The Value Proposition of Fair Trade

I recently visited Oryana, a Traverse City food cooperative after many friends have said great things about it. I have also heard some rumblings about several local Grand Rapids people coming together to start one. This kind of activity makes me hopeful. Every community needs access to a locally based grocery offering local, organic produce as well as other specialty items and I am very excited that something like Oryana could finally happen in West Michigan. The space is laid out very nicely, while the cafe serving highly intentional food is tucked on one end. Bottom line: it’s a very cool place. My intent in writing this is not to point fingers, but to start conversations. I say that, to say I am also very disappointed. When leaving I grabbed the September/October issue of the Oryana natural foods news and found an article written by Equal Exchange about October being fair trade month, and how coffee farmers are reverting back to non-organic farming methods. The article states "the reason: roasters are thumbing their noses at the higher price of organics as farmers are struggling with soil depletion." While I have a number of thoughts on this topic, my first question is this: is it possible the reason farmers are reverting back to non-organically grown coffee is because the fair trade system is flawed?. The recent increase in the coffee commodity pricing has surpassed the fair trade established price and diluted the fair trade value proposition. . Where the fair trade system was designed to promote "fair" prices, with commodity pricing outpacing fair trade pricing, the value proposition to be a fair trade farmer becomes negligible. In fact, the value proposition leans heavily in favor of commodity selling, which in general has no baseline structure for organic coffee. Is it possible that in a system like fair trade, where coffee quality is not the ultimate goal, the farmers make decisions solely based on where they receive the immediate gratification of a igher price per pound rather than the long term benefit derived from sustainable farming practices? Is it possible that a system like direct trade, where roasters are working with farms and are willing to pay a higher price for quality coffee, is a better fit for small scale farmers? Direct Trade is a system where quality, in which sustainable and organic practices are essential to producing the best tasting cup, is rewarded through cash incentives, ongoing commitments, farmer autonomy, and personal relationships. While contemplating these questions, I continued to peruse the rest of the magazine, to find a piece written by an Oryana staff member about how they are going to start offering bulk coffees roasted by their local roasters as part of their "value" options. The last line of the piece states, "for organic coffee, you will be hard-pressed to find a better price per pound." which makes me wonderhow often do we, as consumers, associate the word ‘value’ too broadly. There are actually multiple kinds of ‘value – the two I believe are most closely related to coffee are ‘economic value’ and ‘ethical value’ My concern is that Oryana is getting economic value confused with ethical value with concern to the coffee they are selling we have value menu's and super-value grocery chains (save-a-lot and shop 'n save) and value packs and value sizes….do any of these make you think respect to worth or excellence? or rather more for less? I spoke with someone at Oryana to understand fully what this "value" program meant, especially in regards to the local roasters that were now participating, and found that it was more in line with price, rather than in respect to worth. It was communicated to me that Oryana was offering the roasters an "opportunity" to reduce their price to potentially sell more coffee in their "value" program. This makes me wonder if this type of program propagates the notion that value is attached to a lower price, which in turn trickles down to, and exacerbates the problem of small scale farmers reverting back to non-organic farming practices. I also wonder what the "value proposition" is to these local roasters? Does it help or hurt their business to reduce their prices to be more in line with an inferior product? (I personally have knowledge of these local roasters and know how much passion, time, and energy they put into their product, as well as how much money they spend in producing a good cup of coffee…and for sure, the equal exchange coffee is an inferior product.) It is time that specialty stores like Oryana educate their customers that value is about worth. It is also time for roasters to get rid of their "buy 10 get 1 free" cards and to stop reducing prices. It is time for consumers to truly understand the "value proposition" of their purchases when their only consideration is price.