'Cause coffees' produce a cup with an agenda 'Shade-grown,' 'fair trade' and other eco-friendly, socially aware blends of java are attracting consumers

By Patrick McMahon USA TODAY

SEATTLE -- Now that you've figured out how to order a double tall latte, decaf skinny with no foam, there's a whole new coffeespeak brewing.

Bird lovers want you to buy ''shade-grown'' coffee to protect disappearing rain forests used by migratory songbirds in

Central and South America.

Purists concerned about pesticides push ''organic'' java.

Worried about impoverished Third World coffee growers? There's ''Fair-Trade Certified'' coffee that guarantees farmers a minimum price.

In this hot spot for boutique coffee as well as in an increasing number of cities across the nation, coffee is being poured with an environmental and social agenda. The big chains, led by Starbucks, are acceding to activists' demands that they offer these ''cause coffees.''

While these brews are sometimes branded politically correct, ''we prefer to call them sustainable coffees,'' Washington,

D.C., activist Christopher London says. ''They sustain the environment, and they sustain the farmers.''

But there's a catch.

''It has to taste good for people to buy it,'' says London, who promotes ecological labeling for coffee at Consumer's Choice Council. ''If you can't sell it, it's not sustainable.''

But many of these blends are selling, with the help of environmentalists and other activists extolling their virtues and demanding more availability.

While still a minuscule part of the U.S. coffee market, these beans and brews are being sold at Borders Books cafes, Hyatt hotels, campus coffeehouses and grocery giant Safeway. Seattle-based Starbucks, the nation's largest gourmet coffee retailer, now promotes blends of Fair-Trade Certified, organic and shade-grown coffees.

''There is extraordinary excitement with people in our stores about things like shade-grown,'' Starbucks chief executive Orin Smith says. Starbucks stepped up its promotion of ''cause coffees'' after it became the target of protests by human rights groups demanding that it sell fair-trade blends.

But many Americans just don't take their morning cup of joe all that seriously.

''At 6 a.m., I really don't care about the rest of the world. I just want to wake up,'' says Seattle law student Jeff Yuhasz, 32, who keeps a can of Folgers in his freezer. ''It's definitely an issue of political correctness.''

Many consumers say they like making an impact with their coffee. Philadelphia concert promoter Larry Ahearn, 53, drinks three or four cups a day. His current brew is an Azteca Blend from Trader Joe's gourmet grocery chain.

''It's shade-grown, 100% organic, Equal Exchange, Fair-Trade Certified,'' he says. ''Everything but Eugene McCarthy,'' the antiwar presidential candidate in 1968. ''When I buy shade-grown coffee,'' Ahearn says, ''I feel like I'm voting for a better environment or a better world.''

A host of worries

Coffee is the second most-traded commodity in the world after oil, measured in export dollars. It is produced in 80 countries in tropical regions, most of them environmentally sensitive. The largest exporters are Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico. The largest importer is the United States.

Fully 80% of adult Americans are regular or occasional coffee drinkers. Only 14% say they're daily consumers of gourmet coffees -- premium blends, latte, espresso, café mocha, cappuccino and frozen and ice-blended coffee beverages. But that number represents almost 29 million people, up from about 8 million five years ago, according to a 2001 survey by the National Coffee Association.

Today's sustainable coffees -- a small niche of the gourmet market -- are not as new as they are newly visible. Organic coffees -- once found mostly in health-food stores -- and the others are just getting more space in grocery stores and on the menus at coffee bars.

''It's really an emerging trend,'' says Gary Goldstein, a spokesman for the coffee trade group.

While nothing might seem less contentious than a cup of hot coffee, environmental, economic and labor issues abound:

* World coffee prices are at decade-low levels, prompting concern that low-paid growers will abandon their crops for work elsewhere.

* Tropical rain forests continue to dwindle as farmers clear-cut hillsides and fields to grow coffee in sunshine, a faster process than shade-grown. Sun-grown coffee also requires more pesticides, a greater concern for workers than drinkers because processing removes most chemicals.

* Clear-cutting in the highlands of Central and South America also is removing traditional habitat for migratory songbirds that spend the winter there.

''Coffee touches so many people, from the coffee plant to the coffee cup,'' says Helen Ross, who runs the Seattle Audubon Society's Northwest Shade Coffee Campaign. ''People don't realize the huge effect on birds, workers and forests.''

Growers in decline

No one is suffering more from the fall in worldwide coffee prices than small-scale coffee farmers. Even Juan Valdez is hurting.

The mythical coffee farmer who stars in Colombian Coffee Federation ads with his sturdy mule Conchita has fallen victim to the plummeting world price for beans. Federation ads featuring him were cut almost in half this spring.

But the effect has been far more brutal elsewhere. In May, 14 migrant workers died in the heat of the Arizona desert after crossing the border with Mexico. Half were identified as coffee farmers who had left their jobs in Veracruz, Mexico, in search of better-paying jobs in the United States.

