YUFA
News
Space
for Fair Trade Coffee at York?
As
part of its mission statement York commits itself to the values of social
justice and sustainability. Such
commitments, in principle, supply a space for the York community to
critique current practices and policies and introduce new ones that will
contribute more effectively to the promotion of these values.
How this space is conceptualized and administered, however, can
result in quite different outcomes, most notably for vulnerable
communities. The issue of Fair Trade (plus) coffee is a case in point.
Fair Trade (plus) coffee is coffee which pays coffee producers,
organized in producer co-operatives, a fair (higher than market) price for
their coffee (plus being organic and shade grown).
The
space that York’s formal commitment to social justice and sustainability
potentially provides can be conceptualized in a variety of ways.
When viewed as a space for providing information (about different
issues, policy options, etc.), this space takes on the guise of a liberal
neutrality (in which individual consumers are free to choose on the basis
of the information provided). This
space can also be used for exhortation (to encourage individuals or groups
to take actions that would conform to such values).
In addition, this space could be used to support the initiatives of
(certain types of) individuals or groups (e.g., faculty) that aspire to
living up to these values.
In
the case of Fair Trade coffee, the administration at York has
conceptualized space in each of these three ways.
It has provided some information on Fair Trade coffee (e.g., it
notes on a webpage that certain suppliers of coffee offer a Fair Trade
option). It has exhorted some
coffee providers to consider offering a Fair Trade option (e.g., the
Starbucks @ MegaBytes in the new computer science building).
Third, it has supported, especially with publicity, the work of
Prof. Howard Daugherty and the Fisher Fund for Neotropical Conservation,
who are developing their own (York) brand of sustainable coffee.
All
this is good, insofar as it goes. But
does it go far enough to live up to a defensible conception of social
justice and sustainability? Clearly,
the administration could go further.
It could, for example, conceive of this space as providing room for
developing public policy to encourage responsible behaviour.
This approach would have a larger socio-economic impact, especially
on the lives of coffee producers. This
is what McMaster has done by developing a policy that requires all retail
outlets on campus to offer a Fair Trade coffee option.
The McMaster policy does not require that Fair Trade coffee be
offered exclusively. (Nor
does it prohibit differential pricing to cover higher wholesale costs for
Fair Trade products.) Retail
outlets, however, do have to make Fair Trade coffee available on a
continuous basis (and not, say, as a once a month special as Starbucks
does in most of its outlets in the US and Canada).
York could even go further than this, however.
It could conceive of the York campus as a space for producing
public policy that prohibits the sale of products that are not produced in
a socially responsible and sustainable manner.
This would imply a policy that allows only Fair Trade (plus) coffee
to be sold on campus. Now,
while many might object that this would limit consumer choice, the
university already limits consumer choice in different ways, such as
through its deal with Pepsi. The
only difference here would be that in the former case it would be doing so
for the promotion of the broader goals of social justice and
sustainability – and not just the institution’s (including
students’) own interests.
There
is one further step that the administration could take.
Part of the reason that York has probably not yet developed a Fair
Trade coffee policy has to do with an implicit conception of space as
unidirectional. Policies are
initiated and flow from the top down.
This assumption not only ignores the reality of the heavy burdens
of administrators (which generally preclude the development of policies
which are not explicitly or obviously within their mandate and which are
not of some urgency), but it overlooks the vast resources of energy,
knowledge and commitment on the campus which can reside in students, staff
and faculty. If the
administration were to develop organizational channels which would allow
grassroots initiatives at York around issues of social justice and
sustainability to percolate up (and engage in a systematic way with
various levels of administration), York’s commitment to living up to the
values of social justice and sustainability could move beyond an abstract
vision that largely resides in mission statements to become embodied in
the practice of an engaged community.
This would be a space in which we could all truly enjoy a nice cup
of (Fair Trade) coffee.
For more information on efforts to promote Fair Trade (plus) coffee at York visit http://www.arts.yorku.ca/sosc/buso/fairtrade.html or contact Darryl Reed.