UNLAWFUL CONDUCT, ETHICS AND FAIRTRADE:
CONTROLLING THE PUBLIC DISCOURSE
PETER GRIFFITHS
ABSTRACT
It has been shown elsewhere that good and generous consumers in rich countries
pay $1-2 Billion a year extra to buy Fairtrade certified goods in the belief that the money
goes to farmers in the Third World but that nearly all the extra money paid for Fairtrade
coffee is pocketed by firms and organizations in the rich countries. The Fairtrade
certification standards for coffee require that any money that reaches the Third World is
paid to the exporter, not the farmer. Farmers incur higher production costs in meeting
Fairtrade standards, but receive the same or lower prices. Much of the marketing implies
criminal offences or their ethical equivalent, notably ‘Unfair Trading’, fraud, blackmail, and
breaches of consumer protection and trade protection legislation.
In this paper it is asked how this could happen, when most of the people marketing
the product in the UK are sympathetic to the plight of Third World farmers, and most of the
employees of the Fairtrade Foundation and the volunteers promoting Fairtrade in the UK
are passionate about helping them.
INTRODUCTION
This paper examines the marketing of Fairtrade branded coffee to UK consumers.
Fairtrade is a certification brand, assuring the consumer that the product has been
produced and marketed according to the standards of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International (This organization has operated under several names over the years, including
Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, Fairtrade Labelling
Organizations, and FLO. For clarity, it will be referred to as Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International throughout this paper.) The Fairtrade Foundation UK manages the brand
within the UK. Fairtrade is the largest of the fair trade (two words) brands, with a turnover
of over $6.66 billion a year for all its product lines (Fairtrade International, 2013)1. There are
many other fair trade (two words) brands and other ‘ethical’ brands, but these have
1
80m euros in Fairtrade premium. (Fairtrade International, 2013) Total sales were 4.8 billion Euros
(after Fair Trade USA had broken away). i.e. $6.601 billion. Premium was 1.8% of sales. (Fairtrade
International, 2013)
1
different marketing standards to Fairtrade and a small market share (Ballet & Carimentrand,
2010). Most of the thousands of products marketed under this brand, using this logo, are
produced by farmers in the Third World. The intent is similar to that of ‘halal’, ‘kosher’,
‘organic’, and ‘free range’ labels, assuring the customers that the product has been
produced according to certain standards, so that they will be willing to pay a higher price for
it.
Good and generous consumers pay $1-2 billion a year in higher prices to buy
Fairtrade goods, and they do so in the belief that this helps Third World farmers. It has been
argued that this belief is wrong (Griffiths P. , 2013; Griffiths P. , 2010; xxx, 2014; Mohan,
2010; Griffiths P. , 2012). The argument is that nearly all the extra money paid by consumers
for Fairtrade coffee, for instance, is pocketed by firms and organizations in the consuming
countries, with very little reaching the exporters. Much of the money reaching the exporters
goes on the costs of Fairtrade membership, and sometimes the exporters and traders lose
money on it. The balance is spent on ‘social projects’ which may not even be intended to
produce economic benefits. None goes to the farmers as extra price. The farmers incur extra
costs in producing Fairtrade but get the same or lower prices and are worse off.
XXX (xxx, 2014) points out that if it is unlawful for a shopkeeper to lie to consumers
to get them to buy a product they would otherwise avoid, it is at least unethical for
someone else to tell consumers the same lie. It is not productive to hypothesize about who
the courts might find guilty in different situations.
Griffiths (2012) argued that virtually all sales of Fairtrade coffee imply the criminal
offence of Unfair Trading, or its ethical equivalent, as the average consumer would not buy
the product if this information was not withheld from them. Sales would only be lawful, in
most cases, if the product were labelled
‘This product costs x pence more than the equivalent non-Fairtrade
product. Of this, y pence (z %) goes into social projects, but we have no
evidence that these produce benefits to the farmers. We have no
reason to believe that any extra money is paid to farmers, though they
certainly incur extra costs to get Fairtrade certification. Non-Fairtrade
farmers are harmed. We spend much of the money trying to create a
non-capitalist political and economic system, which is set out on
www.politicalagenda.com.’
Providing false information to the consumer, as firms, organizations and individuals
do, is also Unfair Trading or its ethical equivalent (xxx, 2014; Griffiths P. , 2012). Some of the
false statements identified are that that the key guarantee behind the FAIRTRADE Mark is
 ‘A fair and stable price to farmers for their products’ (Fairtrade Foundation,
2005),
 that ‘Fairtrade means farmers get a fair price for what they grow. The
Fairtrade price is often much more than they would normally get, and it
covers the cost of growing the crop, plus enough to live on. The Fairtrade
2
price is paid to farmers by whoever buys their crops.’ (Fairtrade Foundation,
2012?)
 that ‘The international Fairtrade system monitors and audits the product
supply chains to make sure the producers are genuinely getting the money’
(Fairtrade Foundation, 2006, p. 1),
 that impact studies show that Fairtrade has a positive impact on the Third
World,
 that it would be unlawful for the Fairtrade Foundation to disclose how much
more consumers paid when they bought Fairtrade.
Critics also produce evidence of ‘blackmail’, fraud and other breaches of consumer
and trade protection legislation. (xxx, 2014; de Janvry, McIntosh, & Sadoulet, 2010;
Raynolds, 2009; Valkila, Haaparanta, & Niemi, 2010; Valkila J. , 2009; 2012).
The implication is that $1-2 billion a year that good and generous people think is
going to third world farmers is, instead, being pocketed by firms and organizations in rich
countries, and that this inevitably causes death and destitution in the Third World (xxx,
2014; Griffiths P. , 2012). This can only happen because there is nearly universal toleration
of criminality and its ethical equivalent, notably the suppression of information and the
provision of false information. This paper asks how this can be, when it seems probable that
most of the people marketing Fairtrade coffee are honest and want to help Fairtrade
farmers and that nearly all of the employees of the Fairtrade Foundation UK and the
volunteers who promote Fairtrade products are passionately committed to this.
What is Fairtrade?
Fairtrade is a brand which operates worldwide, offering consumers the assurance
that any product bearing the Fairtrade logo has been produced and marketed according to
standards laid down by Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International. This is a certification
brand, creating a credence good, in much the same way as ‘organic’ or ‘kosher’ are. The
main money aspects of the standards are that the importers must pay a price to the
exporter which is at least the minimum price laid down by Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International , and which is in any case higher than the world market price by a fixed
amount, the ‘Fairtrade premium’. Marketing firms in the producing country pay certification
and inspection fees for the right to market their product as Fairtrade and the packers in
Britain pay a licensing fee of 3% for the use of the brand. There are a large number of other
political objectives implied by the standards. Distributors, supermarkets and cafés can
charge what they like for products bearing this certification brand.
It was evident when Fairtrade started 25 years ago that if it was to have any
noticeable impact, it would have to reach the mass market – the high operating costs would
swallow up the margin otherwise. It has been far more successful than its Fair Trade (two
words) competitors in developing this mass market, thanks to a brilliant marketing
campaign. The first essential step to achieve this market share was for the Fairtrade
Foundation to make it very profitable for firms to handle products bearing the Fairtrade
3
brand. They were permitted to charge whatever they liked for Fairtrade branded products.
The second step was to provide marketing support so that customers asked for Fairtrade.
The marketing system and strategy for Fairtrade cannot be analyzed in terms of
elementary economics or marketing, where we have a clearly defined product and perfect
knowledge and where profit maximization is the goal. Nor can we assume that advertising
and marketing is done in the way described in the textbooks. And we cannot assume that
motivations and ethical issues are the same as when marketing ‘Coca Cola’, ‘Kosher’, or
‘organic’.
