CRS Fair Trader

Special Edition: The Coffee Issue

It’s that time of year again, the time when we turn our attention exclusively to the one thing many of us just can’t live without: coffee. This year’s special coffee issue of The CRS Fair Trader is loaded with information—everything you ever wanted to know about Fair Trade coffee, and then some! Coffee in general—and Fair Trade coffee in particular—have been in the news a lot lately. We hope that this special issue will help you make sense of what you are hearing in the news, and provide you with some of the resources you need to promote Fair Trade in your community. Please forward this to friends and family who care about the welfare of disadvantaged coffee farmers, and encourage them to support Fair Trade. On behalf of the coffee farmers CRS serves around the world, thank you!

In This Issue:

CRS Holds Inaugural Training Event in GA: Coffee Program partner Café Campesino hosts Fair Trade activists
CRS Fair Trade Coffee Tour Coming to California: CRS-supported farmers from Nicaragua to address Catholic audiences
Fair Trade on PBS: Coffee documentary Black Gold to air nationally April 10.
Farmer-Ownership Offers Unique Benefits: CRS partnership with Café Justo promotes new model
CRS Supports Coffee Activities Overseas: Grants in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua in 2006
Coffee Prices, Part I: Coffee Price Review Update: FLO decides not to increase guaranteed minimum prices or premiums
Coffee Prices, Part II: CRS Partners Setting New Standards: Dialogue-driven decision-making
Coffee Prices, Part III: Beyond Fair Pricing: Knowing the people who grow your coffee: priceless
Ethiopia campaigns for trademarks of coffee names: Starbucks urged to sign licensing agreement
CRS Invites Parishes to Serve Coffee that Serves Others: Parishes challenged to commit to Fair Trade for one year
CRS Convenes "Coffee Summit" in Nicaragua: Staff, partners and affiliated cooperatives gather to discuss strategy
Coffee Resources: Tools for your Fair Trade education and marketing arsenal
Other Fair Trade News: Updates on Fair Trade crafts, chocolate, bananas, soccer balls and more!

CRS Holds Inaugural Training Event in GA

Coffee Program partner Café Campesino hosts Fair Trade activists

Nearly two dozen Fair Trade activists from four dioceses in Georgia and Florida traveled to Americus, GA, in February for a day-long training event organized by the CRS Southeast Regional Office and hosted by Coffee Program partner Café Campesino. On Friday night, participants arrived at the Café Campesino roastery where they were greeted by owners Bill and Lee Harris and Tripp Pomeroy. Over pizza and drinks, Bill and Tripp shared slides from their recent visit with their cooperative partners in Peru and answered questions from the group. Most participants spent the night at Koinonia Farm, and returned early the next morning for a day of Fair Trade education that included a roastery tour, a coffee trading simulation, role plays, presentations, and of course, lots of fantastic coffee. Participants gave the event rave reviews, like these:

"The total session was incredible. I loved the photographs from Peru and the very personal stories from Tripp and Bill."

"I really appreciated the commitment shown by Café Campesino staff. It's inspiring."

"Very well led and organized. The video showing the farmers' story (Solidarity in a Cup) was excellent. Wonderful opportunity to have the roastery as the backdrop."

To organize a Fair Trade training in your area, contact your CRS Regional Office today.

CRS Fair Trade Coffee Tour Coming to California

CRS-supported farmers from Nicaragua to address Catholic audiences

CRS and its partners in Nicaragua have been accompanying farmers from the Aroma del Café cooperative since 2002. In May, two delegates from the cooperative will be coming to California to participate in the annual Specialty Coffee Association of America conference in Long Beach before heading out on a week-long speaking tour that will take them to Los Angeles, San Diego and the Bay Area. Stay tuned to the CRS Fair Trade events calendar for more information on tour dates, times and locations!

Farmer-Ownership Offers Unique Benefits

CRS partnership with Café Justo promotes new model

On New Year’s Day, the CRS Fair Trade Coffee Program announced the addition of two new organizations to its partner network: Nectar of Life and Café Justo. Like many of our other partners, Café Justo is a member of the Fair Trade Federation. It is also a farmer-owned enterprise.

