The Inconvenient Truth About Fair Trade
Posted by TheShot on 03 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Fair Trade
Although Fair Trade coffee has been around since the 1980s, it wasn’t until the past couple of years that it received heavy airplay. And unless you’ve been reading a rare opinion, such as this one (or the rare reader of The Economist), you’d think that to question the value and effectiveness of Fair Trade certification amounts to heretical blasphemy. Despite the volume of contradictory evidence against the panacea-for-poverty status currently enjoyed by Fair Trade, there is very little open debate on the issue. The coffee industry itself has debated Fair Trade’s claims and ethical merits for over a decade now, but the mainstream public only gets a sort of “party line”.
For example, in this month’s issue of Fast Company, we learn that “Fair trade ensures workers make a living wage”: Drink Better Coffee, Save The World – Mother Earth Coffee Co. – Jim’s Organic Coffee – Equal Exchange. Yet Fair Trade does no such thing. It merely guarantees a minimum price paid to co-operatives. Whether the co-operatives pass enough of the profits on to growers, and whether that minimum price can support living wages to begin with, are well beyond the scope of Fair Trade certification. Yet magazine publishers and socially conscious bloggers keep spreading these mis-truths without so much as batting an eyelash (or, at least, fact checking).
A smaller, but yet just as illustrative, example of this selective hearing comes from comments made on this very Web site. Following a movie review I wrote for the flawed coffee documentary, Black Gold, one reader could not be bothered to read the criticisms I raised about the movie and Fair Trade’s shortcomings — choosing instead to add a promotional movie/Fair Trade comment as if I had posted a chocolate cake recipe. Stick fingers in ears; yell, “La la la! I can’t year you!”
Which raises the question: why are so many consumers, greenies, and (worst of all) greenie preachers putting their blinders on and bestowing Fair Trade with infallibility? Is the issue that these major flaws — flaws that have inspired some of America’s top roasters to abandon working with Fair Trade altogether — represent inconvenient truths that people just don’t want to hear? Whatever it is, it cannot be explained away with simple naïveté or even just wishful thinking.
The mechanics of social activism
One today’s great ironies is that we scrutinize the caffeine in our coffee ad nauseum — coffee being something we have safely consumed as a species for centuries — and yet the Fair Trade label stamped on the bag it comes in receives virtually no scrutiny.
Is it because social activists are afraid of sending mixed messages that could frustrate the laymen they are trying to convert to the cause? Social activism is like a shark in some respects: it must remain in motion or it will die. Many activists fear that if an individual cannot follow explicit, personal instructions to do their part — even if those actions may ultimately do more harm than good — it will trigger the death of awareness.
It has been fourteen years since the death of César Chávez, and many Californians still boycott grapes. Yet most have forgotten why they’re boycotting, don’t know which grapes to boycott, and/or they have no idea when they are supposed to stop boycotting. We end up with activism for the sake of activism, regardless of whether it helps a cause or not. But is buoying awareness that much more important than actually doing any good? Is blind repetition worth the price of open discussion and debate about how each of us can truly make the greatest impact?
As another point of comparison, AIDS patients and activists of the mid-1980s were so desperate for hope that AZT, which was found to be a terribly flawed drug in the fight against AIDS, was considered better than having no hope in the pipeline at all. But unlike AIDS, few of us directly experience the malnutrition and poverty of the global coffee crisis, and we certainly don’t experience any real death. Which is why I’ve come to the following explanation…
The role of “religious” faith in social activism
People desperately want to believe they can make a clear and positive difference with a simple, personal purchasing decision — something as simple as the label on their coffee. The desire for such a simple solution to exist is so strong that we are willing to commit to the first thing that comes by and sounds promising. If we then ask few questions, we can sustain the convenient façade. We can live in good conscience (or denial, if you prefer) knowing that we’ve done our part to assuage any guilt we might have about living up to the ethical standards we hold for ourselves.
Buy a Toyota Prius, drive all you want, and global warming is no longer your responsibility.
It may seem harsh, but we are all more like Pontius Pilate than César Chávez in this regard: rather than actively question or doubt, we are happier to live in blissful ignorance by washing our hands of further responsibility. Perhaps it’s only fitting that we now consume our ethics in the same way we consume our apples: in low-commitment, bite-size, pre-sliced, “fun size” wedges that prevent our hands from getting too dirty.
6 Comments »
on 04 Jul 2007 at 5:33 am -05:00T 1.Silverbrow said …
Great article.
The easy answer (in this case coffee that does good as well as waking you up) is always an exceptionally powerful marketing tool. And what is Fair Trade if not a marketing org?
on 04 Jul 2007 at 1:05 pm -05:00T 2.TheShot said …
Effective marketing is all about understanding the customers’ needs and the benefits they seek. Traditionally, we think of these customer needs in terms of an end product or service and its direct utility for a customer.
However, the savvy marketers of today — as noted in the New York Times article cited above — are more widely recognizing and responding to customers’ personal psychological needs. These needs are independent of the actual product or service and are instead more reflective of the actual purchasing decision. That is, many customers today have a psychological need to feel that their consumption and purchasing decisions are not harming others and the planet.
