough to make that short black stick in your throat. But wait. As
Oxfam notes,
and this countrys biggest supplier of beans to gourmet roasters, John Burton, is
quick to
reinforce, its instant coffee thats the real problem, not café coffee. You see, a
farmer
producing good-quality coffee is getting a much, much better return, says Burton,
whose
company, John Burton Ltd., imports 30,000 bags of green beans a year and supplies 70
mostly tiny coffee roasters nationwide. But its the farmer producing just the
average, low-
quality grounds that these people