INFORMATION AND NARRATIVES
With any charity there is likely to be a discrepancy between what the charity is trying
to do and what its marketing claims that it does. Andresen (2006, pp. 141, 142), for
example, describes working for a large relief and development agency. The development
professionals thought that the marketing, which emphasized emergency aid in disasters,
was totally misleading, even harmful, as it did not mention their carefully worked out and
implemented programs for achieving real change in the medium to long term. The
marketing professionals said that the public would not understand or appreciate these
complex programs; indeed they would be put off by being given too much information to
digest. The marketing professionals wanted an advertising campaign concentrating on the
agency’s emergency feeding programs, using a picture of a girl holding an empty food bowl
– and indeed this raised far more money, keeping them all employed. In this simple case we
have several different, conflicting narratives or stories. There are the narratives that the
development professionals and marketing professionals tell themselves. There are the
narratives they tell each other. There are the narratives they tell senior management,
separately and jointly. There are the advertising narratives of the organization. Finally there
are the changed narratives of the consumers (a public discourse). Some of the motivations
for the narratives include ‘lying for the greater good’, and ‘protecting my job’. There are
obvious and less obvious ethical issues.
It will be shown below that the Fairtrade industry is much more complex than a
single relief and development agency asking for donations, with a much wider range of
people and organizations developing narratives to tell themselves, narratives to tell each
other and narratives to tell consumers. The narratives dominate the market. It will be asked
who controls the discourse encompassing these narratives: as Van Dijk (2003, p. 357) says.
‘virtually all levels and structures of context, text, and talk can in principle be more or less
controlled by powerful speakers, and such power may be abused at the expense of other
participants’.2 ‘Discourse is believed to be essential in establishing power relationships and
can only be fully understood by paying attention to the historical context and the social and
2
Throughout this paper I cite the classics rather than very recent papers which are footnotes to single
issues raised in the classic.
4
political setting’ (Charteris-Black, 2014, p. 123)p123 discussing (Wodak, 2011) and (Wodak &
Meyer, 2009)
The ‘marketing of Fairtrade’ is the sum total of all the narratives from Fairtrade
Labelling Organizations International, the Fairtrade Foundation, and the firms selling
Fairtrade, including the advertising on their websites. It also includes their very effective
public relations campaign. In fact the narratives that individual charity workers, volunteers,
politicians, civil servants and teachers develop for themselves from how they understand
and process the narratives from Fairtrade’s own narratives to form a general public
discourse is a key part of the ‘marketing of Fairtrade’, and is an input into the narratives that
the consumers develop for themselves.
What is the product?
Customers know that Fairtrade coffee is normally more expensive than other,
identical, coffee without the Fairtrade brand, so they would not buy it if the brand did not
give them extra value. The marketing does not sell the utility (satisfaction) that comes from
drinking a good cup of coffee; it sells the utility that consumers get from their belief that the
extra price they pay goes to helping poor farmers in the Third World. The marketing
convinces good people wanting to help the poor that they are acting according to their
personal values when they buy the Fairtrade branded coffee, when they drink the coffee
and when they know that they will buy it again and again. This is absolutely fundamental to
the existence of the Fairtrade industry, which means that if the marketing narrative is false
or misleading or withholds relevant information, it is cheating both the consumers and the
farmers.
THE FAIRTRADE MARKETING NARRATIVE
The most visible part of the Fairtrade marketing narrative is the one from the
Fairtrade Foundation to the volunteers, to the decision makers and influencers and to the
general public. There is also a narrative from manufacturers and retailers which so closely
follows the narrative of the Fairtrade Foundation that it may be treated as identical. There is
another, far less visible, narrative from Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International and
its employees to firms marketing Fairtrade in the UK and to those people in the UK
sufficiently interested to access its website.
The marketing narrative affects the perception of volunteers, influencers and
decision makers, and so helps create their Fairtrade narrative. These narratives come
together with other narratives to produce a social discourse.
Two ways in which consumers process what they are told have been identified:
System 1, the experiential system, and System 2, the analytic system (Epstein, 1994; Slovic,
2007). System 1 it is affective, pleasure-pain oriented; it has connections by association; the
5
consumers’ behavior is mediated by past experiences; it works through images, metaphors
and little stories; the message can be processed rapidly and it calls for immediate action and
it is self-evidently valid. System 2, the analytic system is reason based; it analyses with logic
and evidence; action is based on conscious appraisal of events; reality is described in
abstract words and numbers; the message takes longer to process and there will not be
immediate action. Someone using System 1 when investing may end up in a ponzi scheme,
and someone using System 2 when a lion walks through the door may end up as lunch.
It is shown here that the Fairtrade marketing narrative works almost entirely
through System 1, through emotion rather than logic and evidence. This has enormous
effects on the Fairtrade narrative developed by others, and by the social discourse on
Fairtrade.
The strategy of rhetoric is as relevant to a marketing narrative, or campaign, as it is
to a single speech or advertisement. The proofs of rhetoric are ethos, logos and pathos.
Ethos is establishing the ethical credibility of the speaker, logos is providing the logic and
information and pathos is developing the emotion that will eventually get the customer to
buy.
Ethos
We are exposed to many marketing narratives, and we would like to know
something about the narrator before acting on any advertisements. We would like to know
that that the narrator, is honest, shares our values, and is acting according to our values. We
would like to know that they have practical wisdom, that in the case of Fairtrade, it
understands the problem of poor farmers in the Third World, that it has a viable solution
which is cost efficient, and that they have evidence that it works. We would like to know
that they run an honest charity, that they monitor and control all aspects, not just the cash.
The ethos is establishing these beliefs in the mind of the consumer, even though it is clearly
not possible to transmit this information in an advertisement or series of advertisements.
Fairness
The ethos of the Fairtrade campaign starts with the brand name. It states that the
organization shares the same values as we do – we all believe passionately in fairness, even
though we may disagree strongly about what is fair. ‘Fair’ is a thin concept (Walzer, 1994,
2001). For instance, the Fair Trade laws and Fair Price laws in the United States from 1931 to
1975 were passed to encourage resale price maintenance with the objective of protect
small traders and their employees from retail chains selling at lower prices: resale price
maintenance is now widely considered to be unfair to consumers and is unlawful in the USA
and EU. The use of the name also smears the ethics of others: it implies that other coffee,
6
with a different brand name, is not traded fairly.3 There have also been repeated complaints
by the Fair Trade (two words) organizations that this brand name is deceptive, first
appropriating the goodwill that they had created, then suggesting that Fairtrade is the only
brand which is really trading fairly.
Shared values
Demonstrating that the seller shares the consumers’ values is important in
increasing the credibility of the marketing narrative. With Fairtrade, it means much more
than this: the product is that the consumers believe that they are acting in accordance with
their own values.
The Fairtrade narrative shows that it shares consumers’ values by the classical
rhetorical method of listing values where there is agreement, with the intention that the
consumers will then believe that they share values on the new subject. They list a lot of
things that they approve of such as fairness, protecting the environment, democracy,
organic farming (though without saying whether this is to protect the environment or the
consumer), Trade Justice, higher prices for farmers, health, stopping child labour, women’s
movements, health, trade unions, education, unexploitative trading relations, etc. and they
mention them at every opportunity. A large proportion of the population agrees that at
least some of these issues are important, so a belief in shared values is created. Some values
of some of the founders of Fairtrade are not mentioned or are only mentioned to select
audiences, the importance of Trade Unions and the belief that Fairtrade is a system that will
overthrow capitalism, for instance.
The impression is also created that these issues are an important part of the
Fairtrade programme. They are not, in fact, part of the core business of Fairtrade. It may be
argued, for instance, that the very existence of Fairtrade detracts from the efforts of Trade
Justice to reform the world trading system from the WTO down, and this is certainly nothing
to do with Fairtrade’s certification business. There are so many of these values claimed that
the proportion of funds that can be spent on any one of them is small: 1% of the premium
spent on environment, 4% spent on education 2% on women’s programmes and 3% on
3
As with its current campaign for bananas:
‘Abolish unfair bananas.
