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Archive for July, 2008

Fair Trade as a Tool for Transformation: Can plantations play that role?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 28, 2008| 12 Comments »

The following post is offered by Nicholas Reid, Sales Representative of the Natural Foods Department at Equal Exchange. His original comments were published in response to a post on GreenLAGirl’s blog about the Business Week article, “Is Fair Trade Becoming ‘Fair Trade Lite’?”.

At Equal Exchange we feel strongly that small-scale sustainable farming is the most effective way to feed the planet, care for the environment, and sustain healthy and vibrant communities and businesses. We believe that small farmer co-operatives provide a model for participatory decision-making, local control, and economic development that is desperately needed to fix a broken food system and an ailing planet.

In this blog, we have tried to make our case by highlighting inspiring stories from our farmer co-op partners and referencing articles written about the importance of agroecology, organic farming, and consumer and farmer movements that are trying to make changes to agricultural and trade policies that serve no one but large scale agribusiness. We have deliberately tried not to focus too much on the debate around plantations, or the competition between different coffee roasters. Nevertheless, I wanted to share Nick’s observations as I thought he did a great job of highlighting some of the history of plantations and the reasons why we choose to focus our work, and continue to build strong relationships, with small farmer organizations in the Fair Trade system.

Fair Trade as a Tool For Transformation: Can plantations play that role?

by Nicholas Reid

For years now, folks have been questioning whether the Fair Trade certifiers should have allowed plantations into a system which was founded by and for small farmer co-operatives. One of the arguments put forth to justify the entry of plantations into the system is that there are many products (such as bananas and tea) which are primarily produced by plantations and therefore are not possible to source from small farmer co-operatives. This is a false premise. The majority of bananas and tea ARE produced by small farmers. More importantly, by allowing plantations into the Fair Trade system, the certifiers are ensuring that products produced by small farmer co-operatives will never thrive in the Fair Trade system.

I would buy the argument that the majority of the world’s tea, bananas and cocoa for export are grown by plantations and large-scale agriculture. But seriously, Fair Trade exists to support small farmers because plantations dominate banana and tea production for export. It aims to create the systems that would allow small farmers to benefit from exporting those products. (more…)

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Trade Liberalization Brings Scant Benefit to Rural Latin America, says new report

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The TRADE Act, currently before Congress, is an attempt to rethink U.S. trade policies. The following is a press release from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University about the impact trade policies have had on small-scale farmers:

Agricultural trade liberalization has largely failed to bring lasting benefit to rural areas in Latin America, where small-holder agriculture remains a key economic activity says a new report published by WOLA and GDAE.

Trade liberalization has provided a few countries in Latin America with unprecedented export opportunities, say authors Mamerto Pérez, Sergio Schlesinger and Timothy A. Wise in their report “The Promise and Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization: Lessons from the Americas,” but it has not generated broad-based development and has caused long-term harm to small producers and consumers.

“This report comes at an important time,” says Vicki Gass, WOLA’s Senior Associate for Rights and Development. “Unregulated trade liberalization in Latin America’s rural sector is clearly a contributing factor to the current food crisis hitting Latin America. Policy makers in the region, and the U.S., have to re-think the whole package of policies they have adopted in recent years. The new administration and Congress will have the opportunity to reconsider U.S. support for trade liberalization policies and move toward financially supporting small producers who supply local and regional markets.”

Among the report’s main policy suggestions: (more…)

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Fair Trade: Are we here to “help” poor people or radically change injust systems that keep people poor?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 23, 2008| 3 Comments »

In her blog, GreenLaGirl, Siel wrote about the issues presented in the Business Week article, “Is Fair Trade Becoming ‘Fair Trade Lite’?” and asked those of us at Equal Exchange why we were so opposed to the idea that plantations and multi-nationals should be operating within the Fair Trade system. Siel wondered if EE is simply nostalgic for the good ole days of co-ops, or if being a co-op means we only want to work with co-ops. Similarly, Jaqui de Carlo asks in her blog, Fair Trade Beginners, can’t fair traders be more inclusive – why can’t Chiquita sell fair trade bananas as well as Oke USA?

Both Rodney and Nicholas have written responses to Siel’s blog, so I won’t go through and repeat their arguments about why it is not just ideology, nostalgia or a desire to be exclusive, that keep us following our own path regardless of the direction being pushed by the Fair Trade certifiers. Please read their comments for some great reasons that should help clarify our position.

Personally, I think it comes down to the question of what the goal of one’s work is and how to best achieve it. Paul Rice, Executive Director of Transfair, was quoted in Business Week as stating that the goal of Fair Trade is to help poor people. While there’s nothing wrong with helping poor people – I prefer to work along side others who want to change the conditions that actually create poverty and injustice. Not just to help – but to change the system. To me, Fair Trade is more than a higher price, as important as that higher price is to the farmer who receives it. It’s more than a supply-side strategy in which the more people buying and selling Fair Trade, the better. It cannot be reduced to a seal; rather it is a holistic approach to economic development and political empowerment and self-determination.

How ironic. During the same week that Business Week came out with their article entitled, “Is Fair Trade Becoming ‘Fair Trade Lite’?” by Pallavi Gogoi, Alternet printed, “Why Fair Trade May be Our Only Hope,” by George Monbiot (originally published in the Guardian). If you want to understand why we should be supporting small scale agriculture, please read this latter article. Monbiot clearly explains why small-scale sustainable farming is the only solution to our multiple problems of environmental protection, feeding the poor, and providing for dignified livelihoods for farmers.

Here are some excerpts:

“…Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen, and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.” (more…)

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Take action to build support for the TRADE Act, an exciting new path toward FAIR trade agreements

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 3, 2008| 2 Comments »

On June 4, Representative Michael Michaud and Senator Sherrod Brown introduced the TRADE Act to Congress. As the press release from the National Family Farm Coalition expressed (see our earlier blog post), this is an exciting opportunity for Congress to finally reform existing trade bills and ensure that future trade agreements are designed to actually benefit small farmers, workers, local economies and the environment.The bills have been officially introduced into both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Debate most likely won’t begin until early next year, but this is an important time to begin gathering support for the bills’ provisions.

Please consider calling or writing your Congressional representatives to urge them to co-sponsor the bills – a strong show of support will strengthen the chances of passage and ensure solutions to skyrocketing food prices, loss of family farms, disintegration of communities and massive waves of immigration.

To read the proposed legislation (or summaries and key provisions of the bills), a list of those organizations supporting the TRADE Act, and a series of press releases from a wide variety of labor, farm, and worker rights organizations expressing enthusiasm for these bills, please go to citizenstrade.org.

There you will find everything you need to email or call Congress, such as talking points and a quick link to your Senator or Representative’s office.

Keep up to date on actions you can take to ensure our free trade agreements are FAIR at Equal Exchange’s action alerts web page.

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