Fair prices, a better quality of life.
We have purchased and sold Fair Trade Certified™ coffee for nearly 10 years. The goal of Fair Trade certification is to empower small-scale farmers organized in cooperatives to invest in their farms and communities, protect the environment, and develop the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.
Starbucks began purchasing Fair Trade Certified coffee in 2000. And we have been recognized for helping grow the market for Fair Trade Certified coffee in the U.S. and bringing it to consumers.
In 2008, we announced that we're expanding our work with Fair Trade to support small-scale farmers. As part of this effort, Starbucks will increase our purchases in 2009 to reach 40 million pounds (18 million kilograms). This will make us the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Certified coffee in the world.
What we've been doing.
Starbucks, TransFair USA and the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) announced a groundbreaking initiative in late 2008 to be launched in fiscal 2009 that builds upon our shared history of support for small-scale coffee farmers, their communities and the environment.
We're working to leverage the strengths of our respective coffee-buying programs to benefit even more farmers. This includes exploring ways to integrate the inspection and auditing processes for Fair Trade certification and C.A.F.E Practices; increasing efficiencies in training farmers on sustainable coffee production and implementing our respective programs; and buying more coffee from suppliers participating in both programs.
With joint announcements in October 2008, TransFair USA and FLO join Conservation International as key partners of the Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ commitment to ethically source our coffee.
Total Purchases of Fair Trade Certified™ Coffee – Fiscal 2008
Starbucks global purchases of Fair Trade Certified coffee totaled 19 million pounds (nine million kilograms), representing approximately 10 percent of global Fair Trade Certified coffee imports and 20 percent of U.S. Fair Trade Certified coffee imports in fiscal 2008. This equaled five percent of Starbucks total coffee purchases.
Hurdles.
Together, Starbucks and Fair Trade have had good success working with farmers to encourage good agricultural and environmental practices and in improving the prices farmers can receive for their coffee – particularly in Latin America.
But both groups have recognized the difficulty of expanding their programs with farmers in the Africa/Arabia and Asia/Pacific coffee-growing regions, where locations of farms can be extremely remote, and the coffee industries and infrastructure pose greater challenges due to supply chain complexities.
Specific challenges that we are committed to working together to overcome include:
- Making field inspections more efficient for farmers, mills and suppliers. The proliferation of certification programs is frustrating for many farmers because of sometimes conflicting requirements and cost of audits. We hope to solve this by unifying the inspection processes for Fair Trade inspections and C.A.F.E. Practices verifications. Our end goal is that the farmers who implement responsible growing practices and socially responsible working conditions can qualify for both C.A.F.E. Practices and Fair Trade certification labeling in the marketplace.
- Developing efficient systems for licensing and labeling Fair Trade Certified coffee so that Starbucks can offer Fair Trade Certified products globally under one recognizable Fair Trade brand for customers around the world.
- Launching an initiative to help small-scale farmers increase product quality and business viability through technical support that they have historically not had access to. Starbucks Farmer Support Centers have already started addressing this need, but this initiative will further help farmers implement changes and benefit from both the C.A.F.E. Practices and Fair Trade systems.
What we're working on.
Increasing our purchases of Fair Trade Certified coffee will result from the critical steps (outlined above) in our collaboration toward achieving our Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ goal of 100 percent responsibly grown, ethically traded coffee by 2015.
We're working to double our purchases of Fair Trade Certified coffee in 2009. And, we've also committed that 100 percent of the espresso coffee sold – both as whole bean and in espresso-based beverages – in Starbucks stores in the UK and Ireland will be both Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ and Fair Trade Certified by the end of 2009.
*TransFair USA is one of the 23 member organizations that comprise Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International. In the U.S., TransFair labels certified products with its Fair Trade CertifiedTM label to indicate that Fairtrade standards have been met, as does TransFair Canada. In other countries, member organizations use the FAIRTRADE certification mark to label Fairtrade products.
