Coffee agreement will benefit poorest growers
By Lisa Lipman
The Associated Press
BOSTON — The nation’s largest
coffee sellers in the past have bare
ly concerned themselves with the
Third World farmers whose crops
enabled their businesses to thrive.
Now, however, they are waking up
and smelling the coffee.
Starbucks, Green Mountain Cof
fee, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Dean’s
Beans, and 78 other gourmet coffee
sellers have agreed to start a line of
coffee purchased from farmers un
der “fair trade” regulations.
Those regulations include pay
ing farmers at least $1.26 per
pound regardless of how low the
coffee market drops, and paying
them 60 percent of the cost prior
to shipment.
The companies have signed on
through the efforts of Qxfam Amer
ica, which fights poverty world
wide, and Transfair America, a
nonprofit organization that works
to promote fairly traded food im
ports.
“We think that, one cup at a
time, we can make an enormous
difference in the communities that
are the poorest in the world,” said
Barbara Fiorito, president of Ox
fam’s board of directors.
Coffee market prices are low,
which means that coffee farmers
from Third World countries often
make only $3 a day selling their
beans to companies that can make
almost that much on one cup in
the United States.
“It’s not enough to live on, and a
little too much to die on,” said Rob
Everts of wholesale coffee seller
Equal Exchange, the first company
to sign on.
Starbucks will start selling a
( ( The fair trade move
ment is fairly new in the
U.S.... we’re building this
market as we speak, aa
Sue Mecklenburg ' *
Director of Environmental
and Community Affairs
Starbucks
line of fair trade coffee in 2,300
stores on Oct. 4. The coffee will
sell for $11.45 a bag. Peet’s has al
ready started selling its own line
of fair trade coffee for $10.95.
Equal Exchange sells its coffee for
$8.99. Equal Exchange is the only
company at which 100 percent of
the coffee meets fair trade stan
dards.
Starbucks’ Director of Environ
mental and Community Affairs
Sue Mecklenburg said her compa
ny will sell the fair trade coffee for
one year, then evaluate whether
selling more than one kind of it is
feasible.
“The fair .trade movement is
fairly new in the U.S. ... we’re
building this market as we
speak,” she said.
The gourmet coffee market has
gotten increasingly crowded over
the years. Americans spend $18
billion a year on coffee, more than
any other nation. Coffee is the sec
ond most heavily traded commod
ity after oil. The two largest coffee
importers — Maxwell House and
Folgers — have not signed on to
the fair trade agreement. Transfair
executive director Paul Rice dis
misses the idea that the companies
are signing on more as a marketing
ploy than as an altruistic inclina
tion.
“'Sure a lot of it may be lip serv
ice,” he said. “But I see a lot of
companies really trying to walk
the walk.”
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Bootleg tape a surprise to Gore camp
By Toni Raum
Associated Press Writer
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Vice
President Al Gore declared Sun
day that he doesn’t know how his
campaign ended up with a bootleg
videotape of George W. Bush re
hearsing for next month’s debates.
But, he told reporters, “If some
body in the Bush campaign keeps
sending confidential internal data
to us, we’ll keep turning it over to
the FBI.”
That comment, in a conference
call with reporters, came as the
two camps traded new accusations
over the mysterious package —
and
whether
there is a
Gore spy in
Bush’s cam
paign.
Bush op
era t i v e s
seized
upon the
Gore cam
paign’s sus
pension of
a junior
staffer in
the matter to hurl new accusations
at Gore’s Nashville, Tenn.-based
operation.
“The more the FBI inquires, the
more nervous they’re getting in
Nashville,” said Bush spokesman
Ari Fleischer.
The Gore staffer, Michael Doyne,
28, was suspended after he ac
knowledged boasting of a “mole”
planted in Bush’s campaign.
Doyne now insists the “mole”
was a product of his imagination
and Gore spokesman Mark Fabiani
said campaign officials do not be
lieve there is any such Democratic
spy.
But Fleischer said Doyne’s sus
pension “raises questions on
whether others in the Gore cam
paign have information” obtained
through political espionage.
“It defies credibility,” Fleischer
said of the whole incident.
GOP running mate Dick Cheney
said there’s cause for concern.
“There seems to be a little bit of
smoke there. Whether or not
there’s a fire, I don’t know,” he said
on ABC’s “This Week.”
On Sept. 13, a package includ
ing the tape arrived at the Wash
ington office of former Rep.
Thomas Downey of New York,
who had been helping Gore pre
pare for the debates. It had an
Austin postmark.
