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pedrulo
Member
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# Posted: 19 Oct 2006 19:46
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Hi. I'm a starbucks partner working in London. We got a e-mail from the head office saying that this film is wrong, Paul Kimberley, vp of operation of Starbucks in uk told us:
"As you may be aware, a new film is due to receive its premiere at the London Film Festival and other locations in the coming moth. Black gold portrays the coffee industry as a whole, rather than starbucks specifically.
Starbucks feels that film is inaccurate and incomplete, as it does not explain how Starbucks purchases coffe, no does it provide any reference to potential solutions to the world coffee crisis.
Starbucks takes an integrated approach to coffee purchasing. Our goal is to pay premium praices that provide the coffee farmers with a profit. In our financial year 2005, we paid an average price of $1.28 per pound for our coffee, 23% above the commodity price and comparable with the guaranteed Fairtrade price of $1.26".
So who is right? Starbucks or the film?
Thanks for you answers
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Trade Aid
Member
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# Posted: 20 Oct 2006 22:13 - Edited by: Trade Aid
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Hi Pedrulo,
Unfortunately, neither you nor your boss are making any serious attempt here to set the record straight on exactly how Starbucks DOES buy its coffee, or how the price of $1.28 quoted in your release relates to any other prices you see fit to quote. If I understand correctly, Starbucks does not buy directly from co-operatives but buys instead through other middlemen (as was illustrated in the movie during the auction scene) who are clearly taking a cut - leaving less for producers. Your use of the $1.26 figure as the 'guaranteed' certified fair trade is also misleading; this is a minimum figure for non-organic coffee and in reality many of us are paying significantly more than this.
I feel it ironic that your boss should come away from Black Gold feeling it fails to point to solutions to the coffee crisis. While the movie goes to some lengths to illustrate the benefits Ethiopian coffee communities are starting to see from trading with supportive fair trade organisations, Mr Kimberley sees fit to both challenge the impact of genuine fair trade, and at the same time to overstate the comparatively modest efforts his own company is making towards addressing coffee farmers' needs. What sort of solution is this?
Justin Purser
Coffee Manager
Trade Aid
New Zealand
www.tradeaid.org.nz
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green la girl
Member
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# Posted: 26 Oct 2006 03:37
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Hey Pedrulo --
I really appreciate your efforts to learn more about this issue, instead of just buying Starbucks' word / press release.
As an activist who's been trying to get Starbucks to take a bigger step in making the coffee trade fair and equitable, I have to say that Black Gold's perspective is certainly more honest than Starbucks'.
As Justin's pointed out, while Starbucks does pay $1.26 for its coffee, Starbucks also obfuscates the situation by never clarifying WHO it pays that sum to. As you can imagine, the $1.28 does NOT go to the farmer co-ops.
This is not to say that there aren't "worse" corporations than Starbucks. In fact, the big four -- Sara Lee, P&G, Nestle, and Kraft -- are clearly working TO perpetuate the coffee crisis. Starbucks, since it's at least trying to work in the specialty coffee sector, is not as "bad" as these 4 assholes.
But -- as we all know -- Starbucks has been expanding at an extremely rapid rate. And while the corp pays lipservice to fair trade practices, these practices are hardly carried through in the corp's overall coffee purchases.
What really needs to happen is that Starbucks actually commit to buying more fair trade certified coffee. This is really the only way that we can get a corporation to get a nonprofit, 3rd party certification about its coffee buying practices. Starbucks' own CAFE practices, which are basically Starbucks-made, watered-down standards, are not going to cut it. And those of us who care have to let the corp know that we must have RELIABLE THIRD PARTY CERTIFICATION for the coffee we buy.
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Jamie
Member
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# Posted: 26 Oct 2006 10:11 - Edited by: Jamie
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and an extra 23% on top of peanuts is still going to be peanuts in real terms. there's also this article about starbucks bloking ethiopia's attempts to copyright their coffee trade names - it would be interesting to hear what's being said internally about this.
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Phil Smith
Member
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# Posted: 1 Nov 2006 16:48
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Pedrulo, thanks for sharing this. Although I haven't yet seen the film, as an employee of Traidcraft (one of the fair trade good boys) I would just like to add one thing. It is unfair of Starbucks to simply make a comparison to fair trade on pricing. Pricing is only one of the criteria that qualifies a product as fair trade, in addition a product must meet other criteria and buyers must make other guarantees.
I agree that Starbucks aren't the worst, but the thing is there publicity suggests they're one of the best.
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Phil Smith
Member
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# Posted: 1 Nov 2006 16:51
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Pedrulo, thanks for sharing this. Although I haven't yet seen the film, as an employee of Traidcraft (one of the fair trade good boys) I would just like to add one thing. It is unfair of Starbucks to simply make a comparison to fair trade on pricing. Pricing is only one of the criteria that qualifies a product as fair trade, in addition a product must meet other criteria and buyers must make other guarantees.
I agree that Starbucks aren't the worst, but the thing is there publicity suggests they're one of the best.