Café Justo is a cooperative of small-scale coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, who bought a coffee roaster and launched their innovative company with a loan from Frontera de Cristo, a bi-national border ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and Mexico. Café Justo ships its green coffee overland from Chiapas to its roastery on the U.S.-Mexico border at Agua Prieta, Sonora. There the coffee is roasted and packaged before being trucked across the border to Douglas, AZ, for distribution through networks of volunteer supporters throughout the Southwest, mostly in religious congregations. When you purchase coffee from Café Justo, the farmers keep the whole amount, not just the guaranteed Fair Trade minimum price. (See news items below for more information on Fair Trade minimum prices.) With the profits from their sales, Café Justo has purchased another roaster at Tijuana, Baja California del Norte. With support from CRS/Mexico and the CRS Fair Trade Fund, Café Justo has created the Just Trade Center, which works to replicate the Café Justo experience at a half-dozen sites along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Read more about Café Justo and the Just Trade Center.

CRS Supports Coffee Cooperatives Overseas

Important advances in 2006 in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua

Here in the United States, CRS promotes Fair Trade coffee in partnership with 16 Fair Trade coffee companies. Overseas, CRS provides credit and technical assistance in a variety of areas to coffee cooperatives in places like Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua. Highlights from 2006 include: the sale of a full container of certified organic, Fair Trade Certified coffee by the CRS-supported Aroma del Café cooperative to several of the coffee companies we partner with in the United States; a grant to support the first-ever Fair Trade Cup of Coffee competition in Bolivia and support for domestic coffee marketing in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Look out for new profiles of CRS coffee work in Uganda and Viet Nam at www.crsfairtrade.org beginning in September.

Coffee Prices, Part I: Coffee Pricing System Revised

FLO increases premiums, price review continues

The Fair Trade Labelling Organizations (FLO), International, is an umbrella organization that sets the standards for all Fair Trade Certified products. In the coffee sector, FLO standards guarantee that buyers of Fair Trade Certified coffee pay small-scale farmer cooperatives a minimum price for their coffee ($1.21 per pound) as well as a "social premium" ($0.05 per pound). Cooperative members vote on how to use the social premium, which is generally invested in community-based social infrastructure. Cooperatives selling certified organic coffee are entitled to an additional organic premium ($0.15 per pound).

FLO announced in March that it will implement five-cent-per-pound increases in both the social premium and the organic differential as of June 1. The net impact of this shift will be to increase the amounts paid to coffee cooperatives from $1.26 per pound for conventionally grown coffee and $1.41 for certified organic coffee to $1.31 and $1.51, respectively.

FLO's announcement is part of a coffee price review that was initiated at the behest of Fair Trade coffee farmers and supported by a wide range of Fair Trade allies, including CRS. FLO also committed in its March release to complete its ongoing price review and present a proposal on the minimum coffee price of $1.21 per pound by September 2007. Stay tuned to crsfairtrade.org for updates on this evolving situation.

Meantime, download our Coffee Pricing Review Backgrounder for information on this process.

Coffee Prices, Part II: CRS Partners Setting New Standards for Fair Pricing

Dialogue-driven decision-making

FLO may establish the official standards for Fair Trade Certification, but the companies that participate in our Coffee Program are setting new standards for fairness in their relationships with farming cooperatives.

Eight of the companies that participate in the CRS Coffee Program (Café Campesino, Coffee Exchange, Dean’s Beans, Higher Grounds, Just Coffee, Larry’s Beans, Peace Coffee and Pura Vida Coffee) are members of Cooperative Coffees, a network of more than 20 companies that buys exclusively Fair Trade coffee. In 2005, after hearing from its partners overseas that FLO’s guaranteed minimums were not enough to ensure that farmers could live with dignity, Cooperative Coffees moved unilaterally to raise its minimum prices. In 2006, in consultation with its farmer partners, Cooperative Coffees again raised its prices. At present, it pays at least $1.56 per pound for certified organic coffee—15 cents higher than FLO’s current guaranteed minimum and five cents higher than the increased rate that will take effect on June 1.

Three of our other partners—Beans for Better Life, Earth Friendly Coffee and Providence Coffee—have also paid CRS-supported farmers prices above the guaranteed Fair Trade minimum for their coffee. (Beans for Better Life also contributes 10 percent of its gross profits back to farmer coops.)

