Fair Trade News

Published Oct 6, 2005

Students campaign for fair trade coffee
By Sara Howard / Staff Writer

Ithaca College Students for Fair Trade have jump-started a campaign for fair trade coffee in the campus dining halls. TransFair USA, a certifier of fair trade products in the United States, named October Fair Trade Month to raise awareness about alternative forms of consumerism, said Laurie Konwinski of the Ithaca Fair Trade Federation.

“Fair trade certification on things like coffee, chocolate, clothing and fruit is the guarantee that the workers who produce it are getting a just wage, a just price for their crop and that they’re working under safe conditions,” Konwinski said. The campaign for fair trade coffee at the college began last fall, when then-junior Julie Perng founded the student group.

“Our goal was exclusively to get fair trade coffee in the dining halls because that concrete change would be a major step,” Perng said. Perng met numerous times during the fall with Jeff Scott, dining services general manager, to discuss the prospect of fair trade coffee in the dining halls. Ithaca College Students for Fair Trade gave a presentation on fair trade coffee to a small number of full- time dining services employees, attended Government Association meetings and tabled on a regular basis.
Then, when Perng studied abroad in China during the spring semester, the campaign for fair trade coffee stumbled. Scott said he didn’t have any meetings with the club this past spring.

“The issue sort of fell off [dining services’] radar,” Scott said. “Last spring, there was a huge push among the student and faculty for healthier and more sustainable food, and that was something that a lot of people wanted. So that was where we laid our focus.”

This year, the group renewed its interest in the campaign as Perng and sophomores Michael Iannacci and Sara-Maria Sorentino stepped up as co-chairs. They contacted Scott and arranged to meet with him tomorrow. Scott said there are no drawbacks to having fair trade coffee in the dining halls and he admires the cause. He also said he does not want to make the change until he knows there is overwhelming campus support for it.

Students for Fair Trade drew up a petition and began soliciting student signatures at the Involvement Fair on Sept. 21. The petitions, handled primarily by Sorentino, were signed by more than 600 people in a week and about 800 at last count. IC Square and Grand Central Café are currently the only places on campus that offer fair trade coffee.

“We brew thousands more cups of coffee in IC Square and Grand Central Café than we do in the dining halls,” Scott said. “So the Students for Fair Trade may think that fair trade coffee in the dining halls will have some big, huge impact when it really may not.”

Sorentino said every change makes a difference. As the Fair Trade Federation reports, the average coffee grower earns about 80 cents per pound of beans, while a grower selling to a fair trade market earns from $1.12 to $1.26 per pound. In order for a business to be certifiably fair trade, it must not only pay its workers a living wage in the context of their community, but also engage in environmentally sustainable practices, provide healthy and safe working conditions and build long-term relationships with the communities, according to the international Fair Trade Federation Web site.
“There’s roughly 25 million coffee farmers in the world, and the majority of them are in debt, and they can’t make profit enough to provide a living for themselves and their children,” Iannacci said. “They have to pull their kids out of school, and they have to stop providing medication and everything, and a lot of them are starving to death, too.”