Fair Trade and Its Environment
A couple of months ago I was asked to respond to a kind of questionnaire. I will
use some of the responses I made at that time and I hope I do not fail the test here!
1. What do you think is the essence, the backbone of fair trade?
Fair trade is based on the creation of a solidarity economy. It demonstrates a
different way of marketing, whereby organized small producer organizations can
offer their products to regional, national and international consumers with prices
that cover the real cost of production and reflect the social cost to the organizations
and their families in such a way that this can create a dignified economy of the
poor. This can and has to create urgent and needed alternative economic models to
those of exploitation, exclusion and powerless individualization. The backbone of
fair trade is the Organization of small producers in democratic, republican and
culturally distinct forms and entities.
2. What was the main reason to start Max Havelaar? (Fair trade with a seal)
The main reason for starting (- in 1988 in the Netherlands with peasants from
UCIRI) Max Havelaar was the experience of exclusion, poverty and extreme
exploitation of indigenous coffee producers, their fight against the “coyotes” (
exploitative middle men), and Government agencies which kept the small
producers in conditions of slavery, dependent on a strain of neoliberal markets
from which they were excluded and shunted aside.
3. What do you consider are the main benefits of fair trade for small producers?
1
The primary benefit of fair trade for small producers is that it has given them the
opportunity and the ability to create their own improvements, whether it be to their
own homes, to their lands, to the environment, and by cultivating products in an
organic way. Furthermore, through organizing, it gave them the ability to demand
that regional and national governments implement services to which small farmers
are entitled, such as education, infrastructure, improvements to drinking water,
access to electricity, the internet and a telephone system as well as passable roads.
This social empowerment, culturally and politically, was made possible by being
organized and establishing minimum safety standards for food, selling surplus
products such as coffee and many other goods, with the condition that it cover, at a
minimum, their investment and social costs. In this way, culturally, indigenous
peoples began to recover their dignity and their being an ancestral part of society.
They maintained their ethnic differences by recovering their way of life and
customs, their ancestral languages and faith in themselves, and by becoming aware
of the hidden neo-colonial mechanism that harasses their existence.
4. How would you describe the current state of fair trade?
The current state of fair trade is complicated, confusing and full of contradictions.
Different interests are at play in the 'family' (WFTO, FLO, and others) of those
involved in fair trade and at times are not compatible with the real interests of
organized small producers. We underestimate the residual existence of a social and
economic colonialism by the coordinating entities, especially those of Western
policymakers with their pursuit of development, progress, benevolence, and a lack
of understanding and appreciation for cultural and social differences. To learn to
respect diversity, we need to learn to apply a real republican model of the equality
2
of human beings. A serious lack of political analysis and insight of the current
world situation causes internal stresses, erratic and undemocratic decisions and
undermines any real sense of republicanism.
5. What are the main challenges of fair trade?
The main challenge of fair trade is to thoroughly analyze politically the world we
are living in, at the regional, national and international level, to counter the
prevailing discouragement of creating another economy with real solidarity and a
human face. Fair trade easily falls into the trap of being mainly an economic
endeavour - get a better price for your product and that is it! This is not fair trade
for the majority of the population of the countryside, particularly small producers.
We can easily forget that life is more than just “dollars and cents”, even though we
can acknowledge that an adequate income is important to maintain the family. The
creation of a supposedly worthy place in the conventional market is an aberration.
The big question we have to answer is how to create a decent economy for small
producers where solidarity really exists and perseveres. The neoliberal model,
impregnated in all its magnitude, is not a feasible model to eliminate inequality and
extreme poverty. Poverty is not the problem. The lack of democratic control over
the market and the economy, that is the main problem. The accumulation of power,
be it in terms of capital or political power, is the main cause of maintaining and
increasing misery, creating more and more inequality and exclusion. Reestablishing the real power over economic and market forces is therefore the main
task of Fair Trade. It is for this reason that we in Latin America have established
our own Fair Trade system with the small farmers seal (SSP) for our own local,
regional and South-to-South market. This is the political quest of and for small
producers, organized in democratic and republican unions.
3
6. Can fair trade guarantee the eradication of poverty and implement social
justice and sustainable development?
Fair trade alone is not a guarantee of the eradication of extreme poverty. Here we
have the big question: what is real poverty? I learned that it is important to
distinguish between misery, extreme poverty, the lack of the necessary living
conditions and a dignified poverty where the basic needs of life are guaranteed:
access to housing, land and labour, health, education, water and a pleasant
environment, clean rivers, accessible roads, freedom and real democracy at home,
village, region, and nation. A dignified poverty economy is our utopian ideal; the
fight to bring this about is today's reality for small producers. Let us be democratic
and join the big majority of the planet’s population. To create power structures that
guarantee social justice is the task of the organizations through arduous struggles,
in conjunction with several willing local, national and international movements.
