katepost
Member
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# Posted: 20 Oct 2008 08:25
Thank you Sarah for explaining your position in such detail. I admire Starbucks' position of going beyond Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, Sara Lee and the other bulk buyers of coffee. Nevertheless, until I see prominently positioned, transparent information showing the difference between Starbucks Fairly Traded and Transfair/Fair Trade certified purchases per type of coffee in shopfronts and online, I will continue to go to independent coffee shops that sell fair trade certified and organic coffees. Someone has to keep the consumer pressure on for the market to improve conditions for farmers, you see, and if we all just took Starbucks at face value, no one would, giving Starbucks no push to keep improving their practices. As long as there is a gold standard out there, with staff making sure things are transparent and verified, I'll be supporting it. If Starbucks wants to improve their sales position in my Vancouver market by becoming Fair Trade certified, by whatever means they feel economically justifiable, they are welcome to join the front runners. That might involve a cost far smaller than the usual advertising expense, such as making sure that their marketers are able to use the fair trade logo on printed material, perhaps not entirely only viewable from the aid side, as it is a marketing advantage that Starbucks currently doesn't enjoy whatever they and their supporters tell us. Until the day that Starbucks takes on the Fair Trade certification challenge, they are a great second-tier choice.
As in the Olympics, whoever gets the gold gets most of the glory. It would be nice to think that Starbucks isn't going to try to discredit the gold standard out of sour grapes - everyone knows that the poor coffee farmers are not responsible for the prices they are being paid, and that Starbucks holds all of the cards in any interaction, so asking them to work towards the certification on their own when in a potentially rather strict relationship with Starbucks may be quite unrealistic.
However imperfect Starbucks is, I will always avoid buying one of the big four buyers' coffees no matter what! They are truly beyond the pale for destroying the price controls and quotas on coffee. No doubt sheltering under the consumers right to pay less, they are truly at fault in this. Here's to the penetration of cooking from scratch more often in most of North America where the big four dominate processed foods.
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