Organic Researcher

One of the problems of trying to do something ethical is that those who are not will try to muscle in on it if it looks like it is going to make a real change and behave in a very unethical way – possibly ruining what you trying to do in the first place. This is the problem that is facing fair trade coffee just as it faced organic farming a few years ago (see this article in the Observer Food magazine).

For several years Fair Trade coffee has been gaining ground in the UK, now taking a sizeable part of the market, and then Nescafe decided it want a cup of the action. Alongside that some of the other major coffee houses have decided to adopt a range of environmental measures. I don’t want to brag but that is just the sort of topic that academics have been working through for several years around organic farming. At the moment only the views of one side are widely available but they are well worth a read (there are a few links below).

The question is in many ways that of reform and compromise, yes the exclusivity of the product will be lost – it will no longer be a club to which few belong, a club that has a certain cachet and elan. Yet, if there is a greater good in the production of the good – benefit to wildlife and/or those who grow it then by scaling it up to a mass product that benefit will flow more widely. However, in scaling it up all too often that process is undermined and distorted, people are treated badly or the ecosystem abused.

Of course the most telling criticism of both of these arguments is that they take it out of context, they argue about a product not the social and economic relations that propel the product. Only by understanding the whole system can reform be made. But that argument leads to dispair, as the task is just so huge.

The debate won’t end but it is fascinating to see it appear somewhere else.

If you want to read about this debate in relation to Organic Farming and Food check out Julie Guthman’s book,

The Starbucks Challenge – a campaign by a couple of bloggers that grew legs and has taken off. Question is if you are against globalisation and the branding of the world – what are you doing in Starbucks in the first place?

For UK readers check out your coffee supply with this article.

star bucks challenge
organic food
fair trade