BALTIMORE — Catholic Relief Services has long been known as the U.S. bishops' agency that provides relief in places around the world affected by famine, natural disasters and war.

It stepped into a new area Nov. 25 when it launched the Catholic Relief Services Coffee Project, an ambitious plan to work for fair global trade by appealing to Americans' appetite for coffee.

The Coffee Project has two simple but ambitious goals, according to Joan Neal, Catholic Relief Services deputy executive director for U.S. operations. It seeks to support struggling coffee farmers around the world who are receiving a dramatically low price for their crops and to give U.S. Catholics the opportunity to put their faith into action by encouraging them to buy high-quality coffee at living-wage prices.

“Starting your day with a cup of fair-trade coffee is a simple way to have a direct, substantial impact on the lives of small-scale coffee farmers,” Neal said.

In recent years, overproduction of low-grade coffee caused prices on the world market to plummet. Coffee fell from a high of $1.40 per pound in 1999 to a low of 45 cents per pound in 2001. Many farmers have reported receiving as little as 15 to 20 cents per pound.

One of those farmers is Encarnación Suárez, a 60-year-old mother of 10 who lives in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Speaking in Spanish during the launch of the Coffee Project at Catholic Relief Services headquarters in Baltimore, she explained how her family can barely make a living with the 2,000 pounds of coffee her land produces annually.

“Coffee prices are too low now. We can barely buy rice, sugar — once in a while some clothing for the kids or medicine when we become sick,” she said. “Our hope is that people in other countries will buy our coffee at a better price so we can improve our homes and better feed our children — and even bring them to school.”

Seventy percent of the coffee reaching the United States — the world's largest coffee consumer — is produced by small producers such as Suárez.

Catholic Relief Services has a natural market to begin selling its product — the 65 million Catholics in 19,000 parishes in the United States. “They can make a big change by taking one simple step: choosing fair-trade coffee,” Neal said.

Catholic Relief Services coffee will be supplied through the Interfaith Coffee Program of Equal Exchange Inc., a Canton, Mass.-based fair-trade company. The coffee, in turn, will be sold primarily through parishes that participate in the program.

Equal Exchange purchases directly from farmers, cutting out several middlemen and paying a guaranteed minimum of $1.26 per pound of conventionally grown coffee and $1.41 for organic.

Starting Small

According to Equal Exchange's Erbin Crowell, 7,600 congregations last year accepted paying higher prices for coffee, purchasing some 118 tons.

“It doesn't make a big difference for now, but it is the beginning of a tendency that is growing and is helping improve lives in coffee-producing countries,” Crowell said.

According to Catholic Relief Services, the program also educates consumers about how current trade policies create an uneven playing field for smaller, poorer countries.

Another advantage is that a percentage of the profit from every package will go back to the farmers through the Catholic Relief Services Small Farmer Fund, a resource that supports agriculture and long-term development.

Catholic Relief Services has already programmed workshops in dioceses such as Seattle, Cincinnati and Wilmington, Del., where parish leaders will be trained in how to bring the Coffee Project to their parishes.

“The goal is to create a large network of grass-roots organizations, and we would like to have a formal launch in every diocese in the United States,” Neal said.

Catholic Relief Services is already contributing: All of its offices in the United States are consuming fair-trade coffee, and retreat houses, Catholic universities and other Catholic institutions are being invited to join the program.

During the official launch of the Coffee Project, with journalists participating by telephone, some reporters expressed concern about how competitive the fair-trade coffee can be in a market striving for higher quality and lower prices. Equal Exchange's Crowell believes fair-trade coffee is going to be competitive in the arena of organic and gourmet coffee.

Javier Pinto, a Peruvian economist who advises cocoa and coffee producers in Peru, agrees.

“Traditional coffee producers such as Colombia, Brazil and Central America, as well as newer producers like Peru, are improving the quality of their crops, thus appealing to high-quality consumers,” he said.

Nevertheless, Pinto believes better products also require greater investment.

“Therefore, by bringing better prices,” he said, “initiatives like the Coffee Project could start a positive spiral of better products aimed at markets capable of paying more.”

In fact, even if fair-trade coffee can become more competitive in quality, Neal said, “justice isn't cheap, so the product will cost more.” That is why increasing awareness is a key element in the process.

According to Crowell, fair trade is shifting from seeing coffee and other products as faceless commodities to products related to actual people.

“This is a more rational approach to globalization and global commerce,” he explained.

So far, some large retailers such as Safeway and Albertson's, among others, have made fair-trade coffee, tea and cocoa available, Neal said, “because Catholics have started asking for such products when they don't see it on the shelf.”

New Ventures

The Coffee Project is the first of a series of projects aimed at combining relief with global justice and solidarity.

Another similar project is Work of Human Hands, which encourages people in U.S. parishes to purchase crafts from people in poor countries.

“We are also looking at other global-solidarity projects connecting dioceses in the United States and others around the world not only in terms of financial support but also of mutual education about ways of life, connecting people with a sense of solidarity,” Neal said.

“This is not a new trend at CRS, since for at least the past 10 years, after the Rwanda genocide, we realized that in order to affect long term sustainability, we really have to address the issues of injustice, empowering people to have the ability to live good and decent lives.”

But what is new, Neal said, “is our approach to get the large U.S. Catholic community involved more directly in our mission by participating in active solidarity in a very concrete way, such as the way we pick our coffee.”

This is a way to live and apply the social doctrine of the Church, she said, “because the entire body of these teachings is focused on issues of justice, solidarity and the dignity of every life.”

Alejandro Bermudez is based in Lima, Peru.