Most people think that Fair Trade is just about a minimum price guaranteed to the farmers. That is a critical piece of the system, but Fair Trade provides many powerful tools for social change – something that no other label or system offers. One of the most significant is the requirement that farmers organize into democratic and transparent cooperatives.

In order to understand what this is about, it is necessary to appreciate why Fair Trade was founded in the first place. In the coffee world, the vast majority of farmers are small scale and indigenous. That means they have little access to information about prices, how the market operates, the needs of northern buyers, access to credit and more. They may not even speak their own national language, but rather their indigenous language. Therefore, they need middlemen to either provide the services for them or buy their coffee outright as cherries picked earlier that day. Since most are physically far removed from the major population or processing centers, they also have to rely on middlemen to get their coffee out of the mountains and into the stream of commerce. As you can see, they are not effective participants in the world market (even though economic models assume that they are), and are at a terrible disadvantage in trying to get a good price for their products.

By organizing into cooperatives, the farmers have the joint buying power to get better prices for farm inputs, they have joint processing power and a greater ability to get information about current prices and market conditions. They get to vote and have a real say (often for the first time in their lives) on the things that impact their families’ health and well-being. The requirement of transparency means that for the first time in their lives they know what they are getting, how much goes into the coop’s coffers, how much everyone else is getting and they can see the impact of the cooperative on their personal and joint bottom lines. Further, the coops provide valuable and often nonexistent social services, such as loans and health care (or at least money to obtain care).

Fair trade coops often pool their premiums together to have a powerful joint impact on their communities. This may take the form of building wells and schools (and believe me, most farming communities are in desperate need of both!) such as we have seen and participated in in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Peru and elsewhere. Often, it takes the form of purchasing and building upstream capacity – that’s biz talk for buying the plants that process, grade, package and export their beans, thereby keeping that entire income stream in the local community, not giving it away to layers of middlemen. In Ethiopia, our Oromia partners have even created a national bank that takes deposits from non-members, makes low cost loans to members and has creatively diversified the income of the coop.

These are the unique, important and largely unknown benefits of cooperation in the coffeelands, and tens of thousands of farming families have gained better lives as a result. These are the reasons why we have focused on cooperatives and will continue to do so.

Fair Trade is much more than just an economic formula guaranteeing the farmers more money than conventional coffee sales. One of the most exciting aspects of the movement to me is the impact Fair Trade has on women throughout the developing world. Within Fair Trade cooperatives, gender equity is required. That generally means that women have to be represented on the Board of Directors and on other governing bodies, and of course, they can vote and their votes are equal. I am not naïve, however, and I know that in many of the societies where coffee grows women’s empowerment is still a goal and is resisted subtly and sometimes overtly by the ruling men. At the same time, I have seen powerful indications of change. Five of the fourteen coops we work with around the world are managed by women. And those women use their power not only to improve the lives, social standing and self-esteem of women in their own coops, but each of them reaches out and mentors women in other coops. An awesome model for all of us.

We take voting for granted, and many of us don’t even bother to vote in primaries or in general elections. For women (and men) who have never had the opportunity to participate in decisions that effect and control their economic and political lives, voting is a powerful act. I have seen enormous changes in women over the years as they participate and have their voices heard in their communities and on the world stage. One example, Esperanza Castillo from Pangoa Cooperative in Peru. When we first met in 2003, she was a shy and quiet manager of a small coop (about two hundred families). Over the years, Esperanza has developed into an internationally recognized voice for women and Fair Trade. At one event she got a standing ovation when the next speaker (Hilary Clinton) got warm applause. In Ethiopia, Nekempte has gone from an “office girl” when we first met in 2000, to the number three in command of Oromia Cooperative, which has over 100,000 members! 

The point here is not that all of the problems of women’s empowerment have been solved by Fair Trade. Rather, the movement opens an oasis of opportunity to women in rural societies where there are not that many other institutional openings. That is the true evolution of change beneath the surface of a cup of Fair Trade coffee.

(Read Part 1 of Dean's trip to Kenya)

Later in the week was the launch of a new NGO, Fair Trade Organization of Kenya (FTOK).  Forty farmers representing ten thousand farm families came together for the celebration and a full-day workshop on fair trade and organics, presented by John and I, along with FTOK founder Sophie Mukua and President, Samwel Okwenda.  There were also representatives of Thika Mills (mills are traditionally the last bad guy in the farmer rip-off equation), which is now certified to process fair trade coffees (hmm, we’ll see), and Robert Thuo of the African Wildlife Foundation, which is saving elephants and helping farmers with a grant from USAID and Starbucks (it is great work, but I had to ask, wouldn’t it be betmter if Starbucks simply paid the farmers more for their coffee? Then they could put up their own fences and feed their families directly-what a concept!).

