Tag: central america

Does Fair Trade Coffee Work?

Coffee beans can be pretty confusing these days.
At times it can seem like a political, even a
moral decision. You might want to buy those pricey specialty beans,
but now the supermarket also carries beans labeled Fair Trade
Certified. That might seem like the nicer thing to do for the farm
workers – and the environment. Julie Grant takes a look at those
claims:

Transcript

Coffee beans can be pretty confusing these days. At times it can seem like a political, even a
moral decision. You might want to buy those pricey specialty beans,
but now the supermarket also carries beans labeled Fair Trade
Certified. That might seem like the nicer thing to do for the farm
workers – and the environment. Julie Grant takes a look at those
claims:


Ahhh… it smells great in here. The owner of this coffee shop travels
the world in search of the best coffees. Linda Smithers has gone to
places such as South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia to
visit farms and to taste coffee. She imports her favorites and roasts
them at her store.


And she has high expectations. Smithers wants to make sure that if
you’re paying a few dollars for a specialty coffee, it’s a satisfying
personal experience:


“And coffee should be able to do that for you. It should bring you
closer to you, and closer to the farmer. You should feel like you know
the farmer. And you feel passion and an intimacy with that farmer.”


I should probably have mentioned, Smithers really loves coffee.
She says the best coffees are grown on farms that are good to the
coffee trees, the local water, and the workers:


“Happy workers, safe workers, produce better coffee. They just do. I
see it every time I go to a farm. I see it when a worker enjoys what
they’re doing and feel they’re getting a fair price. They’re just like us. You
would not enjoy working and at the end of the day being given 20 cents.
You wouldn’t be happy with that. You wouldn’t work in a pleasant
way. And you wouldn’t pay attention to picking the ripe beans rather than the unripened beans.”


The Fair Trade label claims it’s found one way to help keep coffee
farmers happy and safe. The Fair Trade certification is supposed to be
a guarantee that farm co-operatives will get at least $1.21 for a pound
of beans. When coffee prices are low, that can be twice what other
farmers are paid. Fair Trade also promises farm workers have safe
conditions and are paid a living wage.


Michigan State University Professor Dan Jaffee wanted to know if the
Fair Trade system was doing what it set out to do:


“The Fair Trade movement claimed to be able to help bring them out of
poverty, improve their farming practices, make them more sustainable
and just generally improve conditions a lot, and I was interested in
finding out whether that was the case.”


Jaffee spent a few years in Oaxaca, Mexico studying two farming
communities. Some coffee farmers were part of Fair Trade
cooperatives, some decided against it. He’s just published a book called
Brewing Justice to report his findings. Jaffee says families
that joined Fair Trade were more food secure when the market price of
coffee fell:


“That is, they have food shortages much less of the time. They have
significantly greater access to animal protein, foods like milk and
meat and cheese in their diet. And they’re essentially able to feed
their children much more of the time than their neighbors, who were
really, at the time the coffee prices were at their low point at the
time I was doing my research in 2001, 2002, 2003, who were definitely
showing signs of malnutrition and there was a significant problem with malnutrition
in these communities.”


Fair Trade is still only a small fraction of the coffee market, but
its share of customers is growing, and the big players are taking
notice. Nestle is marketing Fair Trade products in the UK, and you can
find the Fair Trade seal at your neighborhood Starbucks. Only 3.7%
of Starbucks coffee is Fair Trade certified, but Jaffee says
that small percentage still makes Starbucks the single largest buyer of
Fair Trade coffee in the US.


Smaller coffee shop owners, such as Linda Smithers, also
buys some Fair Trade coffee. But Smithers doesn’t think guaranteeing a
specific price is the best way to encourage farms to grow the best
coffee:


“You’re given a price regardless of the quality. I have a problem
with that. I do not think that’s a sustainable agricultural model.
Remember, I’m a coffee person. I’m not a cause person, I’m
a coffee person. And to me, sustainable is: the product must be
outstanding and have good sociological and ecological practices, then
get a fair price.”


Smithers believes farms that treat workers and the environment well
naturally have the best tasting coffee and will always get a fair
price in the specialty coffee market.


Some conservative economists agree with her. They say the Fair Trade movement
will only continue to grow if looks beyond the socially-conscious crowd and continues
to improve the taste and consistency. That’s what people eyeing those gourmet coffee beans
want.


Smithers says Fair Trade has already been a success in that it’s put
issues of working conditions and the environment on the table…
and she could sit and drink a cup and talk about that for hours.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Another Cutback in Amtrak Rail Service

  • Amtrak is starting to phase out the Three Rivers route. The National Association of Railroad Passengers is trying to prevent this from continuing. (photo by Michael Jastremski)

Phase-outs have started for an Amtrak passenger train that crosses through the Midwest. It’s the latest in a series of service cutbacks over the last few decades. But some riders are trying to reverse Amtrak’s decision. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach recently rode the rail line in question and talked with some passengers about the pending loss of service:

Transcript

Phase-outs have started for an Amtrak passenger train that crosses through the Midwest. It’s the latest in a series of service cutbacks over the last few decades. But some riders are trying to reverse Amtrak’s decision. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach recently rode the rail line in question and talked with some passengers about the pending loss of service:


(sound of train)


Amtrak has started reducing service on the Three Rivers line between Chicago and Philadelphia. By next April, people in Nappanee, Indiana and Akron, Youngstown, and Fostoria, Ohio will no longer have a passenger train in their city.


On a recent morning, Chicago resident Martin Escutia was riding the Three Rivers to see a friend in Youngstown. He had just flown to Chicago from Central America.


“Being as tired as I was, having the opportunity to be able to bed down and wake up at my destination it’s good convenience, it’s good to have.”


