Although this is a serious problem for the coffee industry; it was an NGO that helped communicate this to consumers as part of a campaign for a more sustainable and economically beneficial international coffee trade. With their proposed 'Coffee Rescue Plan', Oxfam have advocated many changes to benefit Southern producers. The key developments being pushed are; the destruction of up to 5 million bags of coffee stocks (paid for by the major coffee brands); trading in only top quality coffee beans that meet the ICO standards; and commitment by the four roaster companies (Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble, and Sara Lee) to make at least 2% of their volumes Fair Trade coffee.

"Fair Trade" is a specific term, referring to the standards of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) that have been established to bring products to market "in a way that ensures the farmers receive a decent return." With a strong emphasis on cooperative management the Fair Trade standards require people in supply chains to work to transparent terms of trade and guarantee decent production conditions, at the same time as addressing some of the key obstacles that prevent poor farmers from accessing markets. These include measures such as partial pre-financing of orders to avoid small producer organizations falling into debt, payment of a premium for use by mutual agreement between producers, contractual commitments that allow farmers to make provision for long-term production planning, and the guarantee of social and environmental conditions that reflect International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions on working conditions. Additional standards for environmental protection have been introduced progressively over recent years. Nearly 200 coffee cooperatives representing 675,000 farmers, more than 70 traders and around 350 coffee companies are already registered as Fair Trade.

Despite this key area of action, Oxfam recognises that "a systemic, not a niche solution, is needed." Hence, they say that The Rescue Plan should be a pilot for a longer-term 'Commodity Management Initiative', whereby governments would take measures to regulate supply and gain a higher percentage of revenues for those at the bottom of the supply (and value) chain.

In this respect, coffee-producing governments have already agreed to a plan that aims to reduce supply by improving the quality of coffee traded. However, history does not provide much confidence. Supply-management initiatives were pursued by governments from 'developing' countries before the 1980's with most falling apart under pressure from 'developed' countries and their corporations. The response of corporations to such proposals today, both publicly and privately will be crucial to the success of such an initiative and therefore should be a key corporate citizenship issue.

By September, Domini Social Investments came out in support of the initiative commenting, "These firms bear significant risk to their brand names as consumers become more educated about the true costs of their morning cup of coffee, and turn to higher-quality, more sustainably produced brands. Investors ignore the substantial ramifications of this global crisis at their own risk." 8 Nevertheless the Coffee Rescue Plan did not receive extensive media coverage, with minimal governmental endorsement and a fairly insignificant amount of company acknowledgment.

Perhaps this is because Oxfam had not targeted a high-profile corporate brand in order to pressure them to support their proposals. The history of current leaders in the world of corporate citizenship, such as B&Q, GSK, and Shell points to the importance of such brand-bashing in driving public and corporate action. 9 Perhaps a greater focus on spilling-the-beans about the dust and dirt in our average cappuccino would have brought more of us out of our coffee-shop armchairs in uproar, and thus created more of a reaction from the business and governmental communities. Here we see the perennial problem facing any media-oriented campaign: how to translate an issue of economics and politics into something a consumer can understand, talk about and act upon while having a 'cuppa'.

By focusing on coffee, a popular and highly-branded consumer product, Oxfam were attempting to do just that. They could have picked any number of more 'boring' products to complain about problematic power relations in the international trading of agricultural commodities. The ILO reported that: "prices of agricultural commodities have been on an almost continuous decline since 1980, and since developing countries are heavily reliant on agricultural exports... falling commodity prices have contributed greatly to their difficulties... Annual losses in purchasing power due to deteriorating terms of trade are estimated to cost developing countries US$2.5 billion a year and mean that countries have to run faster merely to stand still."

Therefore, if the coffee campaign progresses, we could see the beginning of wider engagement between the corporations and questions about the structure of trading relations in the global economy.

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