Anne MacCaig on the real cost of coffee

When I was growing up, I had this weekend job in a shop in Bristol. What fascinated me was the way all the different chocolate brands would fight for space on the shelf. I started to learn about brands and people: how consumers work, what they choose. People are becoming more and more aware of their impact on the world around them, and looking to make small changes through what they buy.

It all started with the world coffee crisis.There had been a global agreement which provided a sustainable level of income for coffee growers, and in 1991 it collapsed. Suddenly, small-scale growers were in deep trouble, experiencing extreme volatility and low prices. So a group of organisations, including Oxfam, got together and started to sell coffee in church halls and markets. That was before anyone had heard of fair trade, but it was out of this that the movement grew, three or four years down the line.

Rather than being a niche, ‘open-toed sandal’ kind of business, we expanded. When we became sizeable, a number of larger businesses started to notice us – even the likes of Starbucks. They saw that we had something which they didn’t, and that was a real understanding of natural resources, combined with direct access to people up the supply chain. For instance, I can just pick up the phone to somebody in Kenya or Peru and ask, “What’s happening at your end? Why is the price of coffee going up or down?”

I went to one village in Kenya, and the women tied me up in rope. They wanted to show me how much wood they used to carry every day to meet basic needs. I’m talking about a community that’s right on the frontline when it comes to climate change: their tea productivity has declined by 30-40%. But there’s also some great innovation going on. These women had been involved in building and selling over 2,000 energy-saving stoves, and have a new income stream as a result.

Back in the UK, the big trend is ‘grow your own’. The demand for allotments has shot up: everything from gastropubs to celebrity chefs has created an interest around it. Even Tesco has started providing allotment-type services. I’m all for it, because people who know that home-grown vegetables taste great are probably going to be more interested in the kind of brand Café Direct is, and choose it above producers that don’t know who their growers are. And the reality is that you’re going to find it pretty difficult to grow tea and coffee in the UK, so there’s no threat!

At the end of the day, ethical consumption can only drive so much. Businesses are good at picking the low-hanging fruit, like energy efficiency: anything that cuts costs. But the Government has to put the resources and infrastructure in place to make it easy
for people to do the right thing – setting carbon prices, for example.

Anne MacCaig was in conversation with Anna Simpson.