News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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[Some troubling news concerning fair-trade. It is not just the
involvement of retailers like Wal-Mart (and remember, even though buying
fair-trade-certified products from Wal-Mart is better than buying
uncertified products, you're still buying from frigging Wal-Mart. But
the different certification standards for plantations described below
don't just dilute the standards for products like coffee, they remove
the requirement of worker-owner****p-and-control that cooperatives
ensure. This is a key libertarian objective.--DC]
http://tinyurl.com/6l4k4l
Is Fair Trade Becoming 'Fair Trade Lite'?
Some Proponents Say The Adjustments Needed To Bring Companies Like
Wal-Mart And P&G Aboard Warp The Goal Of Helping Small Farmers
BusinessWeek Online
When TransFair CEO Paul Rice sits across from Wal-Mart (WMT) CEO H. Lee
Scott, the differences in their backgrounds couldn't be more stark.
Scott has spent nearly his entire adult life working at the retail
behemoth, with a mandate to increase sales and profits and keep costs as
low as possible. Rice, after graduating from Yale University in 1983,
spent 11 years working with peasant coffee farmers in Nicaragua trying
to squeeze higher prices out of coffee buyers. He set up one of the
first cooperatives, with 24 coffee-growing families, who sold their
first batch of fair trade product to Europe in 1990 for $1.26 a pound,
compared with the 10 cents a pound coffee was selling for in Nicaragua
then. "It was an overnight legend in Nicaragua," recalls Rice.
At one time, that gap might have made it easy to place Rice among
Wal-Mart's detractors, considering the criticism of the chain's
treatment of its own workers, its anti-union stance, and the sweatshop
issues it has faced for years. Yet these days, Rice is finding a lot of
common ground with Scott -- especially since Apr. 1, when Wal-Mart
launched three house-brand coffees certified as "fair trade," meaning
they provide a fair price to small farmers. It was a crowning
achievement for Rice, now chief executive of TransFair, the U.S.
fair-trade industry's labeling organization. And it was a sign that the
fair-trade movement has truly arrived in the U.S. mass market. After
all, Wal-Mart is not only the world's largest retailer but also the one
with the broadest reach.
Same Old, Same Old?
For some proponents of fair trade, however, that endorsement of their
cause feels more like a co-opting. In trying to boost the participation
of Wal-Mart and other large companies such as Procter & Gamble (PG),
they fear the whole idea of helping small farmers is getting warped.
Many of the beneficiaries, critics say, wind up being the same type of
big operations that prospered under the old system.
Take Wal-Mart's warehouse-club division, Sam's Club. When Sam's started
offering fair-trade tea, bananas, and roses earlier this year, it seemed
like a huge win for the movement, which had already seen sales of
fair-trade coffee grow tenfold from 2001 to 2006, to $730 million. "The
idea of bringing high-quality items to our members at a great value that
were produced in an environmentally and socially responsible way was
just too compelling to pass up," says Gregg Spragg, executive
vice-president for merchandising at Sam's Club, who replied to questions
via e-mail.
But all the fair-trade cut flowers and a large quantity of tea, bananas,
and sugar im****ted to the U.S. come from big plantations in places such
as Ecuador and Colombia. "The large companies want to continue working
with mass producers like plantations rather than going the tougher
route, which is identifying small farmers and buying from them," says
Carmen K. Iezzi, executive director of the Fair Trade Federation, a
trade group of companies that say they are 100% committed to fair trade.
The Difference Between Coffee and Tea
Wal-Mart officials declined further comment about their fair-trade
practices. Iezzi and others aim much of their criticism at TransFair
USA, which is expanding fair-trade certification at a frenetic pace.
They say that to keep up the pace of expansion, the organization is
taking shortcuts that compromise the original concept. "When large,
conventional plantations get fair-trade certified for improving
practices, we consider that 'fair-trade lite,'" says Rink Dickinson,
president and co-founder of Equal Exchange, a West Bridgewater [Mass.]
company that is committed to buying only from farmer-run cooperatives.
"There may be reforms, but it is a kindler, gentler version of the same
old thing and falls short of what some of us are advocating."
Rice, who started TransFair in 1999, disagrees. "The notion that the
standards have been lowered is ill-informed," he says. "Our objective is
to help the poor, whether they own a plot of land or not."
Part of the problem Rice and Wal-Mart face is the difficulty of applying
the same standards of equity and economics to different types of crops.
While half of the global production of coffee comes from small farms, it
takes a larger operation to compete in bananas, tea, cut flowers, or
sugar. "The disadvantaged majority would be locked out of the market if
I were to look for only small farms for bananas and tea," says Rice.
TransFair sets different standards for plantations to be certified as
fair trade. They have to pay workers fair wages, allow them to organize
into unions, and have strong worker-safety measures. The workers form a
group and get part of the premium price [8% to 12% of each sale] that
comes with the fair-trade label, for social and business-development
projects. "There is a rose farm on top of a hill in Ecuador where the
workers wear protective equipment against pesticides, they have free
health care, and have invested in their own day-care facility with their
project money -- and I am proud of that," says Rice.
Ugly Colonial Legacy
Working against Rice, however, is the perception that plantation owners
got where they are by exploiting poor farmers and workers in developing
nations. Some of these plantations in previously colonized countries are
still owned by colonizers -- rich white Europeans. And some in Latin and
Central America are owned or controlled by large cor****ations such as
Dole and Del Monte (DLM). "Plantations are the legacy of an unfair
system where the elite and the wealthy cl***** denied small producers
their land, and small farmers always got the raw end of the deal," says
Jonathan Rosenthal, CEO of Ok USA, which sells fair-trade-certified
fresh fruit bought directly from growers.
Also, there are questions about whether TransFair has the resources it
needs to monitor worker conditions, as labor-rights groups do. Those
labor groups say it's hard to keep tabs on workers in countries like
Colombia, which hasn't been a friendly place for trade unions and where
workers are generally afraid to speak out. Indeed, none of the flower
plantations in Colombia that are certified fair trade have worker
unions. "We wonder if TransFair is equipped to deal with worker-rights
violations, especially as they expand and get into more complex
supply-chain industries like garments," says Bama Athreya, executive
director of the International Labor Rights Forum, a nonprofit advocacy
group in Wa****ngton.
TransFair's Rice says he will continue his push into other areas, even
apparel. He says that when faced with criticism, he likes to remind
himself of his experience in Nicaragua. The cooperative he started there
had grown to 3,000 families after four years. The families' lives had
improved dramatically -- they had electricity and water, they could
afford health care, and their children were attending high school and
even college for the first time. "It was a transformative experience for
me," says Rice. "And I believed that globally, I could have the same
kind of impact if I grow that vision in America."
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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