Growers from fair-trade co-op appeal to Starbucks' taste buds
So when Guerrero, a quality technician for the Prodecoop cooperative in Nicaragua, and three colleagues visited Starbucks headquarters in Seattle yesterday, he tried to pick the brains behind the world's most visible specialty-coffee company.
During an afternoon coffee-tasting, Guerrero asked Mary Williams, Starbucks' senior vice president for coffee, to compare the acidity of three cups of coffee made from the co-op's beans.
"It's a little different from the others, but not much," she said. "Un poco difference."
The Nicaraguan coffee producers are in town as part of a visit organized by TransFair USA, an Oakland nonprofit organization that certifies that farmers from foreign markets are paid fair prices for the beans they sell to U.S. roasters.
Starbucks executives, including President and Chief Executive Officer Orin Smith, tasted a variety of coffees made from the co-op's beans, critiquing the body, acidity and consistency of each blend and commenting on the size and color of dry and roasted beans.
After the tasting, members of the Prodecoop contingent said they came away with a better idea of what America's premier coffee retailers are looking for.
"We really want to understand and contribute to quality, all the way from the farm to the cup of coffee consumers are going to drink," Guerrero said through an interpreter.
Starbucks, Tully's Coffee and Seattle's Best Coffee all have ramped up their marketing of fair-trade certified coffee in the past year as activists have drawn increasing attention to the plight of indigenous farmers hit hard by fluctuating world coffee prices.
Yesterday's tasting with the fair-trade co-op was a first for Starbucks, which sells fair-trade-certified coffee in its U.S. stores and on college campuses, in hotels and in restaurants, but not in groceries.
Fair-trade-certified coffee accounts for less than 1 percent of all the coffee Starbucks buys, but the company says it hopes to increase that number and is committed to increasing awareness of the issue.
"We're going to learn together," Starbucks spokeswoman Audrey Lincoff said. "We want more fair-trade coffee to be available to consumers. It benefits everybody."
Coffee prices have plunged in recent years, in large part because of the sudden emergence of Vietnam as a major industry player.
Vietnam is now the world's second-largest coffee producer, after Brazil, which has increased its exports significantly. Those countries' successes have sent world prices plummeting.
With the falling prices, once-profitable coffee farms began to fail. Especially hard-hit has been Nicaragua, where coffee beans that sold for as much as $3 per pound five years ago now go for 50 to 60 cents per pound. The drop in prices has caused Nicaraguan coffee plantations to cut its work force, sending hundreds of workers and their families on arduous treks to cities in search of food.
Fair-trade coffee, on the other hand, guarantees that co-op farmers are paid a set price — right now, it's $1.26 a pound for Arabica beans, the type preferred by specialty retailers. TransFair's "Fair Trade Certified" label "is the consumers' guarantee that the farmers got paid a fair price," said Kimberly Easson, the organization's marketing director.
Prodecoop — made up of 45 co-ops and 2,300 member farms in Nicaragua — sold about 3.1 million pounds of coffee last year. About 45 percent of that was fair-trade certified, said Merling Preza, co-op general manager.
With roughly half of the co-op's crop immune from the day-to-day fluctuations of world coffee prices, Preza said employees have more predictable incomes, nicer homes and better access to schools.
"We consider fair trade as our insurance policy for what's going on right now," Preza told the Starbucks executives.
"You can see the difference between what's happening with the fair-trade co-ops and what's happening to our neighbors," Preza said. "With the current situation, fair trade is really the life of the people — it allows them to live day to day."
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Jake Batsell can be reached at 206-464-2718 or jbatsell@seattletimes.com.