Twenty-two years ago, Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal, and Michael Rozyne founded the first Fair Trade coffee and tea organization in the United States. Soon thereafter, their first Fair Trade coffee line, Café Nica, was launched. At that time, the Sandinistas were governing Nicaragua and there was an embargo preventing Nicaraguan products from being exported to the United States. The specialty coffee craze hadn’t yet caught on like wildfire throughout the country. There was no Fair Trade seal. People thought these three guys were crazy.
The times have certainly changed since then. The Sandinistas were voted out of power (only to have been voted back in a few years ago.) Neighborhood coffee shops abound and many consumers can differentiate between a high quality, fairly grown cup of coffee and the majority of everything else being served out there. The Fair Trade seal is stamped on many lines of coffee, tea, fruit, flowers, and other products.
But what has been the overall impact? Are producers better off today than they were in 1986? Are they more organized? Have they won more rights from their governments? Are consumers more informed about, engaged, and ready to demand changes to the unfair trade and agriculture policies that determine the well-being (or not) of small farmers and dictate everything about our food system (the process by which food gets from field to table)? Twenty years later, what can we conclude about either Southern or Northern social movements and what they have accomplished?
Rink Dickinson, Co-President of Equal Exchange, has written an article which offers his perspective and insights into these questions. As one of the founders of Equal Exchange, he has a unique vantage point from which to write about the history of the Fair Trade movement over these past 22 years. Paradigm Press has recently published Rink’s article in a collection of other essays entitled, Democracy Works: Joining Theory and Action to Foster Global Change, edited by Torry Dickinson, Terrie Becerra, and Summer Lewis.
In his article, Rink offers us a review of the Fair Trade movement. He takes three moments in time – 1988, 1995 and 2005 – and provides us with a snapshot of each era by examining the economic impact, social movement impact in the South, social movement impact in the North, and the overall reform potential of Fair Trade. It’s an interesting, and I would say unique perspective, of Fair Trade that I haven’t seen put forth before. The publishers have allowed us to extract 500 words from his original article to reprint here; the book itself may be purchased at bookstores or on-line. So here is a slightly edited version of his conclusion:
PUTTING THE MOVEMENT BACK INTO FAIR TRADE
“There have been great successes in the development of fair trade in the past 20 years. Chief among these successes are the active involvement of millions of Northern consumers, the major role played by small farmers at the table of international trade, the leveraging of the market in their direction, and the development of mission-based market organizations’ capacity to leverage the economic system towards the interests of consumers and small producers.
These successes have come at a huge cost, however, as the Southern small farmers have been permanently betrayed by the non-profit certifiers who are trying to control the fair trade system. These nonprofits are so keen to meet the real and imagined needs of big retailers that they have sold out small farmers involved in producing tea, citrus, bananas, and other products. The certifiers are doing their best to make it impossible for small farmers in those products to learn from and follow the footsteps of coffee producers. Essentially the reform potential of the fair trade system has been undone both by fair trade’s success and by the unhealthy domination of the system by nonprofits that have long since lost their way.
This does not mean we should despair, however, because our current plight can be dramatically changed with wisdom and willpower. The greatest need to rebuild fair trade’s overall reform potential is the education of informed Northern consumer-citizens. Consumers cannot be seen simply as consumers. In mission-based fair trade work, our goal when interacting, sharing, and talking with as well as selling to consumers has to be more than trying to get them to buy our products.
Northerners and U.S. citizens, even more so than others, are extremely adept at cultivating our need for and interest in things. Our society is awash with things and our consumption levels are at historic and astonishing levels. Yet despite the awesome catering to the power of U.S. consumers, most of our consumption leaves us empty.
We need to develop our consumer power and our citizen power concurrently, and fair trade is one of the most important platforms on which to do this. Consumers need to engage in a process of taking responsibility, asking questions, and re-asking questions. Most of the answers are not there yet. The answers will only evolve through the process of asking those questions in relation to other consumers, to mission-based organizations, to farmers and producers, and to the retailers.
While consumers are doing that, mission-based fair trade organizations need to support both consumers and producers. To the extent that our organizations challenge and engage Northern consumer citizens, we create more space for real alternatives to develop. Our organizations are ultimately only as strong as our capacity to nurture and develop that space.
