CRS Fair Trade News

During the opening ceremony of the 2008 SCAA in Minneapolis, MN, Bill Fishbein, owner of CRS coffee partner Coffee Exchange and founder of Coffee Kids, made a presentation on the 20^th anniversary of Coffee Kids, an organization which helps coffee-growing families improve the quality of their lives. He made the simple but challenging statement that he loved coffee and wouldn’t want to make his living any other way, but not at any one else’s expense.

The theme of this year’s Specialty Coffee Association of America conference is Roots. And while the Specialty Coffee companies have always prided themselves on the quality of the coffee they serve, this year the conference focused on the fact that without strong roots nothing will thrive. If we aren’t paying attention to the communities in which the coffee itself is rooted in, it’s doesn’t matter how well you roast, package and market the coffee, the entire industry will suffer.

In many ways, the roots of the coffee industry, the coffee farmers themselves, are suffering- from increasing costs of production due to higher petroleum prices, to food insecurity caused by profits that don’t last the year long, and an unpredictable environment from climate change that threatens their coffee crops and the overall coffee supply.

However, the Specialty Coffee Industry recognizes its role as a progressive force and role model for the entire coffee industry. The buzz word for the conference was sustainability. If coffee isn’t a sustainable crop or a part of a sustainable livelihood for farmers, then it isn’t a sustainable industry in the United States. For those of you addicted to that morning cup of coffee, it’s a scary thought. Bill’s statement isn’t just a challenge to the coffee industry to rethink its relationship with farmers, it’s also a challenge for us to consider at who’s expense am I able to have my morning cup of coffee.

So how can we enjoy that morning cup of coffee and know that it didn’t get there at any one else’s expense? Well, if you’ve read this blog before, you know what I’m going to say. Buy your coffee from one of our ‘fully committed to Fair Trade’ partners. Ok, yes that’s true. But, another speaker during the opening ceremony, Michael Shuman, gave me a whole new appreciation for our partners and how they promote economic justice overseas and in their own communities. Shuman is the author of The Small-Mart Revolution and part of his presentation showed how these small companies are a benefit to their local communities. In fact, locally owned companies make up at least 58% of the U. S. economy. They tend to pay their employees better than larger out-of-town firms. They also tend to funnel more money into the local economy by using local services, like lawyers, accountants, and in the case of coffee and cafes, let’s use the example of maybe purchasing milk from a local dairy. They are essential to the health of our communities.

CRS Fair Trade partners and allies gather for lunch at SCAA.

Within the CRS Fair Trade program, we have 17 coffee partners rooted in their own localities, making decisions that benefit their community in the United States. They also choose to sell only Fair Trade products which have a positive impact in coffee growing communities in many ways, one of which being that coffee cooperatives are democratically run and are able to make decisions in the best interest of their members. It’s like a double shot of subsidiarity! When folks are able to make decisions that have the most benefit for their communities we’re getting much closer to a cup of coffee in your hands that didn’t arrive at anyone’s expense.

The highlight at SCAA was not a presentation, but it was sitting down with all of our partners and allies that were able to attend SCAA at a great, local restaurant for lunch. Jefferson Shriver, our Head of Programs for CRS Nicaragua was in town for the events, as well as a couple special guests- Jitzie, a coffee grower from the La FEM coop in Nicaragua and Esperanza the head of the Pangoa cooperative in Peru. Everyone had great stories about how and why they choose to become involved in Fair Trade, but these aren’t the individuals that are going to transform the coffee industry and strengthen its roots. They’re members of the communities that have already started to.

Chris Treter of Higher Grounds Trading Co. and James Curren of Providence Coffee discuss how they became involved in Fair Trade during lunch at SCAA.

Two more things:

CRS Fair Trade was happy to help Just Coffee bring Jitzie to SCAA, and La FEM was featured in the most recent CRS Briefing. For more information on La FEM and CRS’ work in Nicaragua, click “I love coffee from La FEM”.

A couple books I left SCAA with that you might be interested in-

Michael Shuman, The Small-Mart Revolution

Christopher Bacon, Stephen Gliessman, and V. Ernesto Mendez, Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Ecosystems in Mexico and Latin America

I haven’t read them yet, but if you have, feel free to share your book review.

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Part of my Sunday morning routine is listening to the Speaking of Faith public radio program. Yesterday I was especially pleased that the guest was Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner who started the Green Belt Movement. The movement began by organizing women who were living the impacts of deforestation through the simple act of planting trees.

