You have bean Verified
14 06 2008Posted by Robert @ 11:38 am
You don’t need verification to be classified as fair trade or organic, but it can help. If you just put fair trade on your roast, without giving any information about where the roast is from or who has farmed it, then it is much like lying on your resume.
“Verified” gives you that little bit of information to say “OK, a third party has checked into this and what they say is true.” A lot of the confusion comes from fair trade being closely associated with organic. Although the two are usually marketed together it doesn’t mean that what is a fair trade roast is automatically organic and what is organic is automatically fair trade. Fair trade certification doesn’t even measure quality or taste all it does is
Take Starbucks for example, it says it has a fair trade roast, but only by its own accord, and the information is very limited to the consumer. It gives you almost no knowledge about what you’re drinking, so their is no paper trail about this coffee, the plantation, or the process the farmers uses.
Also, some roasters do not support third party verification because it takes money away from the farmer.
An example is Victrola. Which doesn’t have any third party verification, but does participate in the Cup of Excellence Competition. Cup of Excellence celebrates the achievements the farmer has made in cultivating the best bean using the best practises and then it is auction off to the highest bidder.
What a lot of educated roasters do is direct trade coffee, a number of them also participate in the Cup of Excellence as well, but what these roasters do is provide information about who it purchases from, who the owner of the farm is and usually pictures of the plantation and how the crop was picked. What these two roasters and many others do is called direct trade coffee 49th Parallel affectionately calls its relationship coffee.
It is not an exact science nor is it fool proof and is a some what controversial subject. But if you have an educated roaster and an educated barista, you will get an educated consumer.
Amendment April 09 :
The Fair / Direct Trade Coffee List has been discontinued until a better way of listing roasters is found.
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I’ve actually been thrown out of cafes in the past (well it hasn’t happened for a fe w years now) because I dared to challenge their claim of their coffee being “fairly traded”, when FT was becoming really hot.
“Can you define fairly traded?”
“Can you show me a paper trail showing how much the farmers or coops get?”
“Can you explain why you aren’t just doing Fair Trade certified?”
“What proof have you got that this isn’t just an attempt to market on the goodwill generated by the real deal?”
OTOH, there’s a few roasters and cafes that embraced these questions and gleefully showed me the paper trail, stories about the farmer, feedback from the farmers on how they benefit from their relationship with that roaster, etc.
Roasters like 49th, Intelly, Stumptown and others get knocked by the unknowning general public for not pimping FT Certified; there was an episode with Intelly being “called out” on dropping FT a few years ago on a popular LA blog – and Geoff Watts himself took the time to write a very reasoned and well explained response as to why that was so.
What the general public doesn’t know is that today, FT is kind of seen as the “welfare” system for farmers and coops, because the price is too low vis a vis the C market and where direct trade / relationship coffees are going. I spoke to a range of farmers this year alone at the SCAA who have opted out of the FT program in the past year or two, because while in 2001 and 2002 it was a lifesaver, today, without a real raise in the price in those seven years, it’s a fallback, a last saving grace, a “welfare” system for them, because now, in some cases, they get much better income from direct relationships and dealing with ethical brokers like Sustainable Harvest or Cafe Imports (49th buys some coffees through them), and other cases, the C market is a better option for individual farmers because they don’t have to give 20, 30% or more of their monies to the coop. They just sell to coyotes or (if they are big enough) to brokers for nearly the same price or higher (in pocket price).
And if another consumer equates FT with “quality”, I’m gonna scream. Yes, there are high quality FT coffees. But not all FT coffee guarantees quality in the cup. Most FT is just commodity grade, sub 85 point scoring coffees.
You said:
“What these two roasters and many others do is called direct trade coffee. 49th affectionately calls its relationship coffee, which really isn’t fair from the truth of the matter.”
These comments are incorrect. From what I know about 49th, they market relationship coffees with the coffees they buy direct and they label COE coffee’s COE coffees! You are misinterpreting the reality. Their El Salvador El Retiro for example is bought direct and is marketed as a relationship coffee. I think you need to verify your facts.
Kyle
I trust a lot of these roasters but Caffe de Lucia seems really weird. Tell me how Brazza can have 2 shipments a week flown in from Italy and make their coffee price feasible. And then all their coffees’s are Fair Trade? Why is it when you go to their internet site you end up at Brazza’s site?
I have never seen an Italian roaster be exclusive Fair Trade and single origin coffees are not generally sold in Italy but this roaster does. Seems very strange.
Does anybody have any information on this roaster?
Andrew
Hi Kyle, I have done some further research and will continue to research this topic. I can see this is a bigger can of worms then I had originally thought. For me this is also a learning and education of good trading practises.
Hi Robert,
I think the big can of worms is the Cafe De Luca. No internet site…no response from email …. no response from brazza. One of your posters sam franko mention they deliver from Italy 2 times a week. I can’t get any verification. Everything seems to be a secret and fumbling of words. I honestly don’t believe they are fair trade. My opinion I may be wrong but this roaster seems far fetched.
Kyle
Hi Kyle you bring up a good point. But I only add it to the list after I have reviewed it.