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martin
Member
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# Posted: 7 Nov 2006 03:05
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I hope starbucks or any other company does not deal with the government or its agencies in Ethiopia as they are becoming the biggest problem Ethiopia or the coffee farmers have - Any money that flows to the country is currently being used to kill and haras citizens - Must fix the process and find ways how farmers will actually beneit - not penny to farmers, dollars to the government who is killing them in every other way.
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melanie77
Member
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# Posted: 8 Nov 2006 19:44
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http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id= 713
I found this web address to be very informative, as I do believe that people should look to both sides of an issue. I enjoyed this film and thought it was well done, but thought that it was unfairly focused on Starbucks, where as the other 4 much larger corporations that are briefly mentioned in the film are more deserving of blame. Starbucks deserves some recognition for what it has done so far in coffee growing countries around the world, all of which can be read about on their website. This film is a story that needed to be told, and I hope it will lead to more purchasing of fair trade throughout Africa.
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mutz
Member
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# Posted: 11 Nov 2006 08:42
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To Melanie.
As somebody that worked for advertising agency's i just smell something on the page you mentioned... marketeers. Alot of multinationals know that more and more people start to think about ethics in the worldtrade so they want to show themselves off as ethical. Everyone can make up some nice press release text, they got people payed for doing that. Africa and other 3th world countries are milked by the big corporations who's only interest is to keep the shareholders satisfied and what are we giving back? Some ships with subsidised grain. Just look at chiquita with their rainforest alliance label and check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest_Alliance
Don't fall into the trap of the PR-talk
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Charli
Member
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# Posted: 12 Nov 2006 12:01
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Dear Pedrulo.
Thank you for your insight into the internal communication of Starbucks over this film.
As Jamie mentioned, it would be great to see what starbucks email regarding the ETHIOPEAN TRADEMARK and OXFAM's accusations read!
Could you once again aid the transparency?!
many thanks
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Chris
Member
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# Posted: 17 Nov 2006 19:37
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I don't directly work in the coffee market but my understanding is that coffee is a commodity and as such, is traded in a free market exchange in New York. In a free market of supply and demand, a commodity is worth only as much as a buyer is willing to pay. I think the key here is how to make the product (in this case coffee) a non-commodity. Jamaica coffee is an example of this. They have been able to sell their product and demand (and get) more then 10x the "C" market price in New York.
Beyond this, anything above the "C" price + differential will simply be a donation.
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bagpuss
Member
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2006 22:21
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Altohugh i was on holiday so missed the email i have been doing some research myself tonight and thought i'd set a few things straight.
Firslty that starbuck denys telling teh NCA to block teh Ethiopian trademark also the NCA denys it was starbucks who asked the to block it. It is also worth mentioning teh teh ICA (international coffee assosiation) estimates that the benifit to farmers would be considerably less than the $60 million quoted by oxfam.
Also as Phil owrks for tradecraft i am sure he knows all about the fair trade certificate and realises that the certificate takes 5 years to obtain and is done so at the farmers time and expense. I am sure you are also aware that the fair trade certificate is only avaidable to small family run farms.
Starbucks is licensed to sell fair trade certified products in more countries than any other company. It is also one of the worlds biggest buyers of fair trade buying around 10% of the worlds supply however this makes only 2% of it's total coffee purchase. Why isn't starbucks 100% fair trade- you do the maths.
Also starbucks is introducing transparency clauses into its coffee contracts which go further than those of fair trade by demanding proof that everyone form mill owner to farm labourer is getting a fair wage.
Not to mention the $6 million starbucks gives to independant organisations for farmer loans in order to allow any farmer (not jsut the ones they trade with) to develop there farm or wait longer untill the crop is harvested (this produces better coffee and can therefor earn farmers a better wage)
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SauceMonster
Member
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# Posted: 29 Nov 2006 05:48
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Blah blah blah!!
Everyone is babbling on about things they have no idea about. What's important here?!?! The farmers and how your coffee tastes!! Does "FAIR TRADE" coffee help the farmer? YES! Somewhat anyways. The problem with fair trade coffee is that it doesn't really represent quality. Why should any company including Starbucks or any coffee company purchase more fair trade coffee if it sucks.
I'm not arguing that we don't pay enough to the farmers i'm just arguing that purchasing fair trade isn't the solution either. People have many choices but don't use them, many small farms I've visited in Costa Rica have set up sites where there coffee can be bought directly from them.
So save the planet. Make these farmers rich and buy from them and put all the mighty and all-powerful Starbucks Baristas out of work. The change can be made now. I lived in Costa Rica for awhile and one of my students family had a coffee farm. He delt with Starbucks and had nothing but positive things to say about this evil empire.
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RobertHull
Member
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# Posted: 17 Sep 2007 08:21
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I'm not sure why SauceMonster has such a down on Starbucks. It's 2% spend on Fair Trade, whilst laughably small is still better that the predatory giants such as Nestle, Kraft et al.
As for his argument that Fair Trade coffee is not good quality doesn't hold water. There is a lot more unfair trade coffee that is poor quality. The point is that the manner of purchasing coffee (or any other item) is not what determines its quality.
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