We’re asking the country to stop unsustainable pricing by buying only
Fairtrade bananas this Fairtrade Fortnight (24 February to 9 March
2014).’ (Fairtrade Foundation, 2013)
7
health (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, 2010)4 suggesting that perhaps one
fiftieth of one percent of the retail price is spent on environment for instance.
Imagining shared values
In normal marketing it is recognized that the product has to be advertised to appeal
to people with very different tastes and values to those of the people in the marketing
department. However, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International and the Fairtrade
Foundation are charities marketing values. It is tempting for the committed employees of a
charity to market the product by showing how it resonates with their own values – which is
unlikely to be successful as they are anything but typical members of the public. Nor is it
realistic to attempt to change the personal value sets of millions of people to conform to
those of the employees. It is not realistic either, to accept these limitations and identify a
large number of market segments, each with homogeneous value systems and homogeneity
in other marketing variables such as income and lifestyle, and have a different marketing
approach for each of these.
The Fairtrade Foundation has recognized this and instead its narrative presents the
brand in a way that encourages individual consumers, who may have very different value
systems, to imagine that the Fairtrade system is compatible with their own particular values
and that there is a significant overlap between their own value priorities and the ones that
Fairtrade supports. As the last section shows, it does, indeed, set out a wide range of values
that many people will share, but which may have nothing to do with what Fairtrade does. It
does not, however, show exactly what is achieved by each part of the Fairtrade program and
how this contributes to any set of values. This is left to the imagination of the audience. The
information that is given to the consumers to exercise their imagination on is so limited that
imagination becomes fantasizing. While it is quite possible to imagine how a farm or village
works if you are given a lot of information, imagination becomes pure fantasy as the
information decreases. Since consumers have to imagine or fantasize what the Fairtrade
system is, how it works, and how its impacts their value systems, there are potentially
millions of different perceptions about what Fairtrade is, what its values are, what it tries to
do and what it achieves. Each perception is the narrative someone tells themselves. There
are also the narratives that they tell other people, narratives which are important because
most coffee is bought by one person for consumption by another, perhaps the homemaker
buying for the family, perhaps a procurement officer buying for the University.
Clearly this approach of encouraging imagination and fantasy can only work if very
little hard information, evidence, is given on what Fairtrade is and does. The more
information, the harder it is to fantasize. The more information that is given, the greater the
number of people who will decide that other charities meet their values better.
4
These figures should be treated with the strongest reservations, as they are presented without any
of the normal statistical or other explanations in a public relations document.
8
This very limited information is ethos, building up the credibility, the perceived
ethical position of the seller. It is not logos, logic and evidence, that would convince a court
of law or a researcher. It has been recognized since Aristotle that logos, that is logic and
evidence, is much less effective than ethos or pathos for this sort of rhetorical persuasion,
getting common people to act on their emotions. Here we have the situation where there is
a very powerful ethos and pathos from the persuader, with all the logos being replaced by
the fantasies of the people persuaded.
Sell. Don’t Preach
The Fairtrade Foundation has recognized that the function of marketing is to sell, not
to preach:
‘HOW TO USE THE FAIRTRADE TONE OF VOICE
… Our strong opinions are lightly held; we never lecture people about
Fairtrade, we talk to them about it instead in a friendly and approachable
manner. Because no one likes being nagged, shouted at or made to feel guilty,
do they? We’re storytellers not preachers.’
(Fairtrade Foundation, 2012)
This may be read as saying that the marketing narrative deliberately avoids setting
out exactly what its values are, in case the hearers have different values. Telling stories
invites people to fantasize.
Ethos and truthfulness
The ethos of Fairtrade is concentrated on shared ethical values. This is very different
from the ethos of a scholarly narrative, where one is trying to establish that one can be
relied on to give accurate information and correct logic, but where differences in values may
be irrelevant.
Logos
Logos is the presentation of evidence and analysis. It is not surprising that there is
none of this in a single advertisement, but it is remarkable when there is none in an
industry-wide marketing narrative. The Fairtrade Foundation and do not present the
evidence needed to assess their claims, such as
 How much extra do customers pay when they buy Fairtrade?
 How much of this reaches the exporters?
 How much of what reaches the exporters goes on expenses incurred because
of Fairtrade membership (including marketing through the traders specified
in the standards)?
 What impact does it have on the profits of the cooperative traders?
 How much is left to be spent on social projects?
9






What is it spent on?
What is the impact?
How much extra reaches the farmer?
What extra costs do the farmers incur in producing Fairtrade?
What exactly do Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International and the
national Fairtrade organizations spend their substantial revenues on?
What is the impact on non-Fairtrade farmers?
It is not just that the Fairtrade Foundation and do not present the information in
their marketing narrative, they do not make it available at all, not even on their websites,
though much of the information should be routinely available. Information that is claimed to
be available is not provided in spite of repeated requests (Griffiths P. , 2012). That means
that the marketing narrative concentrates entirely on ethos and pathos, the emotion that
drives purchase, followed by the instruction, ‘Buy Fairtrade now’.
When the only objective is increased sales, this can be justified. First, statistics and
accounts put off customers: most people just stop reading when they see them. Second,
using statistics or giving hard information moves customers from the System 1 mode, in
which they think emotionally and are easy to persuade, and they act quickly, into the
System 2 analytical mode, the ‘information processing’ mode, in which they question the
information they get and the conclusions to be drawn from it, and in which they are much
harder to persuade to buy (Epstein, 1994; Slovic, 2007). Third, statistics on the number of
people in need reduce the effectiveness of the message. People identify easily with a
photograph of a single person, particularly a person who is obviously a member of a family
or small group. They find it difficult to identify with a large number of people who are in
need. Normally, the larger the number of people in need, the smaller the amount of money
per head donated to help them, and sometimes the smaller the total amount donated. (See
Slovic (2007) for a review of the evidence.)
The fact that the evidence and logic is not available forces the audience into System
1 mode, making decisions on emotion and affect: using System 2 is just not possible. That is
to say people must fantasize what Fairtrade is and what it does. They have to fantasize
virtually everything: the number of people in the rich countries having any knowledge of the
agricultural economy of an African village, of the governance of first, second and third tier
producer cooperatives, or of the marketing chain for coffee is vanishingly small, so we
cannot even talk of imagining or making a best guess. It is part of sales training that at some
stage one keeps quiet and lets the customer argue himself into buying the product, and it is
part of classical rhetoric dating back to Aristotle to ‘to use incomplete syllogisms by leaving
part of the argument unstated, as this could draw the audiences into making an inference in
the conclusion,’ (Charteris-Black, 2014, p. 11) and that they are more likely to believe
inferences they work out themselves (Leith, 2011, p. 57) quoting Aristotle’s Rhetoric (p. VIII
2 23).
10
This strategy is unethical if consumers would not have bought Fairtrade products if
they had known the evidence, if for instance they had been told that little or none of the
extra money paid for Fairtrade benefited the intended beneficiaries, Third World farmers.
Pathos
Pathos is the arousing of the emotions in order change the ‘affect, the positive and
negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgments, decisions,
and actions.’ (Slovic, 2007, p. 82) In the Fairtrade marketing narrative this is not done in the
same way as in a political speech or sermon.
The first step, the sharing of values, gets consumers to tap into their own values and
deeply held beliefs. The message that Fairtrade is fair and shares values conveys confidence,
by ethos, but also affects emotions, that these are nice, well-meaning people.