As always, small farmers and other fair-trade producers have the greatest challenge. They need to constantly improve and focus on economic issues. But, as the past 20 years of fair trade demonstrates, they need engaged, committed consumers in relation to them, ultimately as much or more than they just need economic support.
The opportunities are then to keep building new and more holistic models of consumer- citizen and producer-citizen cooperation.”
What do you think?
Sounds like a very interesting collection, and very interesting to see this not only as a consumer trend but a movement. It seems caring about what you eat is now an act of civil disobedience…
I am thrilled that sustainable food has made such a ripple here in the US and other developed countries that large producers want to source it. The realization that consumers care about something other than price is always enlightening, and that consciousness doesn’t go away once instilled. In fact, for something so regular as coffee I’d say it doesn’t go away even when economic times are tough (this is our health and the health of farmers and the environment). We’re healthier for it, more aware about where coffee comes from, and empowered to fight for trade justice.
Are producers better off? I’d be really interested to see the direct effects. One interesting way to look at it would be: in their trade, could they support themselves now without the price premium of good-willed consumers? Does Equal Exchange offer the business skills, organic farm practices, and personal empowerment they would need to succeed on the free market on quality alone. In other words, aside from the benefits of the business model, is it economically sustainable?
The movement will surely only grow from here. It’s especially important that it does keep its values, as that is entirely what it’s based on. And that will make sure that both farmers and consumers will be better off from a more enlightened and personal trade system.
-Eddie Miller
BU ’10
emiller@bu.edu
Eddie,
I’ll take a stab at your questions.
Q. Are producers better off?
A. Yes and no.
To be more precise – Are they better off than they would be without Fair Trade? Undoubtedly yes. Higher and more stable incomes. Greater power within the marketplace. Greater economic control over their fate + more economic options. Greater political power than they had before. Healthier environments (thanks to the success of organic farming), etc. The list goes on. For more see the dozens of academic studies at
The Fair Trade Institute and
The Center for Fair and Alternative Trade Studies
& Are the better off than they were 20 or 30 years ago?
Not always. This is because even as the growth of Fair Trade and farmer co-ops have been helping other factors have been working against the needs of small-scale farmers. Climate change is already throwing off weather patterns in a harmful way. Free trade agreements have flooded many developing countries with cheap subsidized crops from Northern countries. Governments farm credit programs have been slashed. The U.S. dollar is much weaker. This matters as around the world coffee and cocoa are priced in U.S. dollars and in places like Peru $1 might buy ½ what it did in 1990. This list goes on, too.
Q. . . . could (these farmers) support themselves now without the price premium of good-willed consumers?
A. I’m going to respectfully suggest this question leads the dialogue astray in three ways.
1 – There is in fact relatively little price-premium for Fair Trade goods. For example, at Equal Exchange most of our prices are the same or even lower than other organic NON-Fair Trade products of comparable quality.
2 – I’m guessing you’re overstating the role of good will. For example, a great many people who buy Fair Trade products are not aware that they are doing so and therefore good will is not a factor. They might buy our coffee just for the taste. Or because it’s the only organic Bolivian coffee at their store, or it’s the only coffee served at their college cafeteria.
(Yet, thankfully, for many thousands of people, good will DOES indeed play a role. And we’d contend that this is as it should be. We all should be making our choices – including economic choices like shopping – with curiousity and information and conscience. I don’t want to be forever ignorant of, or indifferent to, the consequences of the t-shirt, or orange juice or mutual fund I buy. I want to know that I’m participating in economic relationships that are not exploitative or taking advantage of someone else’s vulnerability.)
3 – It depends on what you mean by “support themselves”. For example, without Fair Trade maybe the farmer’s family would still eat, but less. They might go hungry once or twice or thrice a week. Yet they might still hang on. Or they might manage to hold on to their farm but they’ have to pull their girls out of school. Would either of those scenerios qualify as “supporting themselves”?
Q. Does Equal Exchange offer the business skills, organic farm practices, and personal empowerment they would need to succeed on the free market on quality alone.
A. Business skills? – Yes
Organic farm practices? – indirectly. We don’t pretend to be an agricultural extension service but the millions of extra dollars that we have paid in organic premiums over the years have directly supported the provision of training in organic farming.
Personal empowerment? Yes. Mostly via our robust support for democratic co-ops, but by other means too (which I think are apparent when you read our newsletters, annual reports, trip reports and so on.)