MSU’s brand of coffee products claim to be “locally roasted” and “Spartan approved.”
A vague statement, but a true one – the coffee distributed on MSU’s campus is roasted in Lansing at Paramount Coffee Company’s production plant, right by the Lansing Lugnuts’ Cooley Law School Stadium.
The coffee beans themselves have more complex origins, leaving students in search of ethically sourced coffee with decisions to make. While the Sparty’s signature blend is organic, it is not fair trade. While the Rwanda roast is fair trade, it’s not organic. But the French roast and decaf coffees are both.
CEO of Paramount Coffee Company Angelo Oricchio said that his company could not give specific details about where individual brews are grown because of privacy reasons. However, information available to the public indicates that the beans for the Sparty’s signature blend come from areas in Bolivia, Peru, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Sumatra, an island in Indonesia. The French roast beans come from unspecified countries in South America and Central America. The decaf originates in those regions, as well.
Before the introduction of the signature blend several years ago, Sparty’s only served fair trade coffee. Michael Harding, service manger of Sparty’s retail services, said that the university moved away from a fair trade main roast for financial reasons. If the university were to commit to fair trade, the prices would be subject to change at the will of the bean producers, he said.
“We wanted to keep the coffee affordable for students,” Harding said.
Only one coffee on campus has a single, committed origin – the Rwanda roast.
MSU professor Daniel Clay has been involved with farmers in Rwanda since 1992, and he is currently working in the capital city of Kigali. Clay estimates there are about 400,000 individual farmers growing coffee in Rwanda, with each farm growing around 150 trees on a plot of one square acre.
After the Rwandan genocide ended in 1994, the people were in dire need of help. The coffee program, created by MSU’s Institute of International Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development, has become something of a success story for the country.
“Overall, there has been a lot of post-war and post-genocide reconstruction,” Clay said. “It’s been pretty dramatic.”
Areas like health care and democratic government have “improved significantly” since the program’s implementation, Clay said.
Patrons of Sparty’s may have noticed the lack of an organic label on the Rwanda roast. Harding said that while the Rwanda coffee is free trade, the brew can not be organic due to the higher cost of resources for organic farming. Free trade ensures that farmers “get a fair price for their coffee” and provides extra income for schools and other community services.