The advertising campaign emphasises that nice people benefit. The pictures are of
smiling people, beautiful people, clean, well dressed people working on their farms ‘beautiful reportage’5 (though these are not the adjectives that spring to mind when one sees
5
The Fairtrade Foundation Marketing Manual for people selling to consumers
advises:
‘How to use the Fairtrade photography
We have evolved our visual focus to ensure we are representing producers in
an empowering way. Therefore we have updated our photography guidelines
below.
To help consumers connect with producers, we want to show them what daily
life in developing countries is really like. We want them to see the hard work
involved in providing the various products to help explain why producers
deserve a fair price for them. We also want consumers to see that whilst
producers work hard, they are also people who have a life outside work that’s
not all doom and gloom. To help show this, local life/culture should also be
included where possible.
We want Fairtrade producer imagery to feel authentic and not staged for the
camera. We also believe that our imagery should be rich and celebratory of its
content. We are calling this style ‘beautiful reportage’. Great shots of people
11
someone working hard in the fields anywhere in the world.) They are presented as
belonging to families and social groups. The deserving poor, who we would be happy to
help.
The message avoids the pictures of starving babies, the nitty gritty of third world
poverty. This message is presented in the newspapers and in the publicity of charities. The
emphasis is not on what is needed, but on what is achieved.
Invitation to fantasize
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International and The Fairtrade Foundation give
virtually no hard information but rather invite customers to fantasize. Typical
advertisements have a happy black face with a jungle farm in the background. This is not
giving logos, but pathos, establishing the emotional reason for action.
There is then a strap line which gives no information or logic at all: it is pure pathos,
an emotional appeal for action.
‘Paying a fair price is important to me. We all need to be able to look
after our families’
‘When you choose coffee and fruit and clothes with Fairtrade, you
know farmers like me, Moussa from Mali, can support my family and
strengthen my community and protect our world.’
‘Choose Fairtrade to give the grower a fair price for a fair life.’
‘Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local
sustainability and fair terms for farmers in the developing world.’
It is of course common marketing practice to invite prospective customers to
fantasize how sexually attractive they will become if they wear a certain brand of
aftershave, or how socially acceptable they will become if they are seen to drink the right
whisky. And some people do fantasize and buy. But even the people who buy the aftershave
or the whisky realize that they are being told to buy by someone who is making money out
of it, someone who cannot really be trusted. With Fairtrade the position is different. Both
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International and the Fairtrade Foundation are charities,
and there is no reason to believe that their employees are making big money out of
marketing the brand. Both of them are established as certifying organizations, certifying
that Fairtrade coffee has been produced and marketed in the way laid down in the
‘doing’, enabling consumers to appreciate the processes involved in growing
and farming. Portraits should feel natural and dignified. They should try and
capture those spontaneous moments of happiness, laughter, quiet reflection
etc. and avoid feeling too cheesy.’
(Fairtrade Foundation, 2012)
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standards. The consumers know this, even if they do not know the standards, so they may
reasonably have far more confidence in Fairtrade advertisements than in aftershave
advertisements. The organizations are placed in a position of trust, and this puts extra
ethical responsibilities on them. This is reflected in the law as it applies elsewhere.6
6
‘The promotion of any unfair commercial practice by a code owner in a code of
conduct is prohibited’ (Great Britain, 2008a, p. Section 4).
The law states that the code owner is guilty of an offence if it promotes any unfair
commercial practice in a code of conduct. (Great Britain, 2008a). The offence of ‘knowingly
or recklessly engaging in a commercial practice which contravenes the requirements of
professional diligence’ (Great Britain, 2008a) implies an ethical obligation to prevent others
from ‘Unfair Trading’. The law specifies a lot of offences called ‘Abuse of position’ (Great
Britain, 2013; Great Britain, 2006). Under the Fraud Act, for example, someone who
‘occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial
interests of another person,’ has special obligations6 (Great Britain, 2006). Similarly, an
offence may be committed where the organization exploits ‘a position of power in relation
to the consumer so as to apply pressure, even without using or threatening to use physical
force, in a way which significantly limits the consumer’s ability to make an informed
decision.’ (Great Britain, 2008a; Great Britain, 2013). Possession or manufacture of articles,
including electronic data and programmes for use in fraud is an offence.6 This implies that
possession of advertising material or publicity, including web sites, that may be used by
others for fraud, is both illegal and unethical. This puts clear obligations on the code owner,
volunteers, schools, etc.
‘4.Fraud by abuse of position
(1)A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of
another person,
(b)dishonestly abuses that position, and
(c)intends, by means of the abuse of that position—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2)A person may be regarded as having abused his position even though his conduct consisted of an omission
rather than an act.
13
The Fairtrade Marketing Manual says
‘Champion producers
We are always looking to bring together the two people that really
matter; the producer and the consumer. So let’s talk about producers
and make them integral to our work; let them know about Irene’s tea
farm, tell people about Makandianfing’s cotton co-operative, let people
know that Regina has a family to support. Everyone should be
portrayed as the three-dimensional characters that they are, with
hopes, ambitions, opinions and worries just like us. We look for
similarities as much as we celebrate difference.
Arm people with information
At our best, we humans are a curious, interested bunch. We always
want to know more. Wherever possible we should arm people with
interesting little nuggets of information about developing world
countries. Sense of place and origin is massively important in helping
the consumer connect with the realities of developing world farming.
And give them facts too. Salient points that they can chat about with
friends and family.’ (Fairtrade Foundation, 2012)
This shows the use of items of fact, not integrated into information or logos, to catch
the attention of the consumers, and to get them fantasizing. Providing information about
individuals is pathos. So is using sense of place and origin. ‘Nuggets of information’ are
anything but hard fact and logic. Concentrating on the farmer and the consumer means
ignoring the whole marketing and distribution chain, which is where most of the costs arise
– and where high profits are made from marketing Fairtrade. This Marketing Manual makes
no mention of the hard fact and logic that would be needed to justify Fairtrade.
Marketing by anecdote
Fairtrade advertises with anecdotes about individuals. The personality is the
anecdote, with vagueness about what is going on and how Fairtrade helps the individual, if
it does:
‘As well as receiving a higher income, the money enables us to find
projects such as computer courses for young people and adults.’
Reginald Vincentem, Coagrosol Co-operative, Brazil. [Note that the
Fraud Act 2006
Note that it also appears in the latest amendments to the Prevention of Unfair Trading Practices Regulations,
(Great Britain, 2013)
14
grammatical error in the translation, the hanging participle, enables
readers to imagine that the farmers rather than the importers get the
higher income.]
‘With Fairtrade small farmers have been transformed from marginalized
farmers into businessmen.’ Amos Wiltshire, Windward Islands Farmers’
Association (WINFA), Dominica. [What can this conceivably mean in the
context? The farmers have given up their small businessperson’s
marketing power to a monopsonistic cooperative buyer.]
The use of anecdotes rather than hard information is because people relate strongly
to stories about other people. These examples use the method specified in the Fairtrade
Marketing Materials Manual:
‘Body copy
The main copy should illustrate how buying a Fairtrade product in the
UK has the power to change the lives of millions of producers, their
families and communities. Research shows that consumers respond
positively to the impact Fairtrade has on communities
Focus and ‘hero’ on one Fairtrade producer where you can and, where
relevant, reference communities in the text. The body copy should also
tell readers what action they can take and how it will make a
difference.’ (Fairtrade Foundation, 2013)
Normal marketing makes some use of this. Charities and non-profits benefit
particularly from anecdotes, showing how one person suffers, from a disability maybe, and
how the charity has helped that person. It helps if that person can be presented as part of a
feel-good community, a family or a village. People find it more difficult to identify with a
large number of people made homeless by a typhoon (Slovic, 2007).
