Time was when a cup of coffee meant a cheap jar of instant. Now it’s a multimillion-dollar industry, a lifestyle, and a moral minefield. The high street chains are rushing to offer us Fairtrade brew.

First, Costa Coffee offered it for an extra 10p. Pret A Manger followed suit, along with Marks & Spencer’s cafés, which serve 100 per cent Fairtrade coffee, as does the Slug and Lettuce pub chain. And then there’s Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee retailer.

If your head isn’t already buzzing with ethically sourced caffeine, it’s crowding on to the supermarket shelves, too, with the likes of Percol, Café Direct and Nestlé’s new Fairtrade instant. But does Fairtrade coffee necessarily mean that the coffee chains and makers are trading fairly? The move has attracted the rapt attention of sceptics. Starbucks promises freshly brewed Fairtrade coffee, certified by the Fairtrade Foundation, in every store in the UK, every day in Britain. But when the coffee chain made a similar pledge in the United States last year, it provoked bloggers to launch the “Starbucks challenge”, encouraging customers to ask for Fairtrade coffee in their local branches. Judging by the blank stares that some bloggers say they received, not all stores were on-message.

Nor has the promise reassured would-be ethical consumers about the motives of multinationals. While MORI polls suggest that almost half of us recognise the Fairtrade logo — we spent £140 million on its certified products in 2004 — not all of us are sure how fair we are being or whether retailers such as Starbucks deserve their ethical plinths.

However, Harriet Lamb, the director of the Fairtrade Foundation, is happy to see its logo adopted by the high street giants. “The more places it is available, the better,” she says. “As long as what you are buying is certified by the Fairtrade Foundation, the UK regulatory body, the consumer can feel reassured that trading standards have been set and checked.”

Fairtrade works by fixing a price for producers, such as coffee growers, regardless of fluctuating world market prices. For example, a farmer selling a pound of Fairtrade Arabica coffee is paid $1.26; lower-quality Robusta coffee fetches $1.06. At last week’s world market price, Arabica was selling for $1.10 a pound and 55 cents for Robusta.

The Fairtrade price includes a five cents “social premium”, which is invested back into community projects.

Last month, Consumers International, a consumer rights monitoring organisation, concluded that of all the ethical-certification schemes that companies have adopted, Fairtrade offers the most tangible benefits for growers.

So does this mean that one chain’s Fairtrade coffee is as fair as another? Pretty much, although there are a few things to look out for. Check the store’s level of commitment, says Lamb. “Some retailers make it hard for customers to choose Fairtrade. If you have to ask for it, or if you can get only a certain type of coffee, such as filter coffee, it reduces the chances of people bothering. The gold standard is a place where all the hot drinks are Fairtrade.”

She cites AMT, the mobile coffee shops seen at railway stations, and Marks & Spencer’s Café Revive, as good examples. Even better, the high street newcomer Progreso, with two branches in Central London, not only serves up 100 per cent Fairtrade produce wherever possible, but the coffee growers in Honduras own a share of the business, so they profit directly from its success. Grab a caffeine hit from here and you will be sporting a halo, as well as the usual smug glow that a Fairtrade cuppa merits.

Starbucks, meanwhile, could certainly do better, as could many of the other biggies. In the last financial year, only 3.7 per cent of the coffee it sold globally was Fairtrade, though this is up from the 1.6 per cent of the previous year. Nescafé’s Partners Blend, the Fairtrade option launched by Nestlé, accounts for only 0.02 per cent of its total coffee sales.

Back on the high street Costa Coffee offers a Fairtrade option on all its coffees, at no extra cost, but you have to request it. Pret A Manger offers only Fairtrade filter and decaf, so forget all those cappuccinos and lattes that fuel our working lives.

As well as this apparent tokenism, there is confusion about the pricing of Fairtrade products. You might cough up considerably more for a certified cappuccino at one place than at another, but don’t think that you are lining impoverished farmers’ pockets. The only bit controlled in the Fairtrade system is the price a farmer is paid for produce. After that, mark-ups are determined by the retailers and middlemen.

This has prompted the criticism that little of the money made by a product is seen by the farmer. “Controlling the prices is against the law,” says Lamb. “We would be concerned if we thought a business was making an undue profit from Fairtrade. But it has to work commercially for everyone. Retailers have to feel confident that they can make money from Fairtrade in the same way that farmers do.”

But fair trading alone won’t convert many sceptics to Starbucks. Ethical Consumer magazine reports that many of its hardcore green readers are as concerned about the chain’s domination of the high street as its coffee.

But Fairtrade advocates say that if you’re worried about the plight of coffee growers, you’d do better to choose the chain-café’s Fairtrade option than a non-Fairtrade equivalent from a colourful local eaterie. One neat solution is to request Fairtrade coffee in your preferred independent café — backed by threats to defect to Starbucks if they don’t deliver.

Such threats only reflect global reality. In the coffee market, the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation, which oversees the system globally, claims that powerful players such as Nestlé and Starbucks are a powerful vehicle for spreading the message of ethical trading and increasing the demand for it; Starbucks buys about 10 per cent of Fairtrade coffee sold worldwide — five million farmers are being helped. But as only 1 per cent of the world’s coffee is Fairtrade, there is still a long way to go.

For further information, www.fairtrade.org.uk
For a bigger picture, visit an exhibition of Trevor Leighton’s photographs for the Fairtrade Foundation at Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London SE1, March 8-26