The companies have signed on through the efforts of Oxfam America, which fights poverty worldwide, and Transfair America, a nonprofit organization that promotes fairly traded food imports. Starbucks will start selling a line of fair trade coffee in 2,300 stores on Oct. 4. Equal Exchange is the only company at which 100 percent of the coffee meets fair trade standards. Starbucks' Director of Environmental and Community Affairs Sue Mecklenburg said her company will sell the fair trade coffee for one year, then evaluate whether selling more than one kind of it is feasible. The gourmet coffee market has gotten increasingly crowded over the years.
Coffee is the second most heavily traded commodity after oil.
The two largest coffee importers Maxwell House and Folgers have not signed on to the fair trade agreement. Transfair executive director Paul Rice dismisses the idea that the companies are signing on more as a marketing ploy than as an altruistic inclination. But I see a lot of companies really trying to walk the walk. Versions of this story appeared in the Chicago Tribune and the Houston Chronicle.