CRS is proud to work with companies that are putting farmers first and leading by example on the issue of fair pricing.

Coffee Prices, Part III: Beyond Fair Pricing

Knowing the people who grow your coffee: Priceless

One round-trip ticket to Ethiopia: $1,500.

A fair price for coffee farmers: $1.56 per pound.

Knowing the people who grow your coffee: Priceless.

Much of the conversation regarding Fair Trade in general—and Fair Trade coffee, in particular—revolves around the issue of fair pricing. There is good reason for that. The guarantee of a fair minimum price is one of the most distinctive elements of the Fair Trade model. In a globalized economy in which buyers are able, quite literally, to conduct a worldwide search for the lowest possible prices, minimum price guarantees constitute a significant departure from conventional trading practices.

But fair pricing is only one of a whole range of measures designed to make the coffee trade more equitable. These include improving organizational capacity, achieving economies of scale, establishing better negotiating positions, offering access to credit and, perhaps most importantly, building direct relationships with coffee companies interested in buying coffee on Fair Trade terms. From our perspective, right relationships between coffee farmers and coffee companies are what underpins the whole Fair Trade system.

Fair Trade coffee companies like the ones that participate in the CRS Coffee Program are in direct relationships with coffee cooperatives that respect the human dignity of their members. From this core commitment to mutually respectful, mutually beneficial, or "right" relationships come a whole series of related commitments that help to restructure trading relationships—commitments that include but are not limited to paying a fair price.

Ethiopia campaigns for trademarks of geographic names

Starbucks urged to sign licensing agreement

The Ethiopian government launched a campaign last fall, with the support of Oxfam America, to persuade Starbucks to sign an agreement recognizing the government’s ownership over the names of the country’s coffee-growing regions. This initiative represents the latest development in Ethiopia’s complicated, multi-year campaign to trademark and control the wealth created by the names of its coffee growing regions—Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and Harrar. Their extraordinary reputations enable U.S. coffee companies to charge premium prices for Ethiopian coffee.

To date, Ethiopia has succeeded in trademarking "Yirgacheffe," but its applications for trademarks on Harrar and Sidamo are still in process, the latter rejected by U.S. authorities based in large measure on a related claim filed by Starbucks to trademark the term "Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo." Starbucks, which has refused to sign any agreement with Ethiopia, has suggested that the trademark approach is ill-conceived, and believes that an appellation system similar to the one used to verify the origin of wine is better-suited to Ethiopia’s purposes.

Although the campaign has focused primarily on Starbucks, several companies that participate in the CRS Fair Trade Coffee Program were among the very first to voluntarily sign a licensing agreement with the government of Ethiopia, including Café Campesino, Coffee Exchange, Higher Grounds, Just Coffee and Larry’s Beans.

For more information about this issue:

Visit Oxfam’s Ethiopia campaign page.

Read Starbucks press releases.

Watch the dueling videos on YouTube:

Oxfam’s Starbucks Day of Action,

Starbucks talks about coffee farmers in Africa, and

The Ethiopia Fine Coffee Campaign’s "Why Trademarks Matter to Ethiopia."

Listen to a 30-minute segment on this issue that aired on Corporate Watchdog Radio featuring Oxfam Coffee Campaign Manager Seth Petchers and Dean Cycon, founder of CRS Fair Trade Program partner Dean’s Beans. (Starbucks declined to participate in the program.)

After you have done your homework, write us at coffee@crs.org to tell us what YOU think.

CRS Invites All U.S. Parishes to Serve Coffee that Serves Others

Parishes challenged to commit to Fair Trade for one year

Shortly after the New Year, CRS Fair Trade sent more than 15,000 letters urging every Catholic parish in the United States to "serve coffee that serves others." We know it can be very hard for Fair Trade supporters like you to convince parish leaders to spend more on coffee when there are so many other needs in our communities, but we think that the collective decision to invest in Fair Trade coffee is a powerful way for us to demonstrate our commitment to live in solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world. That’s why we included in our mailing a copy of our parish reflection guide entitled "Put your money where your heart is." This resource is designed to help parish decision-makers see Fair Trade coffee more as an opportunity to act out the values of our faith than a drain on parish resources, and to identify creative ways to defray the additional costs of Fair Trade coffee. In closing, the resource challenges parishes to commit to serve Fair Trade coffee for one year. We hope that this resource is helpful, and we thank you for everything you do to ensure that Catholic communities across the United States serve coffee that serves others.