The use of anecdote in Fairtrade marketing is very different from that used in
automobile marketing for instance. Automobile customers do use the anecdotes, the
pictures of family people taking the children to school, of dashing young people driving fast,
of adventurous people driving in desert and jungle, to decide whether the auto is designed
for people like them, or whether it projects the image they want to project. However, there
is a lot of information available, so consumers will also base their decisions on independent
tests, on their friends’ recommendations, on the technical specifications, on their previous
experience of this brand and, of course, on what it feels like to drive. The anecdotes are only
a small part of the marketing information, so consumers imagine rather than fantasize.
The gaps in the information that Fairtrade provides mean that the consumer cannot
even pretend to make such an informed decision. The customers have to fantasize to fill the
15
gaps and make a coherent narrative that makes any sense to them. That is to say, providing
too little information can produce a more powerful narrative because it has been created by
the consumer.
Marketing by inspection visits
Inspection visits are a way of giving opinion makers the impression that they have
hard evidence, when they have only been given pathos. My Member of Parliament was
taken on a quick inspection visit to Fairtrade cooperatives, and came back firmly convinced
that Fairtrade was achieving all that was claimed. Other people, including other politicians,
Fairtrade staff, research students and volunteers make similar visits and reach similar
conclusions. Such short visits are, again, minimizing the information available and so inviting
people to fantasize. I have a lifetime’s experience of investigating agricultural marketing,
from farmers in Africa and Asia to supermarkets in Britain and Ireland. I have been
employed by the major aid agencies because I had spent a long time developing the
analytical skills needed, and acquiring the knowledge and experience of what problems are
likely to arise. I have also examined aid projects and seen the stratagems used to hide their
weaknesses from monitoring and evaluation professionals, and, since they are usually
successful in this, it would be surprising if they were not successful in deceiving amateurs on
short visits. This experience means that I usually spot some of the commonest problems and
corruptions in the first day or two, and most in the first couple of weeks, but I certainly
would never say that even after working with a four-person, multidisciplinary team for a
month, I was firmly convinced that everything was in order – the most that I, or my
colleagues, would say was that we had not spotted any serious problems yet.
Using Volunteers to Market the brand
The Fairtrade Foundation uses volunteers as a key part of its marketing. There is a
well-organized system for recruiting, inspiring, training and directing the volunteers. The
first benefit of the volunteer system is increased credibility. People mistrust a message from
people who are making money from a product, including the employees of companies or
charities. They are more likely to trust a friend who appears to have done her homework on
the facts. The second benefit is that the volunteers can tailor their message to the
individuals or the small groups they are addressing, so market segmentation on a fine scale
is possible. And an important benefit is that the volunteers are not paid and often collect
money for The Fairtrade Foundation as well as spreading the message. Private firms
sometimes take advantage of this: Davies and Crane (2003) reported that a private
commercial firm selling fair trade was quite happy to make use of volunteers who thought
that they were helping poor farmers, when they were in fact increasing the firm’s profits. A
fourth benefit is that a small group of volunteers can have a big effect: for example, two
dozen students form a group to make their university into a Fairtrade University; they
16
launch a campaign and put a motion to the Students’ Union; nobody is violently opposed,
and most people are neutral but broadly sympathetic to the Third World, so it goes through
on the nod. Fairtrade suppliers then become monopoly suppliers.
Another benefit is that what the volunteers say is not subject to the ‘Unfair Trading’
legislation, as they are not sellers. Neither they nor the sellers will be prosecuted however
false their story. They get the normal Fairtrade Foundation marketing pitch, plus training,
with gaps in the story. Individuals fantasize from this what Fairtrade does or achieves. They
then talk to each other and build up a group narrative. Inevitably, individuals build up a
fantasy based on their own ideals and values, noticing and giving prominence to anything
that supports these. Individuals tend to be friends with people who have similar ideals and
values, so their particular fantasy is likely to chime with those of their friends’ ideals and
values, and to be very powerful indeed. There is a feedback loop which means that
perceptions may get less and less accurate with each iteration. Such feedback loops are
important in cults and extremist political organizations.
This means that the volunteer narrative, however untrue, may be created by good
people who think they are being virtuous, and that none of their statements are
prosecutable. Is it ethical, though for them not to ensure that their narrative is true?
Foregrounding, Backgrounding, Predication and Nomination
The Fairtrade marketing narrative uses foregrounding (Charteris-Black, 2014) p101,
notably by concentrating on farmers and consumers. One strategy used is to define
‘producer’ in four different senses, sometimes the farmer, sometimes the primary
marketing firm, sometimes the secondary marketing firm, sometimes the exporter, and
occasionally the farmer (Griffiths P. , 2013; xxx, 2014). This means that when the narrative
talks of payment made to producers, consumers understand it as payment made to farmers,
which it most certainly is not.
This narrative also backgrounds some social agencies. In particular it backgrounds
most of the marketing system, from the farm to the supermarket and café, and particularly
from the exporter to supermarket or café. Since the supermarket price for ordinary coffee is
currently 4.6 times the international price7, and perhaps 10 to 30 times the farm gate price,
it must be taken that most of the value added and potential for improvement lies here. In
one of the marketing narratives the fact that the coffee is marketed through producer
cooperatives is foregrounded, but the fact that these are normal, capitalist, market traders
performing the same functions as their competitors is backgrounded.
7 ICO composite price for milds based on the spot prices of various growths of coffee traded daily in the New York, German
and French physicals markets compared with prices in UK supermarkets, December 2013.
17
Predication
In this narrative, there is also predication, the ‘Labelling of social actors, objects,
events, processes and actions as having more or less negative or positive traits’ (CharterisBlack, 2014, p. 151). The normal small traders are labeled as dishonest, greedy people who
act ‘unfairly’. They are frequently labeled ‘coyotes’, both in the marketing narrative and in
the academic literature.8 The experience of agricultural marketing is that small,
independent, traders survive because they are flexible and efficient, offering a service that
the monolithic trading firms cannot, and indeed offering a service that the Fairtrade
cooperatives cannot or do not. Certainly there are examples of dishonest firms and of
honest firms trying to control dishonest graders, scale men, and salespeople, but this is true
throughout the sector. Similarly there is frequent criticism in the narrative of an exploitative
marketing system involving multinationals and big business, though Fairtrade coffee is
marketed through the identical system.
There is also predication in handling critics. Smithers (2013), reporting an interview
with the Fairtrade Foundation, discounted critics9, saying ‘But the movement is not without
its critics. Some on the left argue that Fairtrade has sold out to the major brands, while
those on the right, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, say Fairtrade is just another
brand with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and is not in a position to help all
farmers’. This excludes most of the critics, who are not left-wing or right-wing extremists,
and who have serious and fully-formed criticisms (backgrounding). The suggestion that
when examining a matter of fact, evidence and logic, it is reasonable to ignore the views of
people with different political views to the readers of The Guardian is alarming. This political
smear presumably includes me, as I have published twice in Economic Affairs - critical
comments on methodological problems in papers published there.
It has also been claimed in some of the blogs and websites, in narratives that spin off
from the primary marketing narrative, that my criticisms may be ignored, because I am a
particularly nasty, racist, ex-Conservative MP with the same name, though he is dead.
Nomination
Nomination, the ‘Construction of social actors as in-groups or out-groups and of
objects, events, processes and actions’ (Charteris-Black, 2014)p151 is another classical
rhetorical technique. Some of the in-groups are the Fairtrade farmers (as opposed to the
8
E.g (Lyon, 2009, p. 230) (Garza & Cervantes, 2002, p. 15), (Cabañas, 2002, pp. 3,19,22,24,29),
(Aranda & Morales, 2002, p. 15), (Boersma, 2002, pp. 6,8,20), (Lyon, 2002, pp. 4,21,23,31), (Escalante, 2001),
(Mendez, 2002, p. 20), (Taylor, 2002, p. 2), (Hatlebakk 2000), (Milford, 2004, pp. 49,52,55,58), (Ruben, Fort, &
Zuniga-Arias, 2009), (Murray, Raynolds, & Taylor, 2003, p. 7), (Johannesen, 2008, pp. 108,110,115), (Tedeschi
& Carlson, 2013)
9 ‘But the movement is not without its critics. Some on the left argue that Fairtrade has sold out to the major brands, while
those on the right, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, say Fairtrade is just another brand with an exaggerated sense
of self-importance, and is not in a position to help all farmers’ (Smithers, 2013)
18
vast majority of farmers doing their best to survive), Fairtrade schools, Fairtrade Universities
and Fairtrade towns. Within the in-group it may be unacceptable to present dissenting
opinions: my wife reports the collective gasp of horror when she announced in the senior
common room of a Fairtrade university that we refused to buy Fairtrade.
