Loker Coffee Menu: Regular, Decaf, or Fair Trade?

Since Monday, customers buying a cup o' joe in Loker Commons have been able to do their part to ensure that coffee bean farmers are getting paid adequately for their labor.

The new option is the due to the work of students who are less concerned about whether their coffee cup says Starbucks or Toscanini's than they are with a different type of label-the Fair Trade Certified seal.

The symbol signifies that the farmers who grew the coffee were paid a fair price, currently $1.26 per pound. TransFair USA monitors coffee sales in the United States and allows coffee roasters and retailers who follow their guidelines to use their seal, a black and white figure holding a pot in each hand.

Nine undergraduates, concerned with increasing the presence and awareness on campus of coffee bearing a Fair Trade Certified seal, have joined together to form the Harvard Initiative for Fair Trade (HIFT).

"People just don't know what Fair Trade means," says Jordan A.A. Bar Am '04, the Founder and Director of the HIFT. "If you mention the living wage, at Harvard, everyone knows what it is. But people just haven't heard of fair trade."

Although they are still in the process of applying for official University recognition, in under three months, HIFT has already convinced Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) to introduce Fair Trade coffee to Loker Commons and the Greenhouse.

They held a teach-in on Tuesday, served free Fair Trade coffee at the beginning of the week, canvassed door-to-door around the yard and postered all over campus to spread the word about their cause.

But members say they still have more work to spread the word about an issue that most undergrads still have never heard of.

NOT THEIR CUP OF TEA

Coffee farmers are not paid enough for their produce, according to Fair Trade Cordinator at OXFAM America, Liam J. Brody '00.

"For a pound of coffee that we pay between $5 and $14 for, the commodity exchange says that farmers should get 60 cents a pound. That's what the exporters get paid. But farmers on the open market only get 20 to 40 cents per pound after the middleman," Brody says.

Most of the grande mocha lattes that Harvard students sip are made from the beans of farmers abroad who live in extreme poverty.

"Two-thirds of the folks who grow coffee in the world are poor, small-scale family farmers," Brody says. "They live in the mountains of Nicaragua, Indonesia and Tanzania where electricity, roads and schools exist in a very limited basis. They also don't have first hand knowledge of how coffee is traded in the world and how much people would pay for it in consumer cultures like Europe and United States.

OXFAM helps these farmers form cooperatives so that they can invest in trucks, plants and have bargaining power when they're dealing with trade merchants. The coffee growers can therefore cut the middlemen, known as coyotes in South America, out of the process.

"These cooperatives retain more of the price, but the price itself is still below the cost of production," Brody says. "The farmers are getting more than 20 cents, but they're still only getting 60. We say that we need higher prices-fair prices."

Brody explains Fair Trade coffee is a chance for consumers to make choices with dramatic consequences.

"If someone buys a cup of fair trade coffee instead of a cup at a conventional market, the farmer is really benefiting and it can have a real effect getting these farmers out of poverty," Brody says. "We've either doubled or tripled the amount of money that small scale farmers are getting. Some communities have been able to invest in schools and health clinic for the first time because of the impact of fair trade."

BREWING UP SUPPORT

HIFT started with a sociology class.

Part of Bar Am's assignment for Sociology 96: "Community Action Research" was to get involved with an existing project or start a new one. Local activists spoke to the class about a number of projects, including Fair Trade coffee, an issue that reminded him of high school.

"One of my teachers junior year talked a lot about Brazil. He would say, 'A lot of coffee is grown in Brazil, but do you think that people in Brzil actually drink it?' I stopped drinking coffee after that. I just became a lot more conscious about farming issues," Bar Am says.

He decided to recruit assistance from other graduates to begin working on his project. He sent out e-mails to friends and fellow alums of the Freshman Urban Program to tell them about the project. Soon after, Bar Am and a group of eight other undergraduates began holding meetings.

OXFAM's Brody contacted Bar Am and offered his support in helping to hold a teach-in at Harvard, and said he would bring a Mexican coffee farmer to speak.

"Fair Trade is a vehicle for Americans-and American college students in particular-to get engaged in social justice issues," Brody says. "It's a way for us to create sustainable incomes for people across the world by the way we spend our money."

In order to generate publicity for the info meeting, HIFT gave out free Fair Trade coffee Monday and Tuesday mornings in front of the Science Center. The coffee was donated by Peet's Coffee on Mt. Auburn Street, Loker Commons and the Greenhouse.

"People were very responsive," Bar Am says. "At least they got to hear the words Fair Trade for the first time."

The door-to -door canvassing also helped to increase awareness.

"After only two or three minutes of chatting in someone's dorm, people were asking really insightful questions and agreed to go the meeting," HIFT member Anne J. Beckett says.

About 60 people gathered in the Phillips brooks House Parlor room on Tuesday night to attend the teach-in. One of the speakers was Lorenzo Jose Jose, a Mexican farmer who recently finished his term as president of a cooperative of 23.000 indigenous workers in Oaxaca, Mexico.

"He came with a simple message," Brody says. "Once you know about an alternative like fair trade, it means changing the world one cup at a time for Loreno and his community."

HIFT members hope that these events will convince other students to support their cause.

"This teach-in was a kind of springboard-our entrance onto the Harvard stage," Bar Am says.

ONE SIP AT A TIME

But HIFT has already affected one big change at Harvard-HUDS' agreement to begin serving Fair Trade coffee.

Bar Am says he only needed to call the Greenhouse manager.

"She said, 'Yeah, it's a great idea, I'll look into it,'" Bar Am says. The Greenhouse has agreed to offer Fair Trade coffee every few days as an alternative to other blends.

When he spoke with Loker Commons Manager Debbie Peters, he was greeted with similar support.

"She said that it sounded promising and that she would check the pricing information," he says. "After break, she said that the would offer it every day."

"We're hoping to serve it for the rest of the year," Peters says. "We're very supportive of the program, and as word gets out about how good the program I think more people will people be supportive of the program and buy the coffee."

The Initiative Director didn't expect HUDS to be so receptive.

"I kind of thought, 'Don't you want us to protest?' They were so cooperative that we didn't make demands, but maybe we will pressure them in the future to serve Fair Trade coffee everyday," he says.

Beckett is more explicit about her desire for HUDS to embrace the cause.

"My goal is to get Fair Trade coffee in all the dining halls everyday and in all the cafes," she says. "I don't think it will be very hard to get student support, but I don't have a very good feeling of how the university will respond.

HIFT hasn't yet decided what its next step will be, but Bar Am and friends hope to continue to promote their cause.

"This is a way that Havard Students can fight for social justice and help the environment simply by drinking coffee," Bar Am says.