In the UK, I was pleasantly surprised that the English seem much keener on fair trade coffees than Americans. (Here, it seems like a marginal, West Coast phenomenon.) That is nice, I thought. But that’s the problem: Is fair trade coffee in England and the US a case of “better late than never” or “too little too late”?

In “Extreme Chocolate,” (New Yorker, Oct. 29th, 2007), Bill Buford provides a brief overview of cacao in colonial Europe:

“In London, the first chocolate shop opened, on Gracechurch Street, in 1657. Two private clubs, White’s and the Garrick, got their start as chocolate houses. By 1664, when Pepys whas writing about the new beverage …, he was a representative European consumer. He didn’t understand what he was drinking, had no idea how it was made, and knew only that it came from the New World and that he wanted as much as he could get. In the face of a global shortage, an equatorial panic set in, and prospectors and opportunists fanned out across the tropics, looking for wild trees and planting new ones…. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Spanish had found trees in Venezuela and Ecuador. They planted some in Trinidad, the French planted in Martinique, the English in Jamaica.”

In Europe, as Buford writes, “…by the early sixteen-hundreds the beverage—the Aztec preparation, served warm, with European flavorings (sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg)—had its own high-society rituals.” Without sugar, of course, chocolate at that time would be nearly inedible (and wouldn’t tea served without milk and sugar be Asian, not English?). Great swaths of the New World became sugar cane plantations. Talk about a mean sweet tooth.

A few months ago, David Bacon, the Oakland-based photographer and journalist specializing in labor, issues sent me images and an essay about child labor on banana plantations in the Philippines. I looked, read, and promptly went into denial. But this week at the grocery store I picked up free trade bananas, which tastes and feels better.

Links:

“Children in the Banana Trees,” a report by David Bacon:
http://dbacon.igc.org/Phils/02ChiBan.html

Gallery of photos of Banana workers in Mindanao, by David Bacon:
http://dbacon.igc.org/Phils/banana00.htm

Food of the Gods slide show (New Yorker)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/29/slideshow_071029_chocolate

Abstract of “Extreme Chocolate,” by Bill Buford (New Yorker)
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/29/071029fa_fact_buford

Fair trade coffee available at Global Exchange
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/

Transfair USA
http://transfairusa.org/

Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International
http://www.fairtrade.net/