Of course each establishment of an in-group creates an out-group.
CONTROLLING THE PUBLIC DISCOURSE
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International and The Fairtrade Foundation are
controlling the general public discourse on what Fairtrade is and what it does by a mix of
what they say (marketing, public relations, pressure group activities, training) and what they
do not say (for instance, how much extra consumers pay, how much of this reaches the
Third World and how much goes to farmers as an extra price). What they say, true and false,
in their different narratives is important in shaping the perceptions of different audiences,
notably consumers. What they do not say is more important: the gaps in what they say are
an integral part in their narratives and become integral to public discourse. They are also
able to alter the public discourse by selectively correcting or not correcting the false
perceptions that emerge from people fantasizing. Their response to criticisms is another
way of manipulation, either responding or keeping quiet and hoping the criticisms go away.
Marketing to Schoolchildren
It is always ‘Unfair Trading’, an ‘aggressive commercial practice’, to include
‘in an advertisement a direct exhortation to children to buy advertised
products or persuade their parents or other adults to buy advertised
products for them’ (Great Britain, 2008; European Commission, 2005)
The ethical position is clear, and the ethical prohibition might be expected to cover schools,
schoolteachers, people providing teaching material, and volunteers, who may not be
covered in the strict wording of the legislation. The Fairtrade Foundation boasts of its
success in getting school children to buy Fairtrade products and to put pressure on adults to
buy Fairtrade (and also of its success in persuading children that any bananas not bearing its
logo are ‘unfair’!) (Fairtrade Foundation, 2013)
The school narrative is powerful. There are 4000 Fairtrade schools in Britain working
in a highly organized volunteer system (Fairtrade Foundation, 2012?), or 1000 schools,
according to another document (Fairtrade Foundation, 2013). Teachers paid by the public
are pushing Fairtrade, a commercial brand, as part of the curriculum, in Geography,
Citizenship, Personal and Social Education, Religious Education etc. They put pressure on
primary and secondary children to ask their parents, and the wider public, to buy Fairtrade
19
and on supermarket chains to stock it. So there is an immediate impact, and there will be a
greater impact when the children become wage earners.
Of course moral education is a key part of any education system. At nursery level it
may be little more than stating moral or social norms: ‘It is wrong to steal’, ‘Do not talk with
your mouth full’ or ‘Look both ways before you cross the road’. At a later stage the reasons
for a range of ethical rules are taught, and teenagers should be able to discuss what is moral
behavior, and to think critically in an unfamiliar situation. There can be no objection to
teaching children a moral imperative, ‘You should help people more unfortunate than
yourself’, or to identify some of the groups who are more unfortunate for no fault of their
own, such as Third World farmers. Problems do arise, though, when teachers tell the
students the reasons why they think the Third World farmers are more unfortunate, and
what they should do about it. The two major disciplines working on this, Agricultural
Economics and Development Economics, see an enormously complex set of causal factors
and possible solutions, which do not overlap with the Fairtrade narrative.
CAFOD, a charity which is one of the founders and trustees of the Fairtrade
Foundation UK, has prepared a lot of school teaching material, detailed lesson plans, where
teachers tell primary and secondary pupils what they have imagined are the virtues of
Fairtrade (and since what the author of the lesson plans imagined does not tally with the
facts, it would be surprising if what the teachers imagined did). CAFOD has actually
produced a full lesson of guided fantasy, getting the children to develop their own personal
imagined Fairtrade system. (CAFOD, 2010; CAFOD, 2012?b; CAFOD, 2012?c).10 Oxfam,
another founder, has similar material (Oxfam Education, 2012?a; Oxfam Education, 2012?b;
Oxfam, 2012). There is also selective presentation of information, for example emphasizing
the high margin between farmer and consumer for normal coffee, without mentioning that
there is an even higher margin for Fairtrade coffee (Indeed, one campaign aimed at primary
children gets them to fantasize about what is the ‘fair’ breakdown of the marketing margin
for conventional bananas, then says
‘People often ask about the breakdown for a Fairtrade banana. This
game is about ‘conventional bananas – the way most bananas are
produced, and the issue of Fairtrade is best dealt with later on in a
workshop as the debate can get bogged down in the specifics of
Fairtrade.’ (CAFOD (adapted from Christian Aid and Banana Link), )
The CAFOD package for a morning assembly extolling Fairtrade in a primary school
ends with the prayer
Dear God,
We pray for those people around the world who grow and
produce the things we eat and buy.
We pray that they get a fair price for the things we buy from them.
We pray that we can help support these people by buying Fairtrade
10
Guided fantasy is used in hypnotism, and it must be asked how far this is using hypnotic techniques
to persuade vulnerable schoolchildren.
20
goods so that we can help create a better and more just world.
Amen
(CAFOD Just one World, 2010)See also (CAFOD, 2012?c)
Similarly, we have the churches pushing Fairtrade: Booth describes a Catholic priest
telling his flock that not buying Fairtrade was worse than theft (2009).
Teachers may well feel that what they teach about Fairtrade is correct, since it is
supported by printed material from Fairtrade and from well-known charities like Oxfam and
CAFOD. They also note that the government and education authorities support Fairtrade, so
they may be excused for teaching in this way.11 And of course it saves a lot of time if they
can use lesson plans that someone else has prepared.
However, Fairtrade has an ethical obligation to ensure that schools and teachers get
accurate information, and that the results of wild imagining are corrected. Oxfam and
CAFOD have a particular obligation to monitor the ethics of Fairtrade as founders and
trustees of the Fairtrade Foundation. And school authorities and curriculum designers have
an obligation to ensure that the factual content of lessons on Fairtrade is as correct as that
of lessons on science or geography.
Control of discourse
The public discourse on Fairtrade is developed from a lot of private narratives, the
narratives within the various Fairtrade organizations, and from the Fairtrade organizations
to volunteers, traders and consumers for instance. These people communicate their own
perceptions to other people, creating a discourse.
‘Suggested below are ways that power and dominance are involved in
mind control.
First, recipients tend to accept beliefs, knowledge, and opinions (unless
they are inconsistent with their personal beliefs and experiences)
through discourse from what they see as authoritative, trustworthy, or
credible sources, such as scholars, experts, professionals, or reliable
media (Nesler et al. 1993). Second, in some situations participants are
obliged to be recipients of discourse, e.g. in education and in many job
situations. Lessons, learning materials, job instructions, and other
discourse types in such cases may need to be attended to, interpreted,
and learned as intended by institutional or organizational authors
(Giroux 1981). Third, in many situations there are no public discourses
or media that may provide information from which alternative beliefs
may be derived (Downing 1984). Fourth, and closely related to the
11
There is a literature on epistemology and teachers, covering social epistemology,
responsible epistemology, testimonial epistemology, virtue epistemology, justice and
injustice: see for instance (Code, 2011), (Kotzee, Ed (ed), 2013), (Fricker, 2007).
21
previous points, recipients may not have the knowledge and beliefs
needed to challenge the discourses or information they are exposed to
(Wodak 1987).’ (Van Dijk, 2003)P357
Some of the narratives that go into the public discourse are set out below.
