Do we disobey God with some of our everyday purchases?
I learned two things this week:
1) Starbucks, despite professing to be a values-based company (and in many ways they are and should be commended), sells only one blend of coffee that is Fair Trade certified -- "Cafe Estima" -- and it is rarely the blend of the day. In other words, it's probably safe to say that 95% or higher of the cups of coffee sold in Starbucks are not Fair Trade.
2) Many people assume Starbucks sells all Fair Trade coffee.
The inconsistent application of "values" drives me nuts, but that's not what I want to talk about. Last week we talked about obeying God in the things we don't buy -- this week, I got to thinking about obedience in terms of what we do buy, products we buy regularly that, in and of themselves are not unGodly, but can be unGodly in certain contexts. In other words, coffee is not an unGodly product but I would argue that coffee that does not meet or exceed Fair Trade requirements is unGodly (and yes, I absolutely think it is our role to call this out).
The difference between this week and the question a couple of weeks ago is the focus is not on the company, it's on us. I am not asking about the impact we could have on Starbucks by drinking Fair Trade coffee -- instead, I am asking us to look at our purchasing decisions from the perspective of personal responsibility and obedience.
We've talked about Fair trade before on this blog, but what does it mean? You can learn more about fair trade by clicking on the "Make Trade Fair" link on the right side of this page, but I'll summarize:
Fair Trade does not just apply to coffee but that is the most common association so I'll use that as the example. Essentially, coffee retailers in developed countries have realized that they can get coffee beans and incredibly cheap prices from countries in Latin America, Africa, etc. and, being the capitalists that we are, we bid the prices down as low as we can. The irony, of course, is that coffee is sold for $4 a cup in America while coffee farmers in Third World countries are languishing in poverty because the market dictates what they get paid -- and it's not enough to live on. And really, no one can fault companies like Kraft, Nestle, or Starbucks for taking advantage. They seek to obey market forces, not the commands of God, so there is no reason not to seek profit regardless of consequence. The problem for us is, the Bible directly calls us to care for the poor:
So then the question is: Do we have a call to examine our purchases to understand the ramifications in light of "God's economy?"
Obviously I think the answer is "Yes," so I've decided to make it a personal goal to never consume another cup of coffee that is not Fair Trade certified. This will be difficult in the sense that Fair Trade coffee can be scarce, but I've gone most of my life not drinking coffee at all so I think it's doable. I started this last week and it was cool to talk with the Starbucks cashier about my interest in Fair Trade. Next time, I hope to have a verse memorized to share the source of my motivation.
But I want to reiterate what I said above. This is not about sticking it to the man -- I didn't boycott coffee altogether -- it's about obedience. If I'm going to drink coffee, I don't know how I buy stuff that exploits the poor.
I wonder, then, how this applies to other products, products that we all buy that aren’t unGodly in and of themselves but could be. Products like cars (e.g., energy efficient), houses (e.g., sustainable design), clothes (e.g., fighting child labor), and food (e.g., caring not just about how much I pay but how much the farmer gets paid). I know we have engineers, lawyers, doctors, consultants, and others out there who could shed light on the negative effects certain products have on the poor, the environment, etc. and the alternatives available to us.
So what do you think? Do you agree with my assessment that Fair Trade is the only way to drink coffee in light of the call to love God and love our neighbors? If so, how far can/should this logic (examining all of our purchases and the impact they have on others) be extended?
1) Starbucks, despite professing to be a values-based company (and in many ways they are and should be commended), sells only one blend of coffee that is Fair Trade certified -- "Cafe Estima" -- and it is rarely the blend of the day. In other words, it's probably safe to say that 95% or higher of the cups of coffee sold in Starbucks are not Fair Trade.
2) Many people assume Starbucks sells all Fair Trade coffee.
The inconsistent application of "values" drives me nuts, but that's not what I want to talk about. Last week we talked about obeying God in the things we don't buy -- this week, I got to thinking about obedience in terms of what we do buy, products we buy regularly that, in and of themselves are not unGodly, but can be unGodly in certain contexts. In other words, coffee is not an unGodly product but I would argue that coffee that does not meet or exceed Fair Trade requirements is unGodly (and yes, I absolutely think it is our role to call this out).
The difference between this week and the question a couple of weeks ago is the focus is not on the company, it's on us. I am not asking about the impact we could have on Starbucks by drinking Fair Trade coffee -- instead, I am asking us to look at our purchasing decisions from the perspective of personal responsibility and obedience.
