The head of Colombia’s largest coffee growers’ group vowed on Wednesday to make sure that 10% of its total coffee output will be certified by social and environmental programs by 2007.It sounds like great news.
However, the “what constitutes fair trade coffee” debate continues. Why? Because from what I understand, the certification process being discussed is not through TransFair USA, but through The Rainforest Alliance.
These Colombian farms will have their farms certified by the Rainforest Alliance and have the little green frog logo on their bags of coffee. And although I looked through the literature, I couldn’t find mention of the dollar amount of the premium being paid to farmers under this program.
Once again, it looks like the fair trade coffee movement is becoming more fragmented.
Transfair USA is still handling the lion’s share of certification. But now we have Rainforest Alliance certification. Plus we have Starbucks “trading fairly” even when not fair trade. In addition there are numerous independent roasters and coffee shops which follow their own path to fair trade.
This is all well and good.
The problem with this disjointed approach is that the public will find it harder and harder to get a clear grasp of what fair trade is, and whether the coffee they buy is fair trade at all.
Marketers being what marketers are (benders of the truth), the time will come when one of them will design a “fairly traded logo” graphic for one of their coffee clients...but without any connection to or oversight by an official certification organization.
And then we’ll have a mess.
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