According to an article published by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and republished on the Global Exchange Web site (Full-text here), Starbucks -- which controls 20% of the U.S. specialty coffee industry -- agreement with TransFairUSA to sell Fair Trade certified coffee began in October, 2000. Also according to the article, Starbucks only agreed to sell FT certified coffee in whole bean only, not brewed in their cafes. I have not been able to find exact information on whether that has changed. (On an andecdotal level, I always ask for FT coffee at Starbucks airport cafes -- which is the ONLY time I even step foot in their cafes -- and invariably the employees have no idea what I'm talking about!). Tim Rogers, in a Christian Science Monitor article (see below for full citation) from April, 2004 noted that Starbucks "brews fair-trade coffee once a month as its 'coffee of the day'", but could not confirm this from Starbucks' site and could not gather statistics from Starbucks that would let me deduce the amount of fair-trade served vs amount sold for home consumption.

According to Starbucks own public relations, "in fiscal 2003, Starbucks purchased 2.1 million pounds of Fair Trade Certified coffee, a 91% increase over the year before. Whole-bean Fair Trade Certified coffee is available for purchase in our North American company-operated stores. In addition, Fair Trade Certified coffee has been promoted by Starbucks as a brewed "Coffee of the Week" and can be brewed by coffee press during store hours upon customer request. (Starbucks Fair trade Factsheet in PDF).

According to TransFairUSA, In 2003, 18.5 million pounds of green coffee imports were Fair Trade Certified in the US (Fair Trade Coffee Fast facts). So Starbucks bought roughly 10% of fair trade imports that year. When seen in the light of their 20% share of the US specialty coffee industry, this is far below the amount that they SHOULD be purchasing.

The fair trade vs non-fair trade question is a little more tricky. I was unable to find total amount of beans purchased in Starbucks annual reports (see link below). Their annual reports DO have sales and other juicy numbers. According to Bob Condor's article (see below for full citation), Starbucks purchases one percent of all coffee on the globe, but less than one percent of that is fair-trade. By deduction and using 2003 numbers, 1% (Starbucks amount of bean purchase) of 12 billion pounds (the total world export) equals 120 million pounds and only 2.1 million pounds are fair-trade certified. Using these same numbers points to a statistical error in that 1% of 2.1 million is 210 million pounds, not 120 million pounds. So either MORE than 1% of Starbucks beans were fair-trade, or the numbers were taken from different sources. The discrepancy may be because I took numbers from the USDA for 2003/2004 (meaning it was probably a fiscal year calculation of July 1 - June 30) and TransFair perhaps used data collected from January 1 - December 31. I'd contact TransFair if I were you to double-check my numbers against theirs.

You can find statistics for world coffee supply and distribution at the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service's Production, Supply and Distribution (PS&D) online database. Coffee is one of the database's pre-defined tables with statistics for the last 5 years. Please be aware that these numbers are for 60-kilogram bags, while some statistics are in pounds, or metric tons. So you'll have to do some conversion.

Here's a little math for you (and I'm no mathematician so these numbers may be completely off!) :

90,764,000 60-kilogram bags = 5,445,840,000 kilograms (total world exports 2003-2004)

1 Kilogram = 0.0625 pounds

5,445,840,000 KG = 12,006,022,059 pounds (rounded number)

So out of roughly 12 billion pounds of coffee exported in 2003/2004, Starbucks purchased 2.1 MILLION pounds of fair trade coffee.

I hope this information gets you started on answering your questions. You may want to contact Starbucks and the various fair-trade organizations cited below. And definitely check out the books, The Coffee Book: An Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop. by Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger and Coffee: A Dark History. by Antony Wild for more in-depth history, background and data.

Citations (NOTE: Some of these are available online and some can be obtained from your local library):

• Condor, Bob. Fair Enough? Chicago Conscious Choice, June, 2004.
• Dicum, Gregory and Luttinger, Nina. The Coffee Book: An Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop.
• Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO)
• Global Exchange Starbucks campaign
• James, Deborah. Justice and Java: Coffee in a Fair Trade Market. NACLA. Sept/Oct 2000. *Note: Articles are available from NACLA's Website for a fee. Check your local library to see if they have a subscription to NACLA or can get it from their Interibrary Loan system.
• National Coffee Association of USA (Note: much of their information is only available to members, but I add this here as a possible contact for more information)
• Organic Consumer Association Fair Trade Campaign
• Rice, Robert A. "Noble Goals and Challenging Terrain: Organic and Fair Trade Coffee Movements in the Global Marketplace." Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 14 (2001): 39-66.
• Rogers, Tim. Small coffee brewers try to redefine fair trade. Christian Science Monitor, April 13, 2004.
• Specialty Coffee Association of America (Note: much of their information is only available to members, but I add this here as a possible contact for more information)
• Starbucks Web site
• Starbucks Annual Reports (1999 - 2004)
• Starbucks Fair trade Factsheet (PDF)
• TransFair USA
• USDA Foreign Agricultural Service's Production, Supply and Distribution (PS&D) online database
• Wikipedia's Starbucks page
• Wild, Antony. Coffee: A Dark History.