The farmer coops in attendance introduced themselves, and talked about the low price of coffee they receive and the terrible effects of the drought. They talked about how difficult it was to find direct buyers; even though they were allowed to do so by law, they didn’t know how.  John gave a wonderfully detailed description of the organic farming system.  Most of these farmers were raised on government information that was hopelessly out of date and more appropriate for large plantations, not small holdings of two acres or so.  We talked about interplanting and what crops farmers used in different countries to fix nitrogen into the soil, create soil stability and have more food for their families and the local markets.  We described natural pesticides and took a break for me to plant a muthega tree at the coop of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Matthai.  The tree is used as a natural pesticide and it made a big impression on the farmers.  I spent about two hours describing why they don’t get decent money for their crop, how prices are determined in New York, not in the field, and how to protect themselves from thieves coming into the “second window”. We had to change shillings into dollars, pounds into kilograms, and coffee cherries into green beans (about seven to one in Kenya), which made for a head pounding, exciting translation of information for farmers who had never had access to this before.  After several intense hours of questioning, we called it quits, applauding each other heartily.  Elias Matenge, head of the Thiriku Cooperative came up to me and patted my shoulder forcefully. “This has been revolutionary!” he beamed. “This was the best workshop I have ever attended!” shouted Nelson Mwaniki from Rianjagi. We all walked outside the meeting hall in a good mood.  Then the most unbelievable thing happened.

It started to rain.

(Read Part 1 of Dean's trip to Kenya)

Those of you who have read my book, Javatrekker, will remember how I got clobbered in Kenya trying to create fair and transparent trade a few years ago.  There was so much corruption and so little information or options for the farmers that It looked like fair trade and organics would never take root there.  Yet the coffee farmers of Kenya are a tenacious bunch. In spite of a year-long drought, election violence and market disruptions, they have continued to organize and seek help towards bringing more money and resources to their families.  They haven’t quit, so how could I?

I arrived in Embu with John Njoroge, the head of the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming, whom we had funded last year to come to the USA and receive certification as an international organic inspector.  Building organic capacity in Kenya is a key part of our strategy, so that farmers won’t have to rely on European and American inspectors to create and monitor their systems (very expensive and pretty darn colonial!).  The year- long drought in the area meant that every step raised a cloud of dust, and the crops were withered and sickly. I was greeted by the head of the Rianjagi Cooperative, Albert Mwaniki, who told me that he never forgot that I had said “if trade was not fair, then it was immoral”, and he was eager to continue the quest for fairness for the farmers. We immediately began laying out the program for Rianjagi to become the first organic certified coffee cooperative in Kenya, a three-year process that would demand a lot of work on the farmers’ part. We needed to set up an Internal Control System to document and monitor farm practices, set up training programs in water and soil conservation, build demonstration plots for natural pesticides and new practices, file with an international body for recognition and more. KIOF, Dean’s Beans and Rianjagi would sign a Memorandum of Agreement on who would be responsible for what, and most significantly, who would pay for all of this (guess who?). Just beyond the door of the coop office, women and men sang softly while they turned the coffee beans on their raised drying beds, bringing the moisture down to the required 12 percent before hulling, grading and bagging the beans for export. We worked late into the night designing the program, celebrating with a great dinner of everything grown on the farm of Molly Njeru, the Vice Chair of Rianjagi and a dedicated organic farmer.

We also talked about the big change in Kenya.  Before, farmers were forced to sell their coffee to the big processor, KPCU, which was theoretically owned by the coops, but was controlled by the government. At last the law had been changed to allow the farmers to find their own buyers and market their coffee directly. This was known as the “second window”. They thanked me for the small role I played in that change, as my whistle blowing on corruption inside KPCU pushed the changes along, they said. Well, I don’t know about that, but at least one minister and many KPCU board members were dismissed as a result. Some satisfaction for the incredible rip-off we experienced trying to buy Rianjagi coffee before. We also talked about fair trade coming to Kenya.  There were now three registered fair trade coops, although no certified organic ones.  Were the fair trade coops making better money? Nobody knew, and there are still enough Byzantine regulations and channels of commerce outside of the farmers’ control that I don’t think anyone will know for a while.

The next day we celebrated the inauguration of a new computer system that would allow complete transparency and accountability for the farmers. They could go on the computer and see exactly what they brought in, what it sold for, how much was added to their accounts and who the buyers were.  This was funded by Solidaridad, a Netherlands NGO along with Utz Kapeh, a self-certifying system for large European coffee importers. The claim to fame of the Utz system is transparency, but it doesn’t guarantee the farmers any more money. One of the board members commented sardonically that it was a good system, but they can’t eat computer paper.  The new Minister for Cooperative Development was there (the old one got canned after my debacle, although he is now the head of exports! It seems politicians know a lot about sustainability).  I gave a short speech about how impressed I was with the changes since my last visit, and how much more we had to go to insure fair treatment for Kenyan coffee farmers...

Read Part 2 of Dean's Kenya trip.