Executives of a local fair trade coffee cooperative urged consumers Wednesday to be more conscious of our societies’ business practices in a talk to University of Wisconsin students in Grainger Hall.
Matt Earley, co-founder, and Mike Miller, customer relations representative of Just Coffee, a fair trade coffee company, educated students on the fair trade movement and the start of their company in a discussion hosted by Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group.
“The principles behind Just Coffee are working with small-scale growers in cooperatives,” Earley said. “And the importance of cooperatives, we think, is that cooperatives offer a democratic mechanism for farmers to be able to organize and have more power in the market place.”
Earley and Miller recounted their experiences working with the impoverished coffee farmers of Chiapas, Mexico. They said fair trade is a way for farmers and others to organize and get a fair price for their product so they can afford access to basic human rights, such as food and education for their children.
“The free trade argument against this is that if you’re making 25 cents per pound of coffee and it’s a losing proposition, then you should walk away,” Earley said. “That sounds great on paper, but when you are actually on the ground and you are producing something … [and] your people have been producing for years, and you are in a deep cycle of debt to the people buying the coffee, you’re screwed.”
Consumers in the United States have become too complacent in allowing opaque business practices, according to Earley.
“We have all come up in a system, in a situation where unless we try really hard, we have absolutely no idea who’s producing the things we consume, what we wear and things that we use every day,” Earley said.
Earley pointed to the pair of jeans he was wearing, saying he had no idea how much the workers who made them got paid or how the conditions are in the factory where they work.
Miller warned against the dangers of having companies operate their business practices secretly, saying there is no way democracy if entities inside can work in secret.
He went on to say consumers must demand transparency. However, fair trade business is not the end-all solution, according to Earley. He said consumer education is the next step for transparent democratic business.
Earley said students can join groups like WISPIRG on campus to get more involved with the fair trade process.
According to Earley, students can also help by “just taking the time and caring enough to spend five to 10 minutes a week researching this stuff.”
Audience member and UW sophomore Caleb Crossley said he liked the message of the need for transparent business practices and was also inspired by Miller and Earley as prototypes for a new “socially conscious businessman.”
Crossley also said he thought the fair trade process will be hard, adding fair trade businesses are “nowhere near doing well.”
