Santa Cruz Sentinel
February 28, 2001
By Ramona Turner

You can buy coffee all over town, but not every place sells coffee with a conscience.

The Fair Trade coffee movement is catching on in Santa Cruz County, in an attempt to give Third World farmers a living wage for the coffee beans they grow.

The folks behind that push include humanitarian organizations and coffee sellers. Even though this article focuses on coffee, there are other products sold under the Fair Trade logo, including: organic chocolate, embroidery from Bangladesh, silver jewelry from Chile, stone carvings from Kenya.

Local coffee houses support the cause in their own way. Some, like Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Co., have devoted their entire inventory to Fair Trade Organic Coffee. Others, like Starbucks, offer customers a choice from both worlds, making Fair Trade coffee available upon request.

Fair Trade is on the menu but not on display because a new product campaign has begun, a Starbucks employee said.

Jose Torres of the Coffee Bean in Watsonville has been selling organic Fair Trade coffee for two years.

"We were able to meet a few Fair Trade growers at a coffee conference in San Francisco last year," he said. "They told us that there's been quite a positive impact from Fair Trade on their families.

"But some coffeehouses have raised their prices to offset the increased cost of providing Fair Trade coffee. I hope that coffeehouses will stop that to increase interest in Fair Trade."

Colleen Crosby, who co-owns the Santa Cruz and Aptos Coffee Roasting Companies, has given her full support to the Fair Trade effort after she recently traveled to Central America to meet the farmers who produce the coffee she sells.

Crosby said she witnessed "extreme poverty" during her travels. The farmers and their families had no education, no health care, faced starvation daily and lived in makeshift homes with mud floors and aluminum outhouses.

Crosby's shops are not passing the added cost of buying Fair Trade coffees to their customers.

"We are absorbing all cost," she said, adding that Fair Trade is important "because of the difference it makes in the life of the small farmer."

"In the free trade market and the Fair Trade market, it's the same coffee," Crosby said. "But the money the farmers receive in the free market is less than the cost of producing their goods. Then extreme poverty occurs. The product hasn't changed. Just the pricing has changed. The only difference is that we're starting to care about the quality of life behind the coffee."

The clientele at Shopper's Corner in Santa Cruz is quite aware of the farmers' plight, and the store's slightly higher price for Fair Trade coffee doesn't seem to hinder sales.

"We charge the straight markup," said Dennis Sweet, night manager. "The vendor charges us roughly 10 percent more for Fair Trade coffee. The retail is $6.99 (for 12 ounces of regular Fair Trade coffee) and $8.39 for decaffeinated. Other (non-Fair Trade) popular coffees cost $6.39. So yeah, that's about 10 percent. We have to pass that along."

Some Fair Trade coffee sellers question whether the program can work.

"This is still really new to us," said Garth Tosello, owner of Corralitos Coffee Court in Watsonville. "I don't know if it'll solve the problems of the people in those countries, but it's a start."

Others are determined to make the program work and insist it will as long as consumers are given an incentive.

"The cost difference between organic and conventional coffee is not that great," said Dave Larkin of the Coffeetopia shop on Mission Street in Santa Cruz. "You want to make it as easy as possible, whether through education or pricing, for people to make the right choices."