Certifications

Certifications

Discontent with certifications

In my post about the Coffee Conference, I noted that one of the most interesting things I came away with was the general displeasure many participants had with coffee certifications. Both Rainforest Alliance and TransFair USA (the Fair Trade certifiying organization in the US) had representatives at the conference. RA’s Bethany Koch (Client Relations Manager) and TransFair’s Kim Moore (Director of Business Development, Coffee and Beverages) both gave presentations that provided current statistics on the amount of coffee certified by each agency, and their various partners.

Participants had several bones of contention.

  • Conflict between the mission of the organizations and their corporate partners. Specifically mentioned were RA’s partnership with Chiquita bananas and Kraft, and both organizations with Walmart. These companies have had very checkered pasts (or presents) and their histories and behavior struck people as highly at odds with the principles behind these certifications. Several people were strident about the hypocrisy of purporting to help small farmers considering Chiquita’s role in destroying the Caribbean banana farming industry. I thought one questioner’s hair was going to catch fire. Likewise, Walmart has faced a lot of criticism about unfair treatment of it’s own workers. Moore’s response regarding Walmart was that Fair Trade is concerned with the producers, not the retailers. Further, he said that all big companies had some dark holes in their pasts, and in essence that TransFair/Fair Trade wanted to look forward and not back. Likewise, people were disturbed by the fact that large roasters such as Kraft can use only 30% Rainforest Alliance certified beans and still put the RA seal on the bag (albeit with a disclaimer). Koch replied with the answer that I have received before from RA. First, that there isn’t enough supply to satisfy the huge demand of  large roasters. However, minutes prior she showed a graph indicating supply was larger than demand, a gap RA strove to maintain so that there would always be enough certified beans. I can only surmise that there isn’t enough supply that matches Kraft’s “flavor” profile. And second, although the volume of certified beans purchased by Kraft (20,000 metric tons in 2007) is a small fraction of their total purchases, RA believes that this makes a huge difference on the ground, and that changing the way a large and influential coffee company does business is a big step in the right direction. This “30% rule” is worthy of a post all of its own. Suffice to say that overall, people did not seem satisfied with these responses.
  • Fair Trade prices are too low. The Fair Trade floor price was recently raised to a modest $1.25/lb (there is also a $0.10 social premium that does not necessarily go to the farmer), only $0.11 higher than when it was established in 1988. Producers at the conference noted several times that it was not adequate to compensate for the rising cost of production. This same conclusion was drawn by Daniel Jaffee in his excellent book Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival.
  • Exclusionary policies of Fair Trade. Fair Trade certification is only available to cooperatives, not to individual small farmers or larger plantations (and therefore does not protect temporary workers at these locations). Further, Moore revealed that even many cooperatives do not qualify for Fair Trade certification. A representative of the PEARL project questioned the wisdom of small cooperatives in Rwanda participating in Fair Trade since the cost of the certification itself was a large percentage of revenues for these producers which still had low outputs. Moore’s answer was direct and honest, but made more than a few people squirm. He noted that co-ops needed to be commercially viable entities in order to qualify for certification. He said that Fair Trade is not a beginning intervention point and “Fair Trade is not for the very most in-need farmers.”

Geoff Watts pointed out that Fair Trade uses promotional language that “glorifies” cooperatives and implies that private sector efforts are evil. I’ll add that this applies to other certifications, which often urge buyers to only buy certified coffee (whatever seal is being promoted) as the only ethical choice. Watts said this leads consumers who want to do the right thing away from choices that might do the most good (e.g., Direct Trade initiatives). Indeed, in private conversations I had with some of the small retail roasters in attendance, all told me that they have had customers in their shops who demand coffee with a Fair Trade seal and didn’t even want to hear about directly-sourced coffees from farms that had been paid more than the Fair Trade price. As Jaffee asks in his book,

“What good will it do to have Nestlé displaying the fair-trade seal on a tiny portion of its coffee if the company ultimately succeeds in confusing consumers and undermining their confidence in the integrity of fair trade overall”?

As evidenced by opinions expressed at this conference, the integrity of these seals has already been diluted or compromised. Their success depends not only on the support of consumers, but also roasters and retailers. TransFair and Rainforest Alliance need to examine adopting some sort of tiered certification system that differentiates between products that are truly 100% certified, and those that are part of a limited effort. Brands which use only small portions of certified beans should be required to increase by a set percent over a specified time period, and all these actions should be transparent to the public.

Further, I believe that large corporations (the big roasters) should bear the burden of the costs of certifying the producers. These costs — initially $2000 to $4000 plus regular inspections — prevent many producers from ever getting certified in the first place, locking them out of these markets. The multinationals can well afford to cover these expenses. This will also have the added benefit of acting as an investment by these corporations in their suppliers, providing, one hopes, some long-term stability. I’d also like to see some sort of additional fee paid by these large companies, for as long as their certified supply remains under a particular level, that would help subsidize the fees of other farmers.