Escutia says losing the Three Rivers will put more people on highways and take away a transportation option. The National Association of Railroad Passengers is trying to restore the cutbacks. But Amtrak says Three Rivers service between Pittsburgh and Chicago was only started to haul bulk mail, and Amtrak is dropping the mail service because it doesn’t make enough money.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Birders Flock to Save Crucial Habitat

It’s that time of year again, when those who winter in warm, southern climates travel north for the summer. But for many birds, land development and habitat destruction are making migration an uncertain proposition. Some groups in the United States, Canada, and Central America are working together to protect land for the birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

It’s that time of year again, when those who winter in warm, southern climates travel north for the
summer. But for many birds, land development and habitat destruction are making
migration an uncertain proposition. Some groups in the United States, Canada, and Central America
are working together to protect land for the birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


(sound…birding in the rain…)


It’s 6 A.M. It’s still dark outside. And it’s raining. But Rob
Tymstra and Darrell Parsons are
hiking in the woodlands of Pelee
Island, in Western Lake Erie, on the
lookout for birds.


They’ve seen all kinds of warblers,
and herons, even a bald eagle.
They’re trying to spot as many
species as possible in one day as
part of the Pelee Island Birdathon.
They’ve seen or heard more
than 104 species since noon
yesterday, which seems like a lot, but
they’re
competing against six other teams
from the U.S. and Canada for who
can spot the most bird
species.


“Uh oh, those are the Ottawa people,
our other competitors.”


Tymstra and Parsons are in this
contest to win. But they say the
Birdathon is really just for fun and to
raise money for the Audubon Society.
Both men are in their 40’s and have
been birding since
they were teenagers. They’ve got
lists of birds they hope to see in their
lives and have traveled
the world, most recently, to Brazil,
Panama, and Thailand, in search of
them.


“Pelee Island compares really
favorably with the whole area. Point
Pelee National Park, just
north of us, is world famous for birds,
especially in spring migration. But all
these islands here in
Lake Erie are stepping stones as the
birds are traveling north.”


The next stepping stone for many
birds is Point Pelee National Park,
which gets a lot more
attention. But Tymstra likes to take
the ferry to Pelee Island because it’s
less crowded.


“So here we get as many birds or
more birds as Point Pelee, but we
don’t have the crowds. On a
busy day there in May you might get
10,000 people, but here you’re lucky
to see a dozen people.
So the birds here actually outnumber
the people.”


(unveiling of sign)


“Pull from that end, gentlemen.
Everybody got their cameras ready?
Okay, ta-da!”


(clapping)


The unveiling of this sign marks the
significance of a natural habitat that’s
been preserved on
Pelee. Most residents of this
Canadian island want the birds,
butterflies and other wildlife to
continue to outnumber the humans.
So, they’ve recruited organizations
such as the Nature
Conservancy, the Federation of
Ontario Naturalists, and others to
preserve and restore the habitat.
Ric Wellwood coordinates a coalition
of conservation groups concerned
about development in
southern Canada.


“The difficulty we had was that twenty
years ago we realized that this
paradise we were living in
was getting crunched. Intensive
agriculture hurt for awhile, but it’s
eased off. But urban sprawl
is going like crazy. Urban sprawl is
taking away habitat. Our birdies
are not finding as welcome
a time as they used when they were
coming up here from Central
America and Mexico and
South
America and the southern U.S.”


A yellow-breasted chat or a wood
thrush might spend its winter in
Central America, then make the
long trek to Canada for the summer.
Field biologist Larry Roche tracks
birds in the Great Lakes
region.


“That’s a tough life – migratory birds.
You can go to Belize, and/or Mexico,
and go out to the
Yucatan, and watch them leave the
Yucatan in the evening and they fly
somewhat eighteen hours
across the Gulf of Mexico and they
land on the upper Texas coast. And
then they leave that area
and go hopscotching all the way to
wherever they want to go. Some of
these birds come from
Argentina and go all the way to the
Arctic. It’s pretty stunning for a land
bird to do that.”


These tiny creatures can be exhausted
by the time they get to the shore of
Lake Erie. The Nature
Conservancy in Canada and Ohio
are trying to protect land here to
make sure there’s a place for
the birds to make a pit stop, or to
nest and raise their young. But the
North American
conservationists are concerned that
poorer Central American countries
are allowing bird habitats
to be destroyed. Those countries
need the money developers are
offering for the rainforest
timber.


A report from the WorldWatch
Institute says bird species today face
a wave of extinction not seen
since dinosaurs died out. Twelve
percent of the world’s bird species
are considered to be at risk
of extinction and habitat loss is the
single greatest threat to birds.


Some environmental groups are not
only protecting land here, but also in
Central and South
America. To do that, Randy Edwards
of the Ohio Nature Conservancy says
they’re buying land
in Belize.


“Because there are more then sixty
species of birds from herons to
songbirds, warblers, etc, that
overwinter in Belize and elsewhere in
Central America and then come to
Ohio and places north
to make their nests and raise their
young. And the birds that we see
here, and that we enjoy in the
spring and the summer spend time in
Belize, so we need to protect habitat
here in Ohio and
Canada and Belize, all along their
migratory route, or they won’t be
here anymore.”


The Ohio Nature Conservancy was
part of a debt for nature swap in
Belize. In total, the U.S.
provided five and a half million dollars
to Belize for the preservation of
23,000 acres of forest in
the Maya mountain-marine corridor.
It’s a small but significant step to
ensure that birders Rob
Tymstra and Darrell parsons can try
again next year on Pelee Island.


(winners announced)


They lost by one bird species to their
arch rivals from Ottawa.


For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, I’m Julie Grant in Ohio.