I’ve been meaning for a few years now to read more of Maathai’s writings because I get the sense that she strikes a good balance between addressing the legitimate needs of people–in this case Kenyans needing clean water and firewood– and concerns for the welfare of the planet. Listening to an interview while enjoying my morning Fair Trade coffee was a nice multi-tasking opportunity.

What struck me in this interview was Maathai’s attributing her understanding of community service to the lessons she learned from the nuns who taught her in during childhood. While speaking of the importance of investing in the planet’s future through biodiversity, Maathai touched on how the nuns lived their lives in the service of others, communicating a sense of responsibility to community and to the Creator. Through their efforts, the teachers were planting the seeds of Maatha’s future. You can hear the entire interview from the Speaking of Faith website by downloading podcasts.

Katy and I are working with our web-team to get some of our own podcasts up on this site (yeh, I know we are late-adopters) so stay tuned for that. Or subscribe to this blog if you haven’t already by clicking on the orange box and following the instructions. The blog is a good way to get our latest news…but not for the next two days, because we are headed to a staff retreat. While we are away, visit the Get Involved section for ideas of how to be part of the future of the Fair Trade movement.

That’s the slogan for this year’s World Fair Trade Day. As a proud sponsor of World Fair Trade Day here in the United States, CRS Fair Trade is proud to support the activities large and small to make the world a bit fairer through participating in economic justice activities.

On the fun side, we are gearing up to participate in the World’s Largest Fair Trade Coffee break at 3:00 Eastern Time on May 10. Participating is easy, so visit the Fair Trade Resource Network to learn how and order a resource packet. Also check this blog for updates from some of the other events CRS is participating in, such as the Chicago Fair Trade Coalition celebration and the San Diego Friends of Fair Trade seminar.

The Pope has been visiting, the Fair Trade Federation had its conference, and now we are all gearing up for World Fair Trade Day. Spring has sprung at CRS Fair Trade!

Our friends at TransFair USA have also reminded us that this Mother’s Day falls only one day after World Fair Trade Day on Sunday, May 11th. You can take the opportunity to celebrate Fair Trade with your mother by buying her a bouquet of beautiful Fair Trade Certified roses. Fair Trade Certified Flowers are already making a difference for women and mothers around the world and your purchase means not just fair wages, but increased employee benefits including 12 weeks paid maternity leave and childcare and equal representation for women in leadership roles.

According to TransFair, Fair Trade Certified Flowers are now available regionally at Giant Food Stores, New Seasons Market, Roche Brothers and UKROPS and on the web at 1-800-Flowers, and Organic Bouquet. The TransFair USA partnereship with FTD means new independent florists are adding Fair Trade flowers every day! To view a complete list of where you can buy Fair Trade Certified flowers this Mother’s Day, please visit at the website.

As Katy and I hurry to clear off our desks before heading to the Fair Trade Federation conference, I almost forgot this week is National Farmworker Awareness week. Luckily a new report, Children in the Fields: An American Problem, from my colleagues at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, jogged my memory and motivated me to stop and celebrate with you the lives of farmworkers such as Cesar Chavez and to renew calls for justice in the fields.

Those of us committed to Fair Trade know that coffee farmers in Nicaragua, cocoa farmers in Ghana, really producers anywhere who work to plant, cultivate, and harvest the food that finds its ways to our kitchen tables deserve to be compensated justly for their labor. More and more of us are turning our attention also to efforts to support local agriculture out of concern for our planet and a desire to build right relationships with the families that farm our food. I know a highlight of my weekend is passing through the neighborhood farmers’ market in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC

Still, much of the produce in this country is harvested by migrant farmworkers, who don’t necessarily participate in farmers’ markets because they don’t own the land they work. Instead they move from place to place following the seasons and paths trod by generations of pickers before them. In fact, when we think “farmworker,” we may conjure an image of the renowned Cesar Chavez, who led famous grape boycotts using nonviolent means. Although much has been accomplished by social action, especially the recent campaigns for tomato pickers by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, injustice is still present.

The recent report by AFOP demonstrates that hundreds of thousands of children work as hired labor in America’s fields and orchards. These kids are among the least protected of working youth in the United States due to the skewed “protections” of the Fair Labor Standards Act. While—according to Federal standards—children 14 and 15 years of age can’t work in fast-food restaurants more than three hours a day when school is in session, those children are technically allowed to pick the tomatoes and onions to put on your burger or taco for as many hours as they can fit into a day. Children can rise before dawn to plant, weed and chop. Later, when school is out, they can go outside to work well into the night. But, by law, children hired to work in air-conditioned stores and restaurants are not allowed to work after 7:00 p.m. during the school year. These scenarios assume that the children are in school, but AFOP cites reports from the Child Labor Coalition that “farmworker children have lower school enrollment rates than any other group in the United States.”

