Melbourne is renowned for its coffee culture, but if
you drink one of the major brands then poverty and exploitation could
be ingredients in its making, according to international aid agency
Oxfam Community Aid Abroad.
Aid and fair trade organisations
accuse the world's major coffee roasters of making huge profits out of
impoverished growers in developing countries, whose returns are a
fraction of retail prices. They say the price paid for green coffee is
so low that desperate families cannot support themselves.
Oxfam
has brought its campaign against the exploitation of coffee growers to
Australia with protesters leading donkeys stacked with sacks of coffee
to Kraft Foods' Brisbane headquarters and the Melbourne Stock Exchange.
The
protests were to highlight the plight of growers in Africa, Asia and
Latin America who have suffered in a market where the price for coffee
beans is at a 30-year low, the return substantially less than the costs
of growing and harvesting the crop.
The impact, with more than
70 per cent of the world's crop grown on family holdings no larger than
10 hectares, is devastating for countries such as Burundi, Ethiopia and
Uganda which rely heavily on coffee exports.
Oxfam
advocacy co-ordinator Jeff Atkinson said the world's major coffee
makers - Kraft (Maxwell House, Jacobs), Procter and Gamble (Folgers),
Sara Lee (Moccona) and, to a lesser extent, Nestle (Nescafe) - had done
little to improve the growers' lot.
Mr Atkinson said the
breakdown in the late 1980s of the international coffee agreement,
which regulated supply through export quotas, left the market open for
exploitation. The situation had been compounded by a dramatic increase
in production from Vietnamese and Brazilian growers during the past 10
years.
"We believe that there are solutions and things that can
be done, but they all need the support of the coffee industry," Mr
Atkinson said. "What we are getting is a lack of interest from some
important coffee companies, particularly Kraft."
Monash
University associate professor Brett Inder said the big manufacturers'
use of market power, rather than the glut of coffee beans, was the main
cause of the long-term downward price spiral. Professor Inder, a
spokesman for People for Fair Trade, said manufacturers not only
controlled raw material costs but also maintained retail prices and
healthy profit margins.
While growers' prices were less than
they were 30 years ago, "the coffee price you and I pay in the
supermarket is way higher because all the power lies with the
multinationals that actually control the industry".
Professor
Inder said the fair trade concept was based on paying higher than
market value rates for coffee beans and directing part of the retail
sales back into development programs.
A Nestle spokesman said
the company recognised the plight of growers and was receptive to
raising green coffee prices. He denied coffee makers were exploiting
the growers. Kraft and Sara Lee were not available for comment.
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