Socially and environmentally responsible seals have worthy standards and great missions, but their success depends on goodwill and trust. What I found intriguing was that this was a left-leaning crowd, the type that typically supports, and even helped found, these certification movements. It’s a shame to see this trust eroding.

Certifications / Coffee reviews / Rainforest Alliance

Coffee Review covers Rainforest Alliance coffees

Kenneth Davids’ excellent Coffee Review takes on Rainforest Alliance coffees for its September reviews. Please go read his concise and insightful introduction to the reviews. He provides a good overview of the RA program and how it differs from Fair Trade, how they complement each other, and RA’s efforts to adapt their standards to different cultures and types of coffee organizations.

Davids makes a couple of interesting observations about the RA coffees submitted by roasters for the reviews. Two dozen roasters submitted 34 single-origin RA-certified coffees, but they only represented eleven producers. Familiar RA producers Daterra Estate in Brazil, Panama’s Hacienda La Esmeralda, Selva Negra estate in Nicaragua, and the Mesa de los Santos farm in Colombia (which is also certified Smithsonian Bird-Friendly) were all in the mix.

In addition to the twelve submitted coffees that were reviewed, Davids threw in a review of Kraft’s Yuban coffee, which contains 30% RA-certified beans. The rest, based on his trained palate, is cheap robusta:

Based on a reading of cup profile, the blend we cupped (Yuban Original) probably contains enough Brazil from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to qualify for the certification seal, with a good part of the remainder of the blend inexpensive robustas, perhaps steamed to remove flavor taints. The result is a Rainforest Alliance Certified version of the bland, woody, faintly sweet supermarket profile that has come to dominate canned coffee shelves over the last two decades.

I understand the theory behind RA working with Kraft or other multinationals to get them to buy more certified beans. However, I think there is a serious problem with consumers thinking that this is a truly sustainable coffee if 70% of the beans are not certified, and likely cheap, sun-grown beans grown with chemicals. Nor do I think RA is doing itself any favors by putting its seal on crappy-tasting supermarket coffees, especially when it is highly likely to be the first or only RA-certified coffee consumers will encounter.

Go enjoy the reviews and give some of the coffees a try — just skip the Yuban.

Fair and Direct Trade

Sweet Maria’s Farm Gate Coffee

Green coffee and home roasting supplier Sweet Maria’s has formalized their direct trade buying program, calling it Farm Gate Coffee. Farm Gate prices are at least 50% (but often 100% or more) over Fair Trade prices. Their latest newsletter gives a more thorough explanation.

Even if you don’t roast your own coffee, head over to the Sweet Maria’s web site. I have learned so much there — not only in the coffee library, but also reading the bean reviews and descriptions and the many travelogues that are sprinked throughout the site. It’s a real education!

Certifications / Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance introduces carbon module

In my post “Coffee farms and carbon sequestration,” I discussed the potential of carbon credits in helping coffee farmers earn extra income, and provided some statistics and references on carbon sequestration on coffee farms in and other tropical agroforestry systems.

As it turns out, Rainforest Alliance (RA) will be adding a carbon module to their certification for farms (coffee, and presumably other crops they certify). This announcement was first made in May at their Sustainable Coffee Breakfast at the SCAA annual conference in Minneapolis. The details are not final, but here is what RA’s Gretchen Ruethling explained to me regarding RA’s past experience and future plans:

We are working with other organizations to help farmers get paid for providing environmental services such as storing carbon and protecting watersheds and biodiversity. The Rainforest Alliance is a registered verifier for leading carbon offset programs including the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance and the Chicago Climate Exchange. We have verified carbon offsets on coffee farms through projects organized by Plan Vivo in Mexico. We verified an ambitious project in Aceh, Indonesia developed by Fauna & Flora International that will reduce deforestation on 750,000 hectares of rainforest. We verified a reforestation project in the highly endangered Atlantic Forest of Brazil as a carbon offset for Jacques Vabre, a coffee brand in France. (That project is managed by a coalition of Brazilian NGOs and led by the Nature Conservancy.)

We are working to offer more incentives to coffee farmers to encourage them to plant more trees. One exciting idea is developing a system that would allow coffee companies to buy carbon from farmers along with their coffee beans — through the existing supply chains. Companies could pay a small carbon premium. In order for this to work, we need a simple, low-cost yet rigorous and highly credible method to estimate the carbon on a coffee farm and verify that it remains year after year. This could be done by auditing the carbon as part of the annual farm inspection by members of the Sustainable Agriculture Network.

I’m thrilled RA is pursuing this concept — it’s a win-win-win situation for the farmer, biodiversity, and the planet.