Face of Fair Trade: Matt Earley of Just Coffee

by Zarah Patriana

Published March 03, 2009 @ 04:12PM PT

When doing research for the Fair Trade blog before it launched, a lot of the resources that I was pointed to came from someone about Just Coffee. These guys really know their stuff about the alternative trade system and I really value all their knowledge and work that they do for small-scale coffee farmers all over. So, I finally decided to take this admiration to work and approached them to be featured as a Face of Fair Trade. Our Faces of Fair Trade have done their part in furthering the movement and continuously works to strengthen and define the Fair Trade movement.

Matt Earley of Just Coffee (pictured with his lovely daughter, Lula) was kind enough to share his words covering Fair Trade, transparency the challenges of the movement, how Fair Trade isn't the sole answer and why we have a long way to go.

What is your role in the Fair Trade movement?

We are a coffee roasting worker cooperative, and a member of an importing co-op (Cooperative Coffees), that only buys "fair trade" coffee from small producers around the world.

How did you first get involved with Fair Trade?

In 1999 we met coffee growers in the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, MX who were selling their beans for pennies per pound. We decided to help them find better markets. We were told to talk to a fellow named Tomas Johnson who was selling FT coffee bought from Zap co-ops and lived in San Cristobal de las Casas-- a beautiful town in the highlands of Chiapas. We were asking him about "organic coffee" and how to get farmers certified organic. He said "Organic is fine, but you need to be thinking about fair trade first". We did some digging in the US and talked to Bill Harris of Co-op Coffees who gave us some advice on how to find markets for the coffee growers. Between the lack of response from conventional importers in the US, the urging of the growers themselves, and on the advice on Bill, we decided to start roasting coffee ourselves.

Why is Fair Trade important to you/in general?

The idea of a fair trading system is crucial to the JC Co-op. Fair Trade itself does not really accomplish that on its own. We have had a lot of growing pains in the past few years as we realized that our idea of what fair trade is and should be was not held by the vast majority of actors who are involved in Fair Trade. Then, we spent a lot of time trying to explain to everyone who would listen why our vision was the correct vision and trying to point out why what some others were doing as FT fell short. It came as a shock that not everyone saw/sees things the way that we do, so we retracted into a bit of a shell in '08 to discuss internally and to get our own house in order.

So our thought now is that we want to work with others when we can, but we are not interested in spending a lot of time debating the merits of what we are doing with every organization that does things a bit differently. We are focusing on the idea of transparent trade (not trademarked)-- which can include fair trade-- but really is not exclusive to it. What we would like to do is to urge people to demand transparency from every company that they buy from, whether it be coffee, food, clothing, a mortgage, etc. When every company out there is up front with its business practices-- including who they buy from and how much they pay them-- then people can make informed choices about what they buy. That way you can decide for yourself what is fair and what is lacking fairness.

What do you see as the challenges of the Fair Trade movement?

Traction and stasis have been the biggest challenges, in my opinion. And in these economic times walking backwards is the new challenge. Coffee prices have been up for 3 years or so, but they are coming down. We are seeing contract negotiations with growers going the wrong way-- there is no way a grower should be making less this year than last year. To combat this we are offering a "Just Coffee differential" price to all growers we buy from which will make up the difference between contract price and $2.00 and $2.15 per pound-- these are the low and high minimums that we are discussing with grower co-ops. We need to move forward.

What do you see as a challenge for the Fair Trade movement with this whole 'financial crisis' talk?

The biggest challenge for us is that we all might soon realize that shipping coffee grown thousands of miles away to coffee drinkers in the US is unsustainable-- ecologically and financially. Farmers may someday in the near future decide that they need to use their land, labor, and resources to grow or make things that can be sold in more local or regional markets that they have some control over. This would actually make our jobs mostly obsolete and I can then go back to washing dishes and reading fiction.

Why is 'free trade' not 'fair trade'?

No trade is free and very little is fair.

Free trade is the anti-thesis of what it is supposed to be. It is a system created by the economically powerful and shoved on the economically weak. There is not an even playing field. Or maybe the field is level, but when one team is...say... the Green Bay Packers with losts of equipment and the best facilities and the other is the Pee Wee All Stars with no pads or practice space, well you kind of know where the game is going. The rules are made to give the advantage to corporations in the global north and the various trade pacts and orgs make sure of this.

However, Fair Trade is hardly fair, in my opinion. I think Johnathan Rosenthal (A founder of Equal Exchange) once described it as "sightly less unfair trade". Producers still do not have much power in setting prices or terms, FT certifying orgs still only have nominal producer participation in setting norms, companies selling FT products generally do not get nearly the scrutiny over their practices as grower orgs-- we could keep going. True fair trade would be democratic and transparent. That is what we want to work toward at the JC.

Any background/general information about yourself you want to add?

I am from Lexington, KY and came to Madison, WI to go to grad school in 1999. One of the other worker/owners (Mike Moon) and I started JC in 2001 while I was finishing my MA in Latin American Studies and he was head farmer of a local CSA farm. I have a very lovely spouse and two adorable daughters. I like long walks on the beach. I am a cancer, but not a bad kind. I am a bit of a smart alek, forgive me.

Anything last words about the Fair Trade movement you want to end with?

I think that I might have hit that one above. Lots of good people are doing great stuff and we are excited to keep moving forward. We used to do a lot more "networking" in the FT movement, but these days we are more focused on connecting more directly with producers and with the people who are out there trying to find a better way to live and consume in our crazy culture.

Thanks so much to Matt and Just Coffees for being so fabulous. Keep up with them and drink their coffee!