it'll never pass..but....

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Coffee politics

 

Lovin' cups

 

Aug 22nd 2002 | BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

 

From The Economist print edition

 

Coffee, and justice, for all

 

BERKELEY is the birthplace of People's Park and of American

coffee snobbery. So it seems fitting that the city's

peace-loving, caffeine-wired citizens are embracing a way to

combine their politics with their drug of choice (or one of

them, anyway). " Sec C " --short for Socially and/or

Environmentally Consciously Cultivated Coffee (and

pronounced " sexy " , of course)--is a proposal to limit the

kinds of coffee sold in Berkeley, and is up for discussion

on the November ballot.

 

America's speciality-coffee revolution kicked off in the

late 1960s in Berkeley, where Alfred Peet, a Dutch immigrant

and founder of Peet's Coffee, trained the men who would

later start Starbucks in Seattle. Nowadays cafés line most

of Berkeley's main streets, and people discuss coffee blends

with the passion of wine-tasters. Yet no one can agree on

Sec C.

 

The initiative is the hobby-horse of Rick Young, a lawyer

fresh from the University of California at Berkeley's law

school. After successfully persuading the owner of the

law-school café to switch to more politically-correct

coffee, Mr Young decided to take the matter to the streets.

Having collected over 3,000 signatures, he is now in a

position to appeal to the university town's 80,000-odd

voters.

 

If passed, only coffee beans that are certified as organic,

fair-trade or shade-grown could be sold. To brew regular Joe

would be an offence punishable by up to six months in jail

and a $100 fine. " People should pay a price for their coffee

that reflects the larger costs, like polluting water and

cutting trees, " Mr Young says. " Prices now are artificially

low because they don't take into account all the

externalities. "

 

Basic coffee is trading at record low prices, averaging less

than 50 cents per lb on the New York Coffee, Sugar, and

Cocoa Exchange. Fair-trade coffees, by contrast, are selling

at around $1.25 per lb for regular and around $1.40 per lb

for certified organic beans. To receive fair-trade

certification, coffee growers must be included in the

International Fair Trade Coffee Register, which guarantees a

" fair-trade price " and credit against future sales. Organic

coffee is grown without pesticides, herbicides and

fungicides, while " shade-grown " means grown under a canopy

of trees, thereby protecting wildlife habitats.

 

Mr Young hopes to win voters on the strength of his

environmental argument. Migratory birds which fly south to

Central America each year, he points out, live in forests

that are increasingly threatened by large-scale coffee

growers, who cut down trees to replace shade-grown coffee

with heartier new varieties that thrive in the open air.

Moreover, the birds often return carrying pesticides,

pollutants and fertilisers from non-organic plantations,

potentially wreaking ecological havoc up north.

 

The denizens of Berkeley are used to paying a bit more for

quality Java, and the idea of politically-correct coffee is

not new. TransFair USA, the only organisation responsible

for fair-trade certification in America, is based in

neighbouring Oakland; and in 1999, Berkeley's mayor, Shirley

Dean, sponsored a regulation stipulating that all coffee

purchased by the city government must be fair-trade.

Recently, though, she has expressed doubts about Mr Young's

initiative, noting the enforcement difficulties if it is

passed.

 

Coffee sellers, too, have mixed feelings. " He wants to make

this punishable with six months in prison. I resent paying

taxes for this kind of enforcement, " says Ayal Amzel, owner

of Yali's Café, near the university. " We have 13 people

working here. We will be hurt. It will take a toll. "

 

Despite the reaction of shopkeepers such as Mr Amzel (not to

mention hate e-mails from across the country), Mr Young

seems to have struck something of a chord. A subcommittee of

the House International Relations Committee held discussions

on the coffee crisis last month. Californian politicians

have also weighed in. Congressman Sam Farr has recommended

that individuals and institutional consumers purchase

" sustainable " or fair-trade coffees. Pete Stark, another

Democratic member of the House, has introduced a resolution

that all branches of the federal government purchase only

certified fair-trade coffees.

 

The Berkeley initiative may not pass this year.

Nevertheless, the search has begun for what Thanksgiving

Coffee of California, a leader in the gourmet coffee

industry, refers to as " Not just a cup, but a just cup. "