Starbucks, Ati To Aid Guatemalan Growers

Starbucks will begin an initiative in Guatemala to help boost the income of small-scale coffee producers while working to reduce pollution from coffee-processing operations in the Central American country.

The Seattle-based coffee company said it has formed an alliance with Appropriate Technology International, a private, nonprofit organization created by Congress in 1976, to pay for improved coffee-processing facilities and to provide technical assistance to Guatemalan cooperatives.

Starbucks officials said the company would be the principal buyer of the coffee produced under the pilot program and would help identify other buyers for whatever coffee it did not buy.

The announcement comes as human rights and labor groups say they may renew a public-information campaign over low wages and poor working conditions in Guatemala.

The Rev. John Boonstra, executive minister of the Washington Association of Churches, one of a number of local and national organizations pushing Starbucks to address issues such as giving coffee workers collective-bargaining rights, said there is "a high level of frustration about the slow pace at which Starbucks has been moving" to implement a labor code of conduct that can be monitored and evaluated.

Dave Olsen, Starbucks senior vice president of coffee, said the program would help show small-scale producers how to increase their coffee-tree yields, process the beans to command a higher price for

their product, and access more profitable markets.

Starbucks' project with ATI can improve the incomes of "tens of thousands of people in the first couple years of the project," Olsen said. About 200 small producers are expected to participate initially. Starbucks is providing $75,000 in start-up grant money. ATI will provide technical assistance. Olsen said Starbucks is building a long-term model for self-betterment.

The endeavor stems from Starbucks' "code of conduct" adopted in October 1995 to promote better conditions at its foreign suppliers, company officials said.

Boonstra said it was interesting that the announcement came when Starbucks was being confronted with the possibility of a renewed public-education campaign over underpayment of Guatemalan coffee workers. But Olsen denied that the timing of the announcement was in response to that move.