We've talked about Fair trade before on this blog, but what does it mean? You can learn more about fair trade by clicking on the "Make Trade Fair" link on the right side of this page, but I'll summarize:
Fair Trade does not just apply to coffee but that is the most common association so I'll use that as the example. Essentially, coffee retailers in developed countries have realized that they can get coffee beans and incredibly cheap prices from countries in Latin America, Africa, etc. and, being the capitalists that we are, we bid the prices down as low as we can. The irony, of course, is that coffee is sold for $4 a cup in America while coffee farmers in Third World countries are languishing in poverty because the market dictates what they get paid -- and it's not enough to live on. And really, no one can fault companies like Kraft, Nestle, or Starbucks for taking advantage. They seek to obey market forces, not the commands of God, so there is no reason not to seek profit regardless of consequence. The problem for us is, the Bible directly calls us to care for the poor:
- "Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages...Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? declares the LORD. But you have eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence." -- Jeremiah 22:13-17
- "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy." -- Proverbs 31:8-9 (these are but 2 of 2000-3000 verses about the poor)
Not only are these verses saying that caring for the poor is obedience to God, Jeremiah says it is to know Him. In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus says the greatest commandment is "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" followed by "love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." So all of our actions should revolve around the call to love God and love others. And God clearly has a heart for the poor. But is it fair to make the leap to say we can/should love our neighbors and defend the rights of the poor and needy through our purchases? Consider these quotes:
- "I'd like to tell people in your place that the drink they are enjoying is the cause of all our problems. We grow it with our sweat and sell it for nothing." -- Lawrence Seguya, Uganda.
- "The coffee farmers of Latin America are suffering the worst crisis in a hundred years. I urge everyone concerned with this growing misery to read this report. I hope you will use it to promote action to stop the scandal of hard-working coffee farmers falling further into poverty because of the price which the transnationals pay." -- Raul del Aguila, Junta Nacional del Cafe de Peru (Peruvian Coffee Farmers' Organisation).
- "If a few companies were less greedy, the people at the bottom would have a lot more. We can do our bit by pressuring politicians to change this insanity, and by buying Fair Trade coffee."-- Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay
So then the question is: Do we have a call to examine our purchases to understand the ramifications in light of "God's economy?"
Obviously I think the answer is "Yes," so I've decided to make it a personal goal to never consume another cup of coffee that is not Fair Trade certified. This will be difficult in the sense that Fair Trade coffee can be scarce, but I've gone most of my life not drinking coffee at all so I think it's doable. I started this last week and it was cool to talk with the Starbucks cashier about my interest in Fair Trade. Next time, I hope to have a verse memorized to share the source of my motivation.
But I want to reiterate what I said above. This is not about sticking it to the man -- I didn't boycott coffee altogether -- it's about obedience. If I'm going to drink coffee, I don't know how I buy stuff that exploits the poor.
I wonder, then, how this applies to other products, products that we all buy that aren’t unGodly in and of themselves but could be. Products like cars (e.g., energy efficient), houses (e.g., sustainable design), clothes (e.g., fighting child labor), and food (e.g., caring not just about how much I pay but how much the farmer gets paid). I know we have engineers, lawyers, doctors, consultants, and others out there who could shed light on the negative effects certain products have on the poor, the environment, etc. and the alternatives available to us.
So what do you think? Do you agree with my assessment that Fair Trade is the only way to drink coffee in light of the call to love God and love our neighbors? If so, how far can/should this logic (examining all of our purchases and the impact they have on others) be extended?
posted by Matthew at 5:31 PM
6 Comments:
Matt,
Let me preface by saying my understanding of Fair Trade and of Starbucks' corporate practice, or even economics in general is limited at best. Heck, I don't even drink coffee, and Economics 101 was more like Crossword Puzzles 101. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that Fair Trade by varying the demand of certain products does, in fact, fight poverty. However, I see it as one of many economic tools for that purpose. And to say that buying non-Fair Trade coffee is promoting poverty would mean that we couldn't care for the poor in any other way. To give Starbucks the benefit of the doubt, maybe the money that Starbucks saves on buying non-Fair Trade coffee is the same money that is reinvested in their social development programs to build schools in Latin American communities so the farmer's kids will not have to rely so heavily on how this year's crop turns out. All in all I think there is a variety of forms of tithing, of showing love to our brothers and sisters, and Fair Trade is one of many.
My undergraduate degree was in Economics; I was once a radically free-market capitalist, but am currently concerned about globalism and late capitalism...
"The tragedy of the neglect of [Clifford Hugh] Douglas and the social credit movement is that it has obscured this theoretical description of our condition as debt slavery: debt slavery and the demands of competition explain the creation of the capitalist system, the organization of society for the sake of production for profit, on the basis of the creation of liabilities in the form of bills of exchange, and later by banks; they explain why such a system depends on continual forced growth, through primitive accumulation, colonial expansion, globalization, and privatization of public services; they explain why such a system, which aims at profit alone and cannot take much account of the needs of subsistence and sustainability except as a drain on 'wealth-creating' production, has produced such an extensive dispossession of people from their means of subsistence as well as an ecological crisis that may destroy most life forms on the planet; they explain why neoclassical economics, depending on the naturalistic metaphysics of a circular flow model of money, justifies extreme inequality because of the presumed 'naturalness' of the economy, while at the same time never coming into contact with economic reality at any point; and they explain why, when economic expansion is curtailed by limitation to the global supply of primary energy, an economic system constructed out of unfulfilled liabilities and unpayable debts based upon the promise of expansion will simply collapse in a way we have never seen before--probably within a couple of decades."