CRS Convenes "Coffee Summit" in Nicaragua

Staff, partners and affiliated cooperatives gather to discuss strategy

CRS supports coffee cooperatives throughout Mexico and Central America. In February, CRS staff and partners in gathered in Nicaragua with representatives from the coffee cooperatives we support throughout the region for a week of coffee talk. The event allowed participants to exchange information about their experiences in the coffee sector and innovative practices that may be adopted more broadly throughout the region. It also featured presentations by coffee industry experts, a field visit to the CRS coffee project in Nicaragua, and a coffee cupping competition involving coffee from each of the cooperatives represented at the event. The participation of CRS staff and partners from the United States helped to ensure that our colleagues and allies overseas are aware that we are working hard to build a solidarity-based economy that respects the dignity and quality of their work, and helps us to keep you informed about what is happening on the ground in coffee-growing communities around the world.

Coffee Resources

"Solidarity in a Cup," the CRS Fair Trade Coffee CD
Order the CRS Fair Trade Program’s 15-minute educational CD.

Navigate the Crowded Coffee Market
View the CRS Coffee Map online.

See Where Coffee Comes From
Take the CRS Coffee Tour online.

Your Fair Trade Dollars at Work
See how your purchases helped CRS support coffee farmers in Bolivia.

Fair Trade Coffee in the Classroom
Download "The Coffee Trader" a Fair Trade coffee simulation.

There’s More!
The CRS Fair Trade Resource Center offers lots more resources you can download directly from your computer, and others you can order free of charge.

Other Fair Trade News

Coming Soon: Fair Trade coffee from India!

Naren Sonpal, owner of CRS Coffee Program partner Coffee-Tea-Etc., just returned from Andhra Pradesh in India, where he is working in the Araku Valley to support the application of several ethnic tribes for Fair Trade Certification. Naren notes that this effort parallels a similar initiative undertaken by cooperatives in Kerala, and that both applications for Fair Trade Certification have met with initial expressions of support by the certification authorities. In sum, look out for Fair Trade Certified coffee from India—it’s coming soon to a coffee company near you!

Order Easter items today!

Dark chocolate Divine Easter eggs and hand-woven baskets from the Philippines are just some of the Fair Trade offerings this special time of year. Order chocolate and crafts right away to make sure you are ready to fill spring with the special joy of economic justice.

Host a Spring sale!

The spring/summer Fair Trade crafts catalogs have arrived, featuring brand new products such as natural cotton yarn and meaningful seasonal items like the "Last Supper" batik. Now is the time to plan for a spring Work of Human Hands sale. Form a volunteer committee, enlist the support of your CRS Regional Office, and promote economic justice in your community while offering beautiful and unique crafts made by disadvantaged artisans.

Choose educational fundraising for your school

Students are often asked to help raise needed funds for school projects. Raise Money Right offers an ethical fundraising option that easily relates to Catholic Social Teaching. Fit one more fundraising drive in before the summer, or start planning now to Include Divine Fair Trade chocolate in your school’s fundraising for 2007-2008.

Beyond Coffee and Chocolate and Crafts

The Fair Trade marketplace is getting crowded! Friends of CRS Fair Trade have recently launched Fair Trade companies that sell bananas and sports balls—we encourage you to support these exciting new enterprises.

Bananas

Oké USA is the country’s first farmer-owned Fair Trade banana company. Our friends at Oké USA have been kind enough to donate Fair Trade bananas to dip in a Divine Fair Trade chocolate fountain at the National Catholic Educational Association convention in Baltimore in April. (If you are going to NCEA this year, look for us at Taste of Baltimore on Tuesday night!)

Sport Balls & Gear

Our friends at Fair Trade Sports, meanwhile, have donated Fair Trade Sports packs to the winners of our Raise Money Right chocolate contests and were instrumental in supporting the first-ever Fair Trade Wallyball Tournament at Cabrini College in Pennsylvania. See images from the event.