AFOP’s report spells out some recommendations for new legislation, enforcement and research to help politicians and businesses reform our agricultural system. To help us learn about the complexity of issues from a faith framework, the National Farm Worker Ministry has made many resources available for education and reflection. I also count on the work of Student Action with Farmworkers based out of Duke University and the Farmworker Justice Fund, which has consistently advocated for farmworkers inside the beltway for many years. Finally, check out the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, which applies the teachings of Jesus Christ for the betterment of rural America and care of God’s creation.

And if you have reflections about bringing the principles of Fair Trade to the farms of the United States, comment here!

Some of my colleagues groaned when they heard the “stomach and soul” title of my talk at the National Catholic Educators Association meeting today in Indianapolis. As regular blog readers know, I try to think of “catchy” titles to attract your attention, and the same principle holds true for workshops I give. Here at the NCEA, we have an estimated 8,000 parochial school educators walking around choosing from hundreds of workshops, so I have to reel them in with something unusual.

The reality is, though, that what appeals to people on basic levels about Fair Trade does lead to more profound understandings. On the exhibit floor people have been drawn to the smell of coffee samples we’ve been handing out, thanks to our Indiana-based partners, Beans for a Better Life. When a person pauses to take a free sample, we can engage them in a conversation about how CRS Fair Trade has just updated our website with new educational resources created by colleague agencies and the winners of the Raise Money Right 2007 contest. Teachers are hungry, if you will, for good resources and fun ways to bring economic justice into the classroom. We may tempt them with coffee and chocolate, but their deeper desires for ways to convey Catholic Social Teaching is what gets them to stop and consider Fair Trade.

This is about my third year at the NCEA conference, and I always find it a great mixture of getting the word out about CRS Fair Trade but also listening to what is going on schools across the country. I used to be an elementary school teacher, and so I have a special place of reverence for folks who have stayed in the classroom, day in and day out, working to shape young hearts and minds. Talk about needing to grab attention! Teachers are competing with the internet, television and other influences of modern life. While they deal with incorporating testing requirements and extra-curricular activities into the daily mix, they have to impart important foundations of learning. Students for their part have to begin exploring their own place in a world that seems to get more complicated with each new day or new technological gadget. It is a tall order, and if CRS can help out a bit with unique approaches to justice through Fair Trade, I’ll risk sounding a little silly!

If your classroom has done a good (and fun!) job of bringing solidarity into the mix of required activities and objectives, comment here on the blog to share ideas. Or just give a shout out to a special student or educator who has made learning fun and meaningful. Whether it be at the campus level (see Cabrini students in this photo playing “Wallyball,” whatever that is!) or kindergarten, we’d like to know how Fair Trade really does speak to the body, mind or spirit!

Although as a member of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, I don’t celebrate Palm Sunday as a holy day, I am definitely paying tribute to the ecumenical cooperation manifested through support of Eco-palms, an initiative of Lutheran World Relief. Media outlets, too, are reporting that congregations of several Christian faiths are utilizing these special fronds, which are harvested in a way that protects God’s creation and upholds the dignity of human labor. Check out our original posting or any of the stories from Dallas, Louisville, and Salt Lake City, to learn how joy and justice are filling sanctuaries today.

Interfaith collaboration has been on my mind a lot this week as both Katy and I had a chance to hear from the Mirembe Kawomera coffee cooperative in Uganda as they visited our area. The cooperative, consisting of 700 small scale farmers from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths, offers a transformative model of peace and cooperation through coffee farming. Their product is distributed, thanks to the good folks of Thanksgiving Coffee, through buying clubs at mosques, churches and synagogues and those sales, like the typical Fair Trade model, finance health projects, education efforts and coffee quality improvements.

What’s unique about the “Delicious Peace” cooperative is its intentional coming together of religious groups that had traditionally been separated through political strife and animosity. The speakers on tour, pointed out that through the cooperative they are able to put their heads together “around a common table” to make decisions. Margaret, a Catholic representative, reflected, “It’s not just about making money but about making peace in our country.”

Texas has been in the news a lot with yesterday’s presidential primary, but don’t think the story is over for the Lone Star State. The Fair Trade Federation is hosting a conference from April 4-6 in Austin, and CRS Fair Trade is proud to be a sponsor. The conference will bring together FTF members, partners, and friends to share best practices and discuss the future of FTF and Fair Trade. Most of the partners in the CRS Fair Trade network are members of FTF, and Katy and I are looking forward to the chance to spend time with them as well as constituents like you. The early registration deadline ends on Friday, March 7 so check out the website now.

