Boston Globe
May 20, 2001
By Sarah Tomlinson

Americans spend $18 billion a year on the 450 million cups of coffee they buy daily, while the average coffee farmer abroad earns less than $3 a day, according to the Boston-based poverty relief organization Oxfam.

That is what 50 students learned at a recent Boston University teach-in about Fair Trade coffee, whose goal is to help coffee farmer cooperatives abroad sell directly to coffee importers for a guaranteed fair price per pound.

Coordinated by the BU Fair Trade Coalition, the coffee event was one in a weeklong series of teach-ins at Boston University, Harvard, Hampshire, UMass/Amherst, and the University of Vermont.

Coffee drinkers can relate. Yesterday, the region's popular coffee spots, Peet's, Starbucks and Borders Cafe, brewed Fair Trade coffee for consumers to sample. In fact, May 19 was a national Fair Trade coffee day.

Shayna Harris, a BU sophomore who helped found the university's Fair Trade Coalition after she was an intern at Oxfam, explained to students how Fair Trade relates to larger world issues.

"This is an integral part of the philosophy of Oxfam," she said. "Fair Trade builds a sustainable future for producers by paying them a fair price for their product."

In an interview after the event, Harris explained that other campus organizations already addressed sweatshops, the environment and globalization. The coffee movement has drawn backing from these groups.

She also believes coffee is easy for students to champion because they consume so much of it. "Coffee is a positive way students can react to these issues," she said.

The switch to Fair Trade occurred because of student petitions and talks with the university's dining services, and the coalition hopes that eventually all coffee served on campus will be Fair Trade.

Beyond campuses, the Fair Trade Coffee Campaign is part of the Fair Trade movement, which has been vocal in Europe for over a decade. Since the 1980s, Canton-based Equal Exchange has championed Fair Trade coffee, which became a national cause in the last two years.

Ninety coffee companies, including Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, carry Fair Trade coffee. The coffee can be identified by a Fair Trade Certified seal, indicating the cooperative and importer were certified by the nonprofit organization TransFair USA, and that those farmers received the Fair Trade price of $1.26 per pound, or $1.41 per pound for organic coffee.

Coffee's current market price is 60 cents per pound, and the average price farmers receive when their coffee is sold to a middleman rather than Fair Trade importer is $.38 per pound, according to Fair Trade data.