Starbucks is one of several popular places for students to get their caffeine fix here in Blacksburg. The coffee shop has also received some coverage here in the Collegiate Times and in national newspapers across the country. A quick Google search for “Starbucks” will provide all sorts of accomplishments that are a step in the right direction to promoting sustainable development and better working conditions. The list of achievements is long: Starbucks is one of the hundred greatest places to work, according to Forbes Magazine. The company is trying to promote its Coffee and Farmer Equity Prices program to raise wages for farmers, and in January of 2006 the eighth-annual “Recycling Works” recognition award will be awarded to Starbucks.
Despite these accomplishments, there is still a strong movement against Starbucks. One of the many examples can be found at American University, where President Benjamin Ladner decided that the coffee shop Pura Vida better represented “American University’s institutional values and another opportunity to translate those values into a demonstrated public responsibility.”
The university allowed Pura Vida (and not Starbucks) to move into the Mary Graydon Student Center due to a strong student-led movement that favored it over Starbucks.
These students had good reason to oppose Starbucks. Starbucks proudly displays its “Corporate Social Responsibility 2004 Annual Report,” which asks an important question on the second page: “Is Starbucks responsible?” Despite the report’s 76 pages of bullet points, graphs and pictures displaying the company’s commitment to diversity, sustainability and a fun workplace, one simple fact cannot be hidden. Only 1.6 percent of Starbucks coffee is fair-trade certified. Despite the opportunities that the C.A.F.E. program can provide, in 2004 only 14.5 percent of Starbucks coffee actually met C.A.F.E. practices. Pura Vida, on the other hand, offers 100 percent fair trade coffee.
According to Starbucks, the lack of Fair Trade Coffee is due to a lack of supply. According to Global Exchange, only 20 percent of fair trade coffee is sold at fair trade prices — the rest is sold at the market price due to a lack of demand. In an open market where huge corporations like Nestle and Kraft have enormous market power as buyers and sellers living on cooperatives have practically no market power, prices are often set below production costs. This makes poverty a sad reality for many coffee farmers who rely on the land for their livelihood. According to Make Trade Fair, in Vietnam’s Dak Lak Province, coffee is sold at 60 percent of production costs, while a glimpse at Starbucks’ website boasts of “Strong September and Fiscal Year 2005 revenues.” But this end result shouldn’t be surprising, says Make Trade Fair. When you buy a cup of coffee, 2 percent of the earnings go to the farmer, 3 percent to the exporter, while the great majority of the cash — 64 percent — goes to the roaster and 25 percent goes to the retailer.
Much of the products we use every day are built in sweatshops, much of the furniture we use on campus was built in a prison and much of the coffee we drink was grown under conditions that many would consider to be worse than a sweatshop. The stories of these workers are practically absent from advertisements, press releases and corporate social responsibility reports, except for the few workers who can actually provide uplifting stories to comfort consumers and help sell more product. Comments like “tell people in your place that the drink they are enjoying is now the cause of all our problems,” from Lawrence Seguya, a coffee farmer in Uganda, do little to promote a good image for coffee retailers.
Seguya, interviewed by Geoff Sayer from Oxfam International, said “Buyers can just set the price they want. Millers can just set the price they want. Exporters can just set the price they want … We buy the crop with our sweat and sell it for nothing.”
Fair-trade certified coffee, on the other hand, ensures that farmers are paid a living wage for their coffee.
Coffee is a very important product in today’s economy, with numerous countries depending heavily on its export. The international economy privileges huge corporations with enormous market power, while small farmers compete for subsistence in a race to the bottom. The best way to help farmers is to pay a living wage, but Starbucks has not shown this necessary commitment. With less then 2 percent of Starbucks coffee being fair-trade certified, Starbucks is far from being socially responsible. The least students can do is to consider finding different coffee shops to spend their money.
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