One of the weak points of the fair trade family is their minimal connection with
other movements such as Via Campesina, cooperative networks, the real green
movements, most of the world's population. To create democratic mechanisms in
the economy and the market is an ideal that the current market economy does not
want to accept. Most of us know that the so called free market does not exist, but
rather is manipulated by the power brokers who do not want any democratic and
political restrictions. The state as guardian of the Common Good for all its citizens
does not exist. On the contrary, governments, both national and multilateral, are
being co-opted by the collusion of the economic power brokers. The law of the
free market jungle is one with no restrictions and oversight. It is no wonder that
the international economy and market is in such a mess. The neo-liberal ideology,
in its classical emphasis on its theories of the market, sees this as a spontaneous
4
order, self-sufficient in its dynamic auto-regulation. The market, in this view, is
sufficient of itself to self-regulate through its own internal dynamics. The market
not only does not require external orientation and input but any external
interference harms its optimum performance. Such a “perfect” living being would
surpass in self-regulatory potential to other living beings. In these, the complex
levels of internal self-regulation interact among themselves and within the
environment, so that accentuated autonomy remains relative. The dogma of the
indivisible and self-sustaining market is not content with partial self-regulation. It
aims for total self-regulation and that is a fiction. It only applies to players who are
in the game but does not take into account those 'excluded' from this selfregulation. They dangle the potential of being included... 'some day', a day which
never comes. The self-regulation of the market needs exclusion. For example, the
law of supply and demand influences the setting of prices for products and
services. In that law, only those who have the power of purchasing and marketing
are considered. Those who do not have this power are excluded. The simple fact
that the right of survival of all human beings on our planet is not considered nor
permitted within the parameters of this self-regulation regime. It makes the socalled "free market" far from free for the majority of the world's population. This is
the crux for the urgent need to develop another alternative market, a fair market for
all. Organizing the hope for a different market means not surrendering the
conscious solidarity options to any self-regulatory system.
8. The media play an important role in the era of globalization, in the habits and
tastes of people. What role do the media play in the promotion, dissemination
and awareness of "fair trade"?
The media plays an important role in promoting and building awareness of
5
producers and consumers and their organizations. But what kind of communication
are they promoting? How to help the poor? To show in nice videos malnourished
smiling children who already go to a small school which, thanks to fair trade, the
village was able to build! Analysing YouTube videos on fair trade, the majority of
these do not give me much of an appetite! And, of course, all do so with the best of
intentions but neither in cohesion with nor understanding of the reality and
experience of the world of the people and organizations being displayed in these
videos.
9. To what extent does fair trade improve access for disadvantaged producers to
market and change the rules of conventional trade?
This can raise thousands of questions! Yes, there are many organizations that have
gained access to the market, be it at the regional, national and even international
level, which is very important in their journey. They learn, they regain dignity,
they can begin to make improvements within their homes, villages, and regions. I
don't know to what extent this has impact for real change on the conventional rules
of the conventional market. Processing, bagging, selling coffee from small
producers is also a business and businesses remain and are subjected to the rules of
competition, promotion, and national and international laws. There is a very wide
discussion about fair trade and solidarity which is of utmost importance. These are
very diverse discussions (- critical, adverse, studies pro and contra, etc.). But as
soon as you see that big transnational corporations have an interest in fair trade,
that does not mean that one day they will change the rules of conventional trade
which they themselves have instituted. They will defend these rules at all costs.
One has only to view the lobbying for the planned international rules of free trade
between the USA and Europe (TTIP) to understand this.
6
Fair trade intends to change the secure rules of conventional trade, impregnated
and baptized with their quasi-divine neoliberal myth. But to do so, we have to
reach a minimum of understanding among all the organisations as to where we
want to go. This means that you need at least an ideal, a vision and the audacity to
take the necessary steps to achieve these. Equally, you need a lot of patience,
perseverance and courage. I hope we can all participate in that nice journey.
Here are some conclusions and recommendations for the movement I would like to
make, taking into account several points made by Marco Coscione:
First:
Continue to develop and strengthen Fair Trade, with all its internal diversities that
characterize and enrich this movement and always starting with a self-managed
and real sustainable development perspective.
Second:
Remain well aware of the nerve centre of the movement: prioritize the prominence
of the organized small producers over any other actors, with the conviction that
‘solutions come from below’.
Third:
Strengthen ties with the whole of the social movement, to build another path to an
inclusive and sustainable development, or the good life.
Fourth:
Increasing democratization and social control of the dynamics of production, trade
and consumption, based on social, human and people’s rights and the well being of
our planet.
Fifth:
Decolonize the economic and political perspectives of the movement and rewrite,
7
from the South perspective, its history, its processes and its future developments.
This includes restructuring the systems of internal governance of the fair trade
movement, in particular that of the WFTO and FLO. No more bureaucracy !
CLAC has already initiated this process of decolonization of Fair Trade without
giving in on the principles of the small producers, struggling within the institutions
in order to create, as the Zapatistas of Chiapas say: ‘let us fight for a world where
all kinds of worlds are possible’.
Sixth:
Advocacy with the authorities and public institutions in each country. There is a
need not only for Fair Trade towns, but above all, public Fair Trade authorities and
institutions. This means that we need to protest against public institutions when
they are not functioning well and in our interests. At the same time it is our
responsibility to put forth feasible proposals which these institutions can
implement. Political purity does not help us much. Let us slowly take over the
institutions.
Seventh:
The building and/or strengthening of internal fair trade markets and, therefore, the
commitment to raising awareness of responsible consumers in the countries of the
(South) region.
Eighth:
The development of a South-South fair trade between Latin American countries
and also with Africa and Asia. Good Chilean wine in Mexico and fine Mexican
produced organic coffee in Chile!
And on top of all this let us all not forget to say a clear NO to the possible approval
of a 'Transantlantic Trade and Investment Partnership' (TTIP).
8