St. Louis Today
December 2001

Bill Ramsey lives for a good fight.

His name and face have become familiar to many St. Louisans.

He's a guy who takes the unpopular position on many issues, from protesting the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and deportations of undocumented aliens to castigating Washington for not signing the International Criminal Court Treaty and recently confronting Henry Kissinger at Powell Hall over alleged war crimes.

Now he's taken aim at coffee, the world's favorite legal, drinkable drug. On this one, too, he's David aiming his slingshot at Goliath. Coffee is the world's second-largest commodity, after oil. Today, in the worst global coffee market in years, ordinary coffee is selling for 45 cents to 50 cents a pound. Several years ago, it was nearly $2 a pound. To get a grasp of the odds against him, consider that Ramsey is advocating fair-trade coffee, which is set at $1.26 a pound. Organic fair-trade coffee is pegged at $1.41 a pound. Those prices, he said, cover what a family of three in Central America or other coffee-producing areas would need to make a living wage. If coffee prices go back up, fair-trade coffee prices would go up, too.

Ramsey knows he doesn't have Adam Smith's economic self-interest argument on his side, so he hammers away on the moral case: The only reason to buy fair-trade coffee - and pay a bit more -is that it's the right thing to do. The choice has nothing to do with quality or buying organic. It has to do with how the farmers who grow this type of coffee have more control over their land and their labor. "At its base, the argument is there's a dignity to human labor, and it should not be abused," said Ramsey as he sat in his office on the third floor of a house at 438 North Skinker Boulevard. "(Buyers) should not benefit from and use products that are sold at prices and made under conditions that I would not be willing to work."

Creating the market

Fair-trade coffee is one of the ideas that people like Ramsey, who are deeply troubled about the impact of trade on farmers in Third World countries, have hit on to correct what they see as an imbalance between the growers and the chain of buyers that extends all the way up to the coffee drinker. Trouble is, most coffee marketers, from supermarket chains to little corner coffee shops, haven't yet begun to sell fair-trade coffee in sizable quantities, or even to stock it. TransFairUSA, of Oakland, Calif., the independent nonprofit agency that certifies coffee as grown under fair-trade conditions, estimates that it will have certified 8 million to 10 million pounds of coffee in 2001 out of 2.5 billion pounds sold in the United States.

"Our goal is to get 25 million pounds certified by 2005," said Kimberly Easson of TransFairUSA. "That would be 1 percent of the market."

On a Saturday in early December, Ramsey and a core of coffee-drinking fair-traders trooped through several coffee houses in Clayton, University City and the Central West End, as well as the Schnucks supermarket in Richmond Heights.

They asked customers to request fair-trade coffee and retailers to stock it.

"We got a good reception from the (St. Louis) Bread Co. and at Starbucks," said Ramsey. "It's up to us to create the market."

The battle is uphill. Even some big local roasters say they are unaware of fair-trade coffee.

Thomas Charleville, owner of Thomas Coffee Co., a local roaster and distributor, was stumped when asked if he roasted fair-trade coffee.

"What is it?" he asked.

After hearing an explanation, Charleville said, "I do pay a premium, but $1.26 is high. We pay 90 cents to $1 in this market."

Charleville said he buys directly from small growers, many of them in Central America. He said he supports the idea behind fair-trade coffee but cannot pay the extra cost.

"It's a real shame for those farmers," he said. "It's the only crop they have. The commodity has been traded down, and it hurts them."

Schnuck Markets Inc., the area's largest supermarket chain, also has shown no official interest in fair-trade coffee.

"The people we purchase coffee from, like Folgers, don't buy it," said Lori Willis, a Schnuck spokeswoman, who said she had not heard of fair-trade coffee. "We have not sold any, and we have no plans to."

Such unawareness doesn't surprise Robert Batterson of Washington University, who co-authored "The Pros and Cons of Globalization."

Folgers will continue to outsell everyone else, Batterson said. "That being said, the coffee consumer has evolved into a sophisticated buyer. I don't think (fair-trade coffee) will ever be more than a niche market. . . Price wins in the market."

Coffee of the day

Still, one major player is climbing carefully on board. In October, Starbucks Coffee Co., the world's largest roaster and retailer of specialty coffee, began offering fair-trade coffee in its stores in the United States. The company has pledged to buy 1 million pounds of fair-trade coffee over the next 12 to 18 months. Sue Mecklenburg, vice president of business practices, called it "a large commitment for us."

Next spring, Starbucks' company-owned stores will offer fair-trade brew as the "coffee of the day" on the 20th of each month.

"It takes a lot of coffee to do coffee of the day," said Mecklenburg.

The higher price and reluctance of some roasters and retailers don't daunt Ramsey, 53, a draft resister during the Vietnam War and long-time activist for a host of social causes. After all, fair-trade coffee began to catch on in Western Europe about 10 years ago, where it comprises 2 percent to 10 percent of the market. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark lead in its consumption.

Ramsey wants to stir the hearts of at least 10 percent of the coffee drinkers throughout the St. Louis area to order fair-trade coffee at their favorite coffee houses and grocery stores.

"We believe that when we get 10 percent of the socially active people involved in a movement, we will get change," said Ramsey. "You see that in the civil rights movement, and you see that in the women's suffrage movement."

Brewing up fair trade

Howard Lerner and Suzanne Langlois, owners of Kaldi's Coffee House & Market Bakery, 700 De Mun Avenue in Clayton, may be the wedge that Ramsey needs to prove his case.

Lerner said Kaldi's roasted 110,000 pounds of coffee this year and is among the largest roasters of organic coffee in the Midwest. Some of his restaurant customers are requesting more fair-trade coffee; one is brewing only fair-trade coffee from Kaldi's.

Lerner and Langlois even have fair-trade Fridays at their shop, when all they brew is fair-trade coffee.

Still, Lerner looks at the numbers and wonders if his company will be able to sell 5 percent of its annual volume as fair-trade coffee. At current volume, that would be 5,500 pounds - more than Kaldi's sells now.

That's what TransFairUSA requires when a roaster signs up for certification to sell the special coffee.

"We decided to take fair-trade seriously," said Lerner. "Then the market began to plunge," accentuating the price difference.

"But a lot of our customers are politically active," Lerner said, adding that despite the difficulties of agreeing to market fair-trade coffee, "we'll be signing the contract soon."

Working in the coffee market for a few years, as Lerner has, can engender a lot of cynicism.

Still, he said, it makes smart business sense to roast and retail fair-trade coffee, because demand is starting to grow. And he thinks it's the right thing to do, to help small farmers who tend their coffee crops carefully and pick the beans by hand.

That rationale was behind the thinking of a woman in her 20s who bought coffee beans one day recently at Kaldi's.

"A pound of Guatemalan, fair trade, please," she told the manager.

Why fair trade?

"Because the money goes to the farmers who grow the coffee," she said, adding that she had learned about fair-trade coffee by listening to National Public Radio.

While Ramsey is working to get fair-trade coffee established here, he also plans to take on textile and clothing makers and retailers to stir up consumer awareness about working conditions.

He hopes to change the buying patterns of at least 10 percent of us, because it's the right thing to do.