Buying Practices

I saw this article yesterday in the Daily Coffee News....

http://dailycoffeenews.com/2014/08/05/consumer-group-fair-world-project-rates-the-buying-practices-of-19-u-s-roasters/

The Fair World Project has reviewed the buying practices of 19 top coffee roasters. The big boys like Starbucks and Green Mountain are rated along smaller roasters such as Just Coffee Cooperative, Counter Culture and Intelligentsia. The article makes for interesting reading, and I think is a guide of sorts, but I don't think it's very definitive.

Specifically, this group has investigated and rated coffee trading and transparency of these roasters.

Just Coffee received one of the highest ratings, though to be honest, and I agree with Daily Coffee News, I'm not sure how valid a smiley face and stars are for ratings. I guess I wanted to know more depth about what makes a 1-5 star overall rating. For a group calling for transparency, I felt it was lacking with this report.

Starbucks gets one of the lowest ratings. Fair World Project says we should avoid their coffee, as Starbucks makes claims of helping farmers, but their actions lobbying against some farming practices in coffee growing companies, makes them a bad guy. Perhaps the issue really is, the larger the roaster, the more difficult to be as fair and transparent?

Intelligentsia and Counter Culture land somewhere in the middle. Their practices get applause overall. Fair World Project though believes that these companies, especially Intelligentsia could do more to be more open in their trading practices.

As I said, this should be a guide, but I would take it with a grain of salt.

Charlie