So apparently, Galway wasn’t so unique in its efforts to become Ireland’s firt fair trade city. Living in the US, you don’t hear about this stuff in the MSM (that’s mainstream meda, Jen), but a campaign to make cities and towns and universities and other bits of land and institutions fair trade has been going on in Europe since 1999; Garstang became the first fair trade town ever in May 2000. The UK now has 100 fair trade towns, not to mention a fair trade valley.

I was really excited about this news, until I read Alex Singleton’s post on Globalization Institute citing a “dismissive piece�? by the Financial Times (subscription required), which allegedly said that being a fair trade city amounted to very little.

Now a little depressed, I used Lexis-Nexis (free via school) to find the article. Call me optimistic, but the piece didn’t sound dismissive to me. Jim Pickard, the reporter, wrote the jaunty piece detailing his stroll around Bristol, a then-new fair trade city. He ran into some people who didn’t know about fair trade, and he ran into others who cared deeply about it.

Is that so bad? Obviously, much work still remains to be done. But awareness about fair trade in Bristol still comes across as quite high, though perhaps my standards for “high�? might be rather low, as an American. It seems to me that the whole fair trade city campaign is aimed at making more people aware of, and giving people easier access to, fair trade products – both goals that were achieved in Bristol. Yes, in terms of products, Bristol needed only 100 outlets to stock a mere 2 fair trade product lines each. But that’s a lot more fair trade goods than I see around LA – even on a serious mission to find this stuff!

And correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Pickard was poking fun at the fair trade naysayers a bit. George, the last interviewee for the article was a man who’d come across fair trade rather against his will; he ranted: “… Bristol City Council is so bloody left-wing it is unbelievable. They have spent hundreds of thousands in grants to lesbians, gays, blacks, ethnic minorities. If you want to make it in this city you have to be a black lesbian one-parent family; if you’re black and want a new swimming pool they’ll give it to you.” Riiight…

And I have no idea where Singleton got this idea: “Really, Fairtrade City status amounts to not much more than taxpayer marketing subsidies to Cafedirect plc, the coffee and tea producer listed on the London Stock Exchange, and other Fairtrade companies.�? Um, let me point you to the 31-page PDF detailing fair trade city guidelines here. Singleton’s cursory yet cutting dismissal of fair trade efforts sound a lot like George’s rant against the “bloody left-wing�? City Council. How dare they help black lesbian one-parent families! How dare they pay farmers fair wages! The nerve!

fair trade

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