 What the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International standards lay down
the criteria for all certification, setting out what farmers, cooperatives and
other traders must do. They are aimed directly at the traders in producing
and consuming countries. These are legalistic documents and are not aimed
at farmers or consumers; indeed these people would probably find them
incomprehensible. Like any set of quality assurance standards these are
ideals, what should happen rather than what does happen. They have almost
no effect on the consumer discourse or the discourse of volunteers.
 What the people implementing Fairtrade for Fairtrade Labelling
Organizations International or The Fairtrade Foundation tell themselves is
happening.
 What they tell each other is happening. This is likely to include some of the
problems commonly observed, such as the failure of cooperatives through
incompetence and corruption, failure of cooperatives and importers to
adhere to the standards and weaknesses in the design of the system. In my
experience as an aid professional, this discourse can be hard hitting, using
confidential information to identify serious problems and ways of dealing
with them – very different to what outside researchers could produce.
However if the aid worker puts these conclusions and observations into a
report, one can expect, first, that a report that tells the whole truth will be so
shocking that it will be rejected together with its recommendations and,
second, that one will lose one’s job. (See (Griffiths P. , 2003) for an analysis of
such situations). Because of this the narrative that comes out of the discourse
often stays within the group.
 What these fieldworkers tell other people inside and outside Fairtrade
Labelling Organizations International. This will usually be a sanitized
narrative, omitting problems, blunders, disasters and their own failures. Both
reports to employers and any statements to outsiders are carefully crafted
according to the perceived views and prejudices of the recipient, and may be
designed to change their views and get action, or just to say whatever will
keep them happy.
 What the office workers and management of Fairtrade Labelling
Organizations International and Fairtrade Foundation UK tell themselves and
tell each other is, again, influenced by the information they are given, how
they fit it into their personal values and beliefs and how group discourse
22




comes together into narratives. There feedback loops before a narrative for
the group as a whole is developed.
What the certifying organizations (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International and Fairtrade Foundation UK) say. There is a range of narratives
coming out of each which give different emphases and which contradict each
other, and which are aimed at different audiences, such as supermarkets,
volunteers and consumers. It has been shown above that false statements,
misleading statements and withholding of key information are rife.
What volunteers tell themselves, what they tell each other and what they tell
other people. New volunteers get information from a lot of other volunteers
who they think know more than they do, they process the information and
give the next lot of new volunteers their perceptions. One can certainly
expect a group consensus to develop as individuals discuss their own views,
but there are many different sub-groups, such as university Fairtrade clubs,
town groups, workplace groups, etc, so different narratives are likely to arise.
And, of course, each group, each individual, will tailor the message according
to a single audience at a time. People who do not conform may be rejected
from the group: one volunteer informs me he was excluded from their
Facebook page site because he put a link to criticisms of Fairtrade on it. The
learning process is, of course, very similar to how one learns to play bridge,
or communities of practice (Wenger) – except that there is a lack of input
from the outer world which might introduce some logos.
What customers tell themselves and what they tell each other, and of course
what they feed back to Fairtrade Foundation UK and retailers, not least by
their buying behavior.
What researchers say.
The Supermarket Narrative
Fairtrade does not limit, control or monitor the mark-up for Fairtrade products. This
is particularly important for a supermarket’s own brand coffee in a market such as the UK
where the major supermarkets guarantee to match the price that ASDA (perceived to be the
lowest price chain) charges on all branded goods, so they have to make higher margins on
unbranded and own-branded goods to survive.
Laundering the seller’s image is important. A supermarket selling Fairtrade may
claim that this means that they are determined to pay fair prices, and by implication, to
charge fair prices, and to deal honestly with suppliers and customers, as well as being caring
and compassionate. They advertise to support this perception. Similarly, Nestle whose
image certainly needs laundering, has marketed two product lines as Fairtrade. This means
brand owners, cafés and supermarkets can buy ethos.
23
The supermarkets do not deviate noticeably from the Fairtrade narrative, essentially
repeating their message in the same words, with the same or slightly different pictures. The
Fairtrade Foundation requires that anyone using their brand follows strict guidelines on
advertising images, which have to be checked and cleared by the Fairtrade Foundation
(Fairtrade Foundation, 2013; Fairtrade Foundation, 2013; Fairtrade Foundation, 2012).
I wrote to the directors responsible for corporate ethics of seven major food retailing
chains in the UK, ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose, The Cooperative, Morrisons and Marks
and Spencer, enclosing ‘Ethical Objections to Fairtrade’ (Griffiths P. , 2012), and stating that
it provided evidence of major ethical failings and widespread criminality. These chains state
that they are proud of their traceability, and can normally trace sub-standard produce to the
producing farm within hours. All of them sell their own-brand Fairtrade coffee (implying that
they take full responsibility for it) and all but one sell other brands as well. I got no reply
from ASDA, Waitrose, Tesco, and the Coop. Morrisons wrote to say that they had passed the
paper to Fairtrade, but did not respond when I asked some months later what reply they
had received. Marks and Spencer asked me to contact their Ethical Trading Manager
(Foods), who replied some months later after prompting, suggesting that I complain to
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International. Sainsbury’s Chief Executive replied,
‘We are well aware of the challenges of ensuring that the benefit
consumers seek through supporting the brand in their shopping
decisions, are actually delivered. . . However, we believe that the best
way to bring about change is from within and that through working to
re-engineer supply chains in a truly sustainable way consumers and
producers can indeed be brought closer together, in a way that satisfies
these aims.’ [sic]
We may compare this with the instant, decisive and widely publicised reaction of
Marks and Spencer when they found that Facebook had placed a third party advertisement
offering Marks and Spencer vouchers on a page called ‘cute and gay boys’. (Cellan-Jones,
2013)
The Politicians’ Narrative
There is another, much less formal, alliance between politicians and Fairtrade.
Politicians support Fairtrade by giving it public support and governments support it both
directly in grants and by diverting aid money to support it. Some do this because they
believe that it works, some because they think that this is an easy way to establish their
credentials as caring people wanting to help the poor (in foreign countries), and some have
both reasons. There is not a lot that a politician would not do for a sound bite on television.
While some politicians really support Fairtrade, they really support a lot of causes, and they
have to decide which of their strongly held beliefs they have time to support with action.
And this implies a negative: they stand to lose a lot of support if they attack
Fairtrade, motherhood or apple pie. Because of this, they may use their position to suppress
24
any investigation of it by civil servants, or any prosecution should there be any lawbreaking.
Once they have come out publicly in favor of Fairtrade, it is extremely difficult for them to
criticize it publicly.
Fairtrade encourages politicians by the carrot and the stick. It provides opportunities
to get publicity when supporting Fairtrade issues. It organizes volunteers to question
politicians before elections, in effect threatening that voters will be discouraged from
supporting anyone who does not support Fairtrade.
Civil servants, trading standards officers and police, again, face two problems. They
may be keen supporters of Fairtrade, in which case they may not apply their professional
skills dispassionately and in line with the law. Or they may see problems, but consider it
politically inexpedient to do anything about them.
The Media Discourse
Newspapers and television have been reluctant to report criticisms of Fairtrade. I
have been approached by a string of press and television reporters who have been
disturbed by what they found and what they did not find about Fairtrade when they visited
Fairtrade cooperatives and farmers in the Third World. I provided the evidence to explain
this, and a lot more. Their stories were spiked. An editor of an influential newspaper,
someone who was favourably impressed by one of my books and who had published several
of my articles, refused to publish my article on Fairtrade, on the grounds that, ‘We are in the
feel-good business. We do not attack popular institutions, or tell our readers they have been
fooled.’ Profitable journalism is telling consumers what they want to hear.