''Prices are so low that we are at risk of having farmers opt out, and we will be unable to get the quality we want,'' Starbucks CEO Smith says. ''This is of grave concern to all the specialty-coffee people.''

Suppliers, roasters and retailers now have dozens of projects underway in South and Central America to improve the lives of coffee farmers and maintain quality supply lines.

Starbucks is working with the environmental group Conservation International to improve shade-grown production near Chiapas, Mexico. Other retailers on the bandwagon include Seattle's Best Coffee, Bucks County Coffee Co. in

Philadelphia, Equal Exchange in Canton, Mass., and Taylor Maid Farms in Sebastopol, Calif.

Consumers looking for independent evidence that these coffees are organic, shade-grown or bought at a fair price to farmers need only look on the back of packages in the store. Some are certified by groups such as the Rainforest Alliance, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and several organizations that monitor organic farming.

What difference does all this make?

Fair-Trade Certified coffee, for example, guarantees farmers in cooperatives a minimum $1.26 a pound, far more than the current world price of 43 cents.

Fair-trade prices will give the typical Latin American coffee farmer an annual income of about $2,000, compared with the current $500, says Paul Rice, executive director of TransFair USA, an Oakland non-profit group that certifies fair-trade coffee in the United States.

''This is the difference between a small farmer carrying sacks of coffee on his back, versus buying a mule,'' Rice says.

The fair-trade coffee movement is growing. TransFair USA certified 2 million pounds in 1999, 4.3 million pounds in 2000 and ''we project 9 million this year,'' Rice says.

Coffee seems an unlikely focus for rallies, protests and benefit concerts featuring Bonnie Raitt. But not in Seattle, where coffee is taken more seriously than almost anyplace else.

And that means Starbucks.

Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle and named for the first mate in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Thumbing its nose at fast food in the fast lane, it pioneered the modern-day, stay-as-long-as-you-like coffeehouse.

It has grown from 84 locations in 1990 to 4,435 stores in 39 states and 21 foreign countries. This month it reported $2 billion in sales for the last nine months -- up 23% from the same period a year earlier.

Targeting Starbucks

Starbucks' meteoric rise coincided with increasing concern about coffee itself. The same affluent baby boomer consumers who liked Starbucks' no-hassle atmosphere grew more interested in the content of their coffee. Soon after protests against the World Trade Organization's summit meeting in November 1999 left downtown Seattle trashed and hundreds arrested, Starbucks found itself taking heat.

Starbucks says it was already planning to market fair-trade and Earth-friendly brews when members of Global Exchange, a San Francisco human-rights group, picketed the company's annual stockholders meeting in March 2000, demanding that the retailer sell fair-trade coffee.

Immediately, ''I got involved,'' CEO Smith says.

Even as it moved to provide more Fair-Trade Certified coffee, Starbucks encountered a new group of protesters at this year's annual meeting.

This time, it was the Organic Consumers Association targeting Starbucks' milk -- a major ingredient in lattes, mochas and other espresso products. The chain's milk wasn't guaranteed to be hormone-free. Starbucks said it offers the same kind of milk sold in grocery stores, but only 25% is guaranteed hormone-free. Later this month, it will offer an organic, hormone-free milk alternative.

In the same vein, activists here have launched a major education and advertising campaign to get people to buy more sustainable coffees -- of any brand.

The highlight came in June when recording artists Raitt, Jackson Browne and Keb' Mo' held a concert in Seattle to benefit the Songbird Foundation, which seeks to protect songbirds and their habitat. Nostalgic boomers in faded jeans and long skirts packed the refurbished Paramount Theater to hear the three mix politics with music. Microbrews were everywhere, the aroma of marijuana surprisingly faint.

Browne, 52, his silky brown hair slung over his forehead, told the audience to try sustainable coffee: ''Being able to change our lifestyle just a little will make a big difference.''

The artists were there to support their longtime friend, singer-songwriter Danny O'Keefe, who founded the Songbird Foundation in 1997 and wrote and recorded the 1972 hit, Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues. ''Quality is the bottom line,'' says O'Keefe, who roasts his own coffee. But by buying sustainable coffees, he adds, ''consumers can have quality and really make a difference. Every cup of coffee makes a difference.''

Not everybody cares.

''The average American isn't ready for this,'' says Julie Barrett, coffee director for Dunkin' Donuts. The chain recently offered a ''French Roast Eco-Blend'' in Maine, Boston and Chicago but decided not to go nationwide yet.

''They're not asking for it enough,'' Barrett says.

But for some, the message is catching on.

''Sometimes you'll ask for a cup of shade-grown or fair trade, and people give you a blank look, but not so much anymore,'' says Tom Keefe, a Spokane, Wash., lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2000. ''In the era after WTO, especially in Seattle, it's not surprising to see consumers asking more questions about the products they buy: Who makes it, where did it come from and what's in it?''