Portland (ME) Press Herald
December 17, 2001
By John Richardson

In Guatemala, coffee farmers get about 50 cents for each pound of their beans. It's not even enough to stay in business, let alone feed their families. In the coffee aisle of Shaw's at the Westgate plaza on Friday, Marion Golden decided to do something about it. She put back the can of coffee she usually buys and filled a bag with Fair Trade beans -- French roast. "I knew about this," she said. "But I didn't know you could go to the grocery store and buy it." Portland has become a promising market for one of the newest trends in java. It's called Fair Trade coffee, and buying it guarantees that the farmer who grew the beans got a living wage out of the deal.

The Fair Trade movement began in Europe and is quickly growing in the United States. A Fair Trade stamp certifies that coffee was bought directly from a family farm cooperative for at least $1.26 a pound -- $1.41 if it's organic. Promoters are pushing Fair Trade coffee harder than ever now. The international commodity price of coffee beans has hit historic lows -- dropping from about $1.50 a pound to 50 cents in the last few years -- because of new coffee production in Vietnam that has flooded the global market. The glut means family farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia can earn less in one day than the price of a cup of gourmet coffee in Portland. "Coffee farmers across the board are making much lower than their production costs, which is about 90 cents a pound," said Virginia Berman, a spokeswoman for Equal Exchange, the leading local promoter and supplier of Fair Trade coffee.

Rick Peyser of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters said he saw the impact of the glut during a recent trip to Mexico. "Farmers were leaving their coffee, leaving their families and their communities, going to the city or to the United States to find jobs," he said. "It's really having an impact, not just on the farmers but their communities. ... The fair trade premium is allowing many of these families to stay on the farms."

Despite the glut, there's been little, if any, change in the retail price of coffee. "All of the profits are staying in the hands of those who have the control, which is the importers in the U.S. and the sellers," Berman said. "There's a lot of profit." Equal Exchange, based in Canton, Mass., is a combination activist agency and for-profit company that sells only Fair Trade coffee. Its organic coffees sell for $8.99 a pound at Shaw's. But other coffee roasters, including Green Mountain and Starbucks, have begun to sell Fair Trade coffees and are seeing a growing demand. Downeast Coffee in Portland is roasting a new product it calls Eco Preserve, which it says provides decent wages and other benefits to rural coffee farmers.

David Marshall promotes Equal Exchange coffees by waiting for java drinkers in Shaw's stores in Portland and telling them about struggling farmers in Latin America. "It's weird. It's a grass-roots political movement that's starting in the grocery store aisles," he said. "When people find out, they usually respond pretty well. Then it comes down to: Are they willing to spend about 50 cents more for a pound?" Marshall used to serve coffee at Java Joe's in Portland, a former Exchange Street cafe that only served Equal Exchange. The popularity of that coffee house helped build the movement in Portland. Now, Equal Exchange says it is better established in Portland than any other city its size. Several churches around Portland also serve its coffee. Marion Golden used to go to Java Joe's before it was sold. She knew all about the plight of coffee farmers, but didn't know she could brew her own Fair Trade coffee. Her conscience cleared Friday as she pushed her cart out of the coffee aisle with the Equal Exchange French roast. "I'll go home and make myself a cup of that," she said.