The Fairtrade Foundation provides journalists with feelgood stories e.g. Smithers
(Smithers, 2013). It is keen to provide speakers and appear in debates. However, after
several debates in which I appeared, with the facts at my fingertips, it has refused to appear
on the stage or on radio, if I also appeared. A contributory factor may have been that I had
put a clip of a top Fairtrade Foundation executive lying to an international conference on
You Tube about how much of the Fairtrade premium reached the farmer (Hill, 2009).
The Academic Discourse
There is an academic discourse on Fairtrade and this is of course influenced by the more
general social discourse, as is recognized in a Critical Discourse Analysis for example:
‘Continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a "value-free"
science, they argue that science, and especially scholarly discourse, are
inherently part of and influenced by social structure, and produced in
social interaction. Instead of denying or ignoring such a relation
between scholarship and society, they plead that such relations be
studied and accounted for in their own right, and that scholarly
practices be based on such insights. Theory formation, description, and
25
explanation, also in discourse analysis, are sociopolitically "situated,"
whether we like it or not. Reflection on the role of scholars in society
and the polity thus becomes an inherent part of the discourse analytical
enterprise.’ (Van Dijk, 2003) 352-3
What is covered in the research is partly determined by the students who choose to
study development. If a significant number of them are Fairtrade enthusiasts, because of
what they are told at school, and what they believe from the general social discourse, the
subject will be covered at university. If the professors are themselves enthusiasts, the effect
will be reinforced.
The appropriate discipline for the study of an agricultural marketing system is
agricultural economics, but Fairtrade is almost invisible in the agricultural economics
journals. These journals require new facts or rich theoretical models based on realistic
assumptions. The Fairtrade system itself is of little interest to them, as it is the normal
marketing system with the same traders and distributors performing the same functions,
using agricultural cooperatives, which have been well researched over the last century, and
giving assurances on hidden quality in the same way that the organic industry or Blue
Mountain does. The new facts and rich theoretical models are not possible given the
obsessive secretiveness of the Fairtrade industry: information on the extra prices paid by
consumers, the amount reaching exporters, what happens to the money, additional costs
incurred in marketing Fairtrade, extra costs incurred by farmers in producing Fairtrade and
farmers’ production costs are not available. There are very useful case studies which do use
agricultural economics analysis, but these do not normally appear in the agricultural
economics literature, possibly because of limitations arising from lack of information.
Fairtrade marketing makes major claims for the impact of its system. I have not been
able to find any studies that met the generally accepted requirements for an impact study
(discussed in Clemens & Demombynes (2010)), Gertler, Martinez, Premand, Rawlings, &
Vermeersch (2011), Angelucci & Di Maro (2010), Winters, Maffioli, & Salazar (2011; 2010)
for instance.) Griffiths (2012) questions whether a meaningful impact study can be carried
out because of the way in which Fairtrade operates, and sets out the difficulties. At the
least, this means that a meaningful study would be very expensive. Again, the secretiveness
of the Fairtrade industry is a major constraint: the information needed is not available.
Discourse on impact is also controlled by not financing meaningful impact studies, and by
financing studies that clearly have no possibility of ever producing meaningful assessment of
impact.
Much of the literature is reports of surveys with no theoretical input, usually done by
students and published on web sites. Sociological studies are common. There is very little
research with a rich theoretical basis, and there are a few studies with pure theory and
arbitrary, non empirical, assumptions (See Griffiths (2013) for a comment on one of these).
26
The research is nearly all done by people who started off as Fairtrade enthusiasts, with
a small amount being done by people who started off with a prejudice against it. Their
findings are influenced by the universal tendency to notice theory and data that confirm
one’s own beliefs, to give it undue weight, and to analyze it in a way that supports one’s
own beliefs. It is heartening that, in spite of this, many researchers have changed their
beliefs as a result of what they saw. Some people remain committed to Fairtrade after doing
their research, without noticing that the evidence they have produced throws doubt on the
Fairtrade narrative, and so leaving it to other researchers to analyze and disseminate as part
of the wider research discourse. For example convinced Fairtrade supporters reported
evidence that kickbacks and blackmail occurred, without examining or realizing the
implications (xxx, 2014).
The coverage of the research is controlled by the Fairtrade industry. It is easy to
prevent certain lines of research by withholding information, on prices and margins within
Britain, for instance, on what happens to the money collected by Fairtrade Labelling
Organizations International or what exactly happens to the money that does reach the
exporter. There are so many students wanting to research the better known Fairtrade
cooperatives, sometimes 50 at a time trying to get permission from each, that the Fairtrade
industry can select people whose enthusiasm and whose special area of interest makes
them unthreatening.
Researchers, who desperately need publications to further their academic careers,
censor their own papers, and referees censor papers that produce results that they do not
want to hear. There are a lot of journals clearly favorable to Fairtrade, and some clearly
supporting ‘free market’ economic theories and opposing Fairtrade (though Fairtrade is, in
fact, a classic free market industry), and the think tanks are mostly financed by extreme
right wing organizations. Researchers can increase the chance of publication by submitting
to a journal that they think supports their views. Sending a paper like mine to one of the
journals or think tanks which holds extreme views means a high possibility of rejection.
There may also be a loss in credibility because of the perceived bias of the publisher. Smith
(2009) attacked one researcher on the grounds that his research had been published by the
neo-liberal Adam Smith Institute. I asked one academic for copies of his papers, but after he
had cross examined me on my views on Fairtrade, he refused to give them to me.
All of which means that Fairtrade Foundation UK and Fairtrade Labelling
Organizations International are, indirectly, controlling the research discourse.
CONCLUSION
Good people, generous people, think that they are making a charitable donation to
Third World farmers when they buy Fairtrade. It has been shown elsewhere that little of the
extra they pay reaches the Third World at all – it is pocketed by firms and organizations in
rich countries – and none reaches Third World farmers as increased prices. Diverting $1-2
Billion a year of charity money from the poorest people in the world inevitably increases
27
death and destitution. It has been shown that this has been achieved by the offence of
‘Unfair Trading’, other criminal actions, or by other actions which may not be criminal but
are equally unethical.
How is this possible, when there are so many people in the Fairtrade industry and
supporting Fairtrade who are passionately committed to helping Third World farmers, and
so many who are firmly, but less passionately committed to helping the Third World?
The Fairtrade Foundation and Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International control
the discourse on Fairtrade, through their marketing, their public relations, their pressure
group activities, their use of volunteers, and their use of schoolteachers. Much of what they
claim is false. An important part of their control is the suppression of information: the less
information is available, the more people have to fantasize. And these Fairtrade
organizations do not counter false beliefs inside or outside their own organizations. The
control is also exerted indirectly, on the media and through the media, on the politicians
and by the politicians, encouraging them to support Fairtrade publicly, and to refuse a
platform to those exposing its weaknesses.
So people may not be lying out of pure greed. Some people in the organizations, no
doubt, know that they are not telling the truth but believe that a small lie is justified to get
more money to the Third World. Some have fantasized a system where Fairtrade achieves
what they would like to be achieved. Some believe the false information that they have
been given by others. Some see problems in the organization, but think that it is better than
nothing, and they should continue with it while waiting for reforms. Some are proud of what
they have achieved in building up a very successful brand, and think that whatever needs
doing, the brand should be kept. Some are on an ego trip, getting a high from devoting their
life to helping the Third World and being admired for it. And people outside the
organizations believe what they are told, especially since so many people tell them, people
who ought to know the truth. Some, no doubt, believe that the people operating Fairtrade
must have a lot of undisclosed information to support their claims, some think that checking
the facts is someone else’s business, some are just obeying orders.
But these are explanations, not excuses. From our earliest days we are taught the
basic survival skills of humanity, how to assess evidence, how to apply logic, how to
distinguish fact from fantasy. Most of the people involved have gone to university where
these skills are honed. What we have here is intellectual dishonesty. And this is the most
dangerous kind of dishonesty.
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