Wise marketers have quickly picked up on this with things like green marketing and Fair Trade. These marketers are involved in the direct selling of what is essentially “guilt relief” — of which many consumers today are gladly purchasing as an optional accessory to any product or service.
It is therefore in the marketer’s best interests to keep up the facade that you can save the world by simply buying more of the right things. Any sales funnel comes crashing down the minute customers start to ask, “Hey — is this Fair Trade coffee really helping people the way I was lead to believe?”
on 05 Jul 2007 at 11:37 am -05:00T 3.alicia said …
You do well in pointing out one of the failings of Fair Trade. However I believe this is a step toward a more equitable trade system in which consumers are active participants, rather than sheep following the marketing god.
Organizations such as the Fair Trade Federation (fairtradefederation.com) and it’s member companies have committed 100% to the ideals and purpose of Fair Trade. It is not their goal to sell a bite size pieces of marketing, but to effect actual change to the trade system.
Please do not get me wrong, continue to criticize! Do it loudly and to as many people as you can. It will force consumers to think about what their purchase means and how it affects others. It is on the consumer’s shoulders to hold companies accountable and see through the mask of Fair Trade actors.
But to also offer hope Fair Trade is not corrupt, but there are those who would make it so. Bring attention to those on the other end that seek to keep its integrity.
on 05 Jul 2007 at 7:49 pm -05:00T 4.TheShot said …
No question that many supporters of Fair Trade are at least recognizing the problem and are trying to actively think about the ramifications of their buying decisions. This much is good news. And no question that Fair Trade’s originators and most ardent supporters have the best of intentions at heart. (Even though we also know “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”)
But I am afraid I cannot share the same level of optimism that you have about “a step toward a more equitable trade system”. Even if you set aside all those Fair Trade detractors who claim (with good reason) that FT carves out artificial and unsustainable market imbalances. Also set aside those who argue that FT will help keep people trapped in agrarian economies that are based on manual labor, removing incentives for them to break the poverty cycle.
All of this is much, much bigger than FT — it concerns global marketplaces and labor forces. Coffee farmers don’t have a monopoly on working poverty. Garment workers in Haiti, toy manufacturers in China, child laborers making running shoes in Malaysia…the list of those struggling to make a living wage is broad and far reaching.
And while Wal-Mart may be the biggest seller of Fair Trade decaffeinated coffee, they are also the biggest seller of $29 DVD players — to the very same customers. Working poverty is going to remain with us as long as consumers place their demand behind cheaper prices — and as long as someone else in the world is willing to do the same work for less.
on 08 Jul 2007 at 5:47 pm -05:00T 5.Rodney North said …
Hi,
upfront disclaimer: I’m a 11 yr worker-owner and Board Director for Equal Exchange, the folks who introduced Fair Trade to the US food industry (along w/a few other pioneers like Cafe Mam). So you know where I’m coming from.
I like a good debate but its a little too late to really dive into it all. In the meantime I have some questions, and some suggestions.
First, I agree that the media coverage of Fair Trade is often frustratingly simplified. But again, that’s how everything is treated, so that’s not a surprise.
Second, could you please share with everyone “the volume of contradictory evidence against the panacea-for-poverty status currently enjoyed by Fair Trade”? Even just 3 or 4 examples would be a helpful start.
Third, in the same spirit, here are three academic sources that I’d to share in defense of Fair Trade (be forewarned, the 1st two are long, wonkish, acadamic and arguably booring books if you’re not really interested in economic development in rural areas in developing countries)
- the book “Fair Trade – The challenges of transforming globalization” (Routledge press)
- the book “”Brewing Justice – Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival (by Daniel Jaffee)
- the lengthy studies &/or interviews with Fair Trade coffee co-operative leaders posted on the left side of this web site: http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Sociology/FairTradeResearchGroup/
And, lastly, not to be snarky, really, how much time have you spent in coffee growing areas, especially with small-scale coffee farmers?
Respectfuly,
Rodney North, http://www.equalexchange.coop
on 09 Jul 2007 at 1:05 pm -05:00T 6.TheShot said …
Rodney –
It sounds like you followed a link recently and just stumbled on things here (so welcome!). Thus, your response to “the volume of contradictory evidence” is not at all surprising.
The reference is shorthand for regular readers to the many posts on the subject of FT here over the last couple of years — without rehashing the same posts/subjects over-and-over again each time the subject comes up. (No use flogging a dead horse.)
There’s a whole category of them on the site here:
http://theshot.coffeeratings.com/category/fair-trade/
Some clearly in support of its intentions and merits. But more recently, the focus has been on concern over the unilateral and selective representation of FT in the popular media and among many ‘armchair’ ethicists.
As for anything ’snarky’ per se, I’ve spent some time on small farms in Central America and Hawaii. And I have close friends who practically spend half their lives on them. But to be honest, I don’t see tree-level views being a particularly accurate representation of forestry here — not to mention the real problem of balanced issue education and discussion in the general public.