Fair trade I find a difficult subject and one I'm not currently confident in discussing. Here, however, are some things to read:
"Free Trade Is Anything but Fair, and Lousy Economics Besides" from Los Angeles Times (March 5, 2004)includes the paragraph:
"Every time we pare down an industry because its labor can be performed more cheaply overseas — say, most recently reading X-rays — those who used to work in it here either need to be retrained to do something else or live off unemployment or welfare. Such transitions also entail, as studies have shown, a significant increase in mental illness, suicides and family breakdowns, all hefty human and social costs. Economists tend to ignore all these public costs, which end up in the laps of taxpayers, when they tell people how wonderful it is that they can buy T-shirts at Wal-Mart at a discount."
Full article...
More on Starbucks...
Fair trade?
this is Robby Grabow again ...
I just wanted to add into the debate the ideal of illegal immigrants into the equation and whether or not we as Christians should support businesses whose profitability is based on a supply of labor from mexico. I personally haven't made up my mind completely on the topic and would like to solicit thoughts as I think the topic of fair trade and globalization implicates how we respond to illegal immigration.
Dan,
Interesting articles. I read a similar one in The Economist recently that talked about the pros and cons of Fair Trade. It presented the following economic criticisms of Fair Trade:
- Low coffee prices are due to overproduction and introducing an artificially higher price prevents that message from reaching the farmers, keeping them from diversifying their crops
- Higher prices encourage more producers to enter the market
- Drives down the price of non-Fair Trade coffee
- Certification is only available to co-ops
One economic rebuttal (from the article): these farmers are too poor to diversify…but, if they receive the premium from Fair Trade, then they could.
These economic arguments make a lot of sense in a world governed by capitalism, however (and I'm assuming you would agree with these):
1) While it may seem otherwise, we are ultimately subject to a spiritual economy, not capitalism. Forgive the cheese here, but we have to be traders of love, grace, and truth. We must seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and let all else follow. To refuse to pay someone a living wage may make capitalistic sense, but it violates God's economy. We are thus presented with Jesus' challenge in Matthew 6:24: God or money, which do you worship?
2) We have a responsibility to examine our role on both the demand and supply sides of the equation. Capitalism is founded on greed and self-preservation. To assume the economic principles that follow are the only ones that can regulate an effective exchange of goods and services is simply unimaginative.
3) I will quickly concede that Fair Trade is not the ultimate answer (hence my reference to it as a minimum standard) as it is prisoner to too many current economic "realities" but as we participate in capitalism, it seems to be the best existing alternative when it comes to coffee. We could argue the merits of Fair Trade for hours but I'm not sure how to argue the merits of buying a product that exploits Third World farmers. To argue that exploitation is OK if we then give away the profits is indefensible.
These intersections of Gospel and business may be complex, but we simply cannot throw our hands up in defeat simply because the process is difficult. We have to seek to understand our individual roles in a networked economy/community and pursue individual obedience while pushing for the creation of Christ-centered business solutions.
Here's to research, personal examination, and reality-changing imagination. (I'm raising a metaphorical cup of Fair Trade coffee).
"We could argue the merits of Fair Trade for hours but I'm not sure how to argue the merits of buying a product that exploits Third World farmers." This is merely semantics. There has been no establishment that these farmers are being exploited by coffee drinkers purchasing a non fair trade cup of coffee, and to give away the profits if it is directly to the benefit of their community. If it allows for the farmer's education, and it could, then the farmer's life has been enriched, he has not been exploited.
This absolutely is not a matter of mere semantics. There is much evidence that "these farmers are being exploited by coffee drinkers purchasing a non fair trade cup of coffee" (e.g., receiving $0.50/pound vs. $1.26/pound) and there is no guarantee that companies will "give away the profits." In fact, the only guarantee we have about corporate charitable activity is that it will be done for profit's sake, not the community's sake.
Our economy is driven by profit, so even the most generous of corporate acts are often driven by this motivation. At Deloitte, our Community Involvement department reports up through Marketing. That sends a clear message. Community involvement results from arguments that it drives long-term profitability (differentiation in the marketplace, loyalty of vendors/customers/employees, etc.). We have to recognize the significance in that: the actions of a church and Starbucks to serve the poor might appear similar but the heart is completely different. A bottom line-driven heart will go only as far as economic sense takes it. A heart committed to Jesus will stop at nothing to make His Name known. Let's not be fooled by PR, let's look at the heart to determine the depth of true commitment.
I cannot control whether Starbucks gives away its profits, but I can do three things: 1) while participating in a profit-driven economy, I can play by its rules and force accountability for profit distribution through the purchase of Fair Trade coffee, 2) I can work to change the system and pray for the Spirit to change hearts so Jesus, not profit, is the motivation behind business, and 3) I can give my personal "profits" to the Church, trusting Jesus-driven hearts to spend that money effectively for His glory.
Post a Comment
<< Home