Gore told reporters that Doyne
“has signed a sworn affidavit that
he has no knowledge whatsoever
of any so-called mole or Gore sym
pathizer within the George Bush
presidential campaign. That’s all I
know about it.”
As to the tape, “I don’t know
who sent it,” Gore said. “I’ve read
the reports that the FBI has identi
fied a Bush campaign official as
the person responsible but I have
no knowledge other than that.”
Bush campaign officials have
denied strongly that anyone in
volved in debate preparations sent
the tape to Gore’s campaign.
However, they have not ruled
out the possibility that a junior
staffer may have stumbled upon a
copy of the tape and passed it on,
or that a security lapse may have
allowed the tape to be copied out
side campaign headquarters.
FBI agents were in Austin on
Friday interviewing staffers with
direct access to debate preparation
material.
Both candidates stayed close to
home Sunday — Gore in Washing
ton, Bush in Austin — while the
race was conducted by conference
calls laying out the coming week.
Handling his own phone work,
Gore promised a “detailed book”
— 74 pages, an aide said — on
how he would modernize and ex
pand Medicare.
“Medicare faces insolvency un
less we act now. I want to make a
rock-solid commitment ^ to
Medicare,” Gore said. “The other
side treats the surplus as a piggy
bank for a tax cut.”
Bush, just back from a two-day
trip to Florida, was leaving Mon
day on a three-day trip to Oregon,
Washington state and California
during which he will promote his
education plans.
Timed to coincide the trip is a
new Republican National Commit
tee ad suggesting the nation is in
the grips of an “education reces
sion.”
Citing low test scores, particu
larly on math and science, the ad
implies that part of the blame rests
with the Clinton-Gore administra
tion. It also praises Bush’s record
as governor of Texas.
The ad will begin airing later in
the week in 17 states, Fleischer
said.
“Reading and math scares na
tionally have been declining for
the past 10 years,” Fleischer said.
“There’s a real worry in America
about whether children will be
safe in school.”
Bush’s trip will include an ap
pearance Tuesday on CNN’s “Lar
ry King Live.”
Bush has proposed a $47 billion,
10-year education plan that would
boost spending for literacy pro
grams, college scholarships and
programs that improve pupil
achievement. He also wants
vouchers that poor families could
use for private-school tuition.
Bush’s camp also welcomed
new weekend polls suggesting he
had reclaimed some of his losses
to Gore. It also confirmed reports
of sharply reduced advertising in
Illinois, a key battleground state,
but denied that was because the
campaign felt Gore’s lead there had
become unassailable.
Fleischer said the cutback was
largely a response to a decision by
Democrats to scale back their own
advertising there. “We keep an eye
on each other’s advertising and
that’s what you’re seeing ... Illinois
is definitely a battleground state.
We’re going to contest it,” he said.
Gore spokesman Fabiani paint
ed a different picture of the ad cut
back, telling CNN the decision to
pull out of Illinois is “a major, ma
jor statement about where this
election is going.”
Associated Press writer Sandra Sobieraj
contributed to this report.
Bush to campaign today in Beaverton, topics include education
PORTLAND (AP) — Locked in
tight race for Oregon’s increasingly
important elector J votes, Republican
George W. Bush will discuss educa
tion on his visit to Beaverton Monday.
The Texas governor will then fly
to Spokane, Wash., to argue that the
region can’t afford the electricity
and irrigation losses would result
from breaching dams on the Snake
River to help save salmon.
While Vice President Al Gore will
be in Florida talking about
Medicare, Bush will hold a late
morning “town hall” meeting at
Bethanv Elementarv School, an area
of fast-growing housing develop
ment in west Beaverton.
Ari Fleischer, a Bush campaign
spokesman in Austin, Texas, told
reporters Sunday that Bush will ar
gue that the United States is in an
“educational recession” demon
strated by poor test scores.
That claim will likely be chal
lenged. Educational experts say it’s
difficult to compare test scores
across nations, particularly because
achievement tests are taken by a
much broader cross-section of
American students than in many
foreign countries.
Fleischer said Bush will talk at a
Spokane airport rally about how
breaching the dams would “hurt
peoples’ livelihoods in Oregon,
Washington and the entire region.”
Bush has ruled out dam-breaching,
while Gore says it should be kept as
an option if other efforts to save en
dangered salmon in the Columbia
River basin fail to produce results.
This will be the fifth visit to the
region by Bush or his running mate,
Dick Cheney, in less than two
months, and it signals the increas
ing importance of the two states for
the Republican ticket.