Katy and I just finished up with the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, a time each February when about 500 folks from a variety of Catholic organizations arrive in Washington, D.C. to learn about each other’s work and strategize for policies and programs that “Put the Poor and Vulnerable First” and “Pursue Peace in a Broken World.”

I can’t possibly relate all the wonderful interactions I had or information I learned, but I would like to share a few snapshots. I can’t get out of my head, for example, the statistic shared by Lesley-Anne Knight, Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis, that the same number of people killed by the Tsunami three years ago—230,000 human beings—die every five days from extreme poverty. I also can’t shake that the money Americans spend on ice cream each year, $10,000,000,000 (yep, that’s billion) is the same amount needed to provide basic education to all children of the world. Now, I’m not against ice cream, especially because Ben & Jerry’s offers flavors with Fair Trade Certified ingredients, but I am against extreme inequality and lack of opportunity to prosper. And as shocking as the international statistics are, I am humbled by the reminder from Catholic Campaign for Human Development that if all the poor people living in the US were to populate a single state, it would be our nation’s largest—bigger than California, which has a population of more than 36 million people.

To confront these kinds of injustices, participants in the SMG went to Capitol Hill to visit with Senators and Representatives and to share perspectives on key areas of legislation. For example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is taking a particular interest in trade policy. The Bishops have said that “Much more than fostering economic growth, trade should play an essential role in reducing poverty by helping to shape domestic and international legal frameworks to protect workers and the environment, ensure opportunities for decent work at a just wage for struggling families and provide access to technology and knowledge for those at the margins of society.”

With all these ambitious and critical goals, SMG participants had to be well-fueled for our work, and I’m proud to say that Dean’s Beans in Massachusetts, Higher Grounds Trading Company in Michigan,Nectar of Life in Washington, Just Coffee in Wisconsin and Earth Friendly from Colorado contributed coffee to special events all week long, while Equal Exchange in Massachusetts provided the core sessions over several days. It was kind of fun to see participants take pride in their local roasters and to hear people debate the differences between light and dark roasts as they shared stories of mission trips to coffee-producing countries such as Nicaragua and Mexico.

If you were a participant at the SMG gathering this week, please feel free to use this blog to share your reflections or comments. If you weren’t able to make the event you can still participate in the advocacy campaigns that CRS is involved in all year long. Sometimes natural disasters like tsunamis can’t be prevented, but solidarity can transform the world when people like us act together!

Thanks to President Bush’s travels this week, many Americans are being exposed to some of the great humanitarian work happening on the continent, as well as some of the tragedies and ongoing civil concerns. The trip brings up for me memories of my time in Africa, most recently to Ghana. CRS has decades of experience in this West African nation with nutrition, health and education programs. Ghana is also where our friends at Kuapa Kokoo not only farm Fair Trade cocoa but also help run Divine Chocolate, the first farmer-owned Fair Trade chocolate company. In August, a group of Fair Trade chocolate Ambassadors (see photo below) spent time meeting the people and projects that stand as important examples of progress for the people of Africa.

Of course, there is also much to be concerned about on the continent, and CRS works with partners in some 30 African countries on a range of assistance and development projects. For Fair Traders, our eyes have turned in recent weeks to the instability in Kenya. Our Work of Human Hands partners at A Greater Gift have recently shared reports on the situation of the Bombolulu Workshop for the Handicapped in Mombasa. Demonstrating Fair Trade’s concern for disadvantaged producers, the workshop provides work and residential facilities for 193 severely handicapped individuals. These craftspeople earn 50% of their annual budget on sales to tourists. Yet last month, due to the violence and strife, sales at Bombululu dropped by 90% as tourists have canceled trips.

Long-term partnerships are a hallmark of Fair Trade and groups like A Greater Gift will work to honor sales contracts and commitments for the other 50% of the budget, despite the fact the violence has decreased production capacity with electricity and raw materials in short supply. Knowing that there is a customer based committed to Fair Trade artisans makes the steadfastness of Fair Trade Organizations possible. They can accompany their artisan partners through struggles because they know people like you want to support right relationships based on global solidarity.

If you have traveled to Africa and have memories to share, hopes or concerns to express, or comments on Fair Trade work there, please tell your stories by commenting on this blog, and help CRS Fair Trade continue to build connections and relationships.