Trent prof looks for a fair cup of Joe

from Lindsay This Week

Author: Lauren Gilchrist

If switching to a different brand of coffee could drastically improve the lives of your neighbours right across the street, would you change?

What if those neighbours were actually in Mexico, or Guatemala, would you still make the switch?

Gavin Fridell doesn't believe people are greedy, selfish, or uncaring by nature. They just get on with their daily lives, which often means shuffling up to the counter each morning at the most familiar, and most advertised, coffee shop.

He says there are many complex reasons why people choose to drink conventional brands of coffee over fair trade coffee even though that choice is keeping thousands of people around the world in poverty.

On a very basic level people lead incredibly busy lives and are over-saturated with corporate advertising, he explains.

"I believe people have the potential to care about each other," he says.
"Fair trade coffee encourages us to think about other people when we are buying certain products. If you buy fair trade coffee you are directly improving the lives of poor coffee farmers in the south."

Mr. Fridell is an assistant professor in the politics department at Trent University.
On Thursday (March 15) Prof. Fridell was at York University in Toronto to launch his first book entitled Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Drive Social Justice. His book examines the broader political-economic and historically-rooted structures that stop the spread of fair trade coffee to all coffee growers.

"Fair trade coffee is extraordinary. Although some coffee growers are experiencing the benefits of fair pricing, the lion's share of coffee growers remain obstructed from ever benefiting in the same way due to entrenched power structures in the coffee industry," he explains.

Prof. Fridell says large, famous coffee companies receive 100 per cent of the publicity when only 2 per cent of their coffee products are fair trade.
"It is very trendy for people in the north to consume fair trade coffee but for the producers in the south it's life or death."

There are 700,000 coffee-producing families around the world who are part of the fair trade registry. Prof. Fridell says that might sound like a lot, but there are some 25 million coffee-producing families across the globe.

The idea for Prof. Fridell's book came from his PhD dissertation where he examined issues of fair trade coffee. A couple of years ago he spent a few months in Oaxaca, a Mexican State that has fair trade coffee co-operatives. Because they are farming fair trade coffee, Oaxaca was able to build its own small hospital, offer some dental care and construct a school. The co-operative is also building its own bus system along dirt roads.

With fair trade coffee the farmer often produces their own coffee and processes it locally. This means more money stays in their hands and in their village.

One of the problems with conventional coffee is that more people are involved in the chain of events that gets the coffee from the fields to your hands. The farmers lose a little bit of money at each step along the way.

"Everybody takes a piece," he explains.
Prof. Fridell says there are ways people can make a difference. Locally, that means buying coffee certified as fair trade.

"It's actually very easy nowadays," he says.
Here in Peterborough, Dreams of Beans on Hunter Street West and Haaseltons Coffee and Sweets on George Street offers certain types of fair trade coffee.

"We sell as much of it as we can and also rainforest coffee," says Joe Stable, manager of Dream of Beans.

"Some countries are not set up for fair trade. But we have a very good selection of fair trade and organic coffee. We get it from all over the world."

Mr. Stable says one reason why more coffee shops don't sell fair trade coffee is because it costs the business more.

"There's a lot of people who just don't care about coffee."
Mr. Stable says large companies often buy lower grade beans that are chipped and broken because they order them in such large quantities.

"We have integrity in what we sell," he says, noting that a better grade, fair trade bean, has more flavour and aroma.

On a large scale, Prof. Fridell says people need to start thinking big and about the political decisions each person makes. He says Canadians in general believe in a basic standard of living for themselves and for their fellow neighbours.

"But there should be good environmental standards and good standards of living for everybody. People think that's not possible but it's very possible. The political will is not there to do it."