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- The coffee served by AMT and Virgin Trains is now exclusively Fairtrade, and all the bananas sold at Sainsbury’s will soon be Fairtrade. Does this mean that the Fairtrade movement is changing corporate practices?
- Nestle and Tesco now produce their own-brand Fairtrade coffees. Is this confusing consumers and, ultimately, undermining the aims of the Fairtrade movement?
- Should only 100 percent Fairtrade companies be allowed to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark on their products?
- Is the involvement of large corporations who mainly sell non-Fairtrade goods necessary for Fairtrade to succeed or does it undermine the objectives of the Fairtrade movement?
Pauline Tiffen, co-founder of Cafedirect and Divine Chocolate, writes:
Itīs a case of canīt live with them, but really no point without them!
Lots of different motives and goals criss-cross efforts to build fairer trade between marginalized small scale farmers and consumers. Change the whole global economic system? Save the planet? Help some farmers who really need it? Make consumers part of the solution not the problem? Guarantee supply?
Everywhere you look in the Fairtrade realm there are different aspirations. That is why passionate Fairtrade advocates are set at loggerheads right now. Fairtrade delivers hope and greater opportunities and prosperity to many small holders, thatīs for sure. But it delivers on different levels, based absolutely and intricately on the motives and extent of partnership and participation offered by the buyers.
That is where we need to discriminate. Consumers now are the only ones who can make Fairtrade in the deepest sense win out, by spotting and distinguishing the superficial from the deep versions of Fairtrade being offered through the lenses of the products on the shelf. This is not easy and requires levels of consumer awareness we have not yet achieved on a mainstream level. We face an enormous educational challenge which requires a move away from the simplistic versions (Fairtrade equals more money for farmers) towards raising awareness about power, market control and where profits are made and kept.
When large companies “do Fairtrade” we should not be bemoaning and trivialising the impact of their purchases made in a fairer way at a guaranteed minimum price. Nor should we underestimate the importance of prepayments, pre-finance, long-term relationships, more predictability and ability to invest. But we can only be at ease if the rather unaccountable FT labellers are doing their job, are not whittling away the basics and are not busy selling out the real Fairtrade champions, their precious spaces and their far reaching messages in the name of a few `big dealsī.”
What do you think?
Join the debate on the network-run online discussion forum. We will publish some of the posts from the debate on this webpage.
“It’s simply a matter of realising FT’s limitations”, says Ben West
I think it’s a case of only fight battles you can win, and only fight one battle at a time.
Effectively, those who oppose corporate involvement in FT are asking the fairtrade movement, and particularly the Fairtrade Association to fight a battle for which it is entirely unequipped and not designed for.
One of the things which has made the Fairtrade mark so successful is that it has a fairly narrow, but concrete remit, with a clear set of requirements. It is, simply a label which can be applied to any product which meets clear standards and practice in ethical behaviour towards its suppliers. The Fairtrade Association have never really placed any stipulations beyond that, and for good reasons.
They do not specify that recipients of the FT mark be of a certain size, have a certain turnover, hold a specific political position, be of a certain structure, or even that they always behave in a generally ethical way in regards to environmental practice etc.
In the early days, most FT mark recipients did all share such common values, being mostly small-scale, locally owned, often cooperatives etc, but that was simply a happy coincidence; the people most likely to behave in an ethical way towards their suppliers also happened to be those with an interest in other movements such as community ownership, environmental protection etc. For them, FT was simply part of a larger Worldview, as it should be for all of us.
We’ve now moved onto the situation where demand has shifted to the point that many generally unethical corporations are nonetheless willing to meet the standards called for by FT for the sake of profitability. Just because they have FT, that doesn’t dictate that they’re necessarily nice folks, and it never has; it simply means that they’re meeting the standards set out by the FT association.
It’s simply a matter of realising FT’s limitations. All those who saw FT as a means for fighting their war against corporate capitalism miss the point; FT was never meant or equipped with the frameworks to do that. Equally so, it was never equipped to specify that recipents work in an environmentally sustainable manner, nor that they should not use plastic bags, or anything else. All are legitimate grievances against the corporate world, but FT is the wrong tool to do that.
What FT was designed for, and has been phenomenally good at is providing a set of standards in regards to labour and ecoonomic justice in producer communities. Its inclusiveness has been its strength; it has allowed it to move from niche into mainstream, ensuring that, for all of the other nasty business FT mark recipients might be up to, these standards are adhered to.
If FT had been a subjective movement; granting the mark only to businesses which fitted the typeset perhaps envisioned by some of its founders and on the basis of whether or not they looked friendly, nice and well behaved, it would have fallen flat on its face, basically becoming a clique of massive proportions, with ever-changing goalposts, no clear, realistic and achievable standards or objectives, and never bringing it, and its values into the mainstream in quite the way it has.
Ben West is a People & Planet Activist at King Edward VI’s School, Southampton