The third and last session of the Equal Exchange summit was a lil disorganized, but that disorganization actually worked out in my favor.
Cuz when we broke up into a buncha lil groups, my group ended up being just four people: Rink Dickinson, co-exec-director and one of the founders of Equal Exchange; Doug Dirks, a biggie at Ten Thousand Villages; Heather Deeth of La Siembra (a fair trade company in Canada); and me.
This meant that Heather and I, both relative newbies in our 20s, got to ask lotsa Qs and get the thoughts of 20-years-plus fair trade veterans, Rink (right) and Doug.
It also meant that I got some surprising revelations about how some of the veterans of the fair trade movement feel about the direction fair trade’s taken of late.
Doug and Rink agreed on a lot of things — Most fascinatingly, both said fair trade certification wasn’t important for them.
That was a serious trip, for me.
I mean, I didn’t know too much about Doug’s history beyond what he said during the convo, but I’d heard a helluva lot about Rink. This guy was one of the heavies giving suggestions to the fair trade licensing org, TransFair USA, back in the day when TFUSA first got started. But in our convo, Rink sounded like he’d given up on fair trade certification and TFUSA.
Rink actually said, when I asked, that he was glad that Intelligentsia Coffee left the fair trade licensee roster.
Mind you — Rink did say that he wouldn’t be so happy if companies like Starbucks left, cuz that would mean that the mermaid wouldn’t even bother to meet the minimum standards of fair trade certification.
But for small companies generally treating their coffee farmers well, Rink seemed rather gleeful about their departure from the fair trade roster.
This is the level of bitterness that some of the founders of the fair trade movement have arrived at in regards to the fair trade certification bodies (FLO and TFUSA. For more deets about these discontents, read the Certification Challenges series).
We all came to this convo with our personal biases, of course. Rink had seen the definition of fair trade get more and more watered down during his lifetime of involvement. I, on the other hand, had been introduced to fair trade just a few years ago, through the TransFair USA label — which, despite its problems, got its message out to the layperson (me).
Rink, I believe, saw the TFUSA label as dumbing down what fair trade really meant — Taking a very complex and nuanced polical, social, and PERSONAL relationship and dumbing it down to an oversimplistic “fair price for the farmer” message.
I saw (and see) the TFUSA label as a starting point that got me thinking about these issues and made me find out more — After all, I didn’t just stop at the TFUSA brochures; I talked to people, researched, and delved into it, getting deeper and deeper into the difference between the ideals of the peeps who started the fair trade movement, and the bottom-line, minimum-standards definitions of fair trade certification.
The main difference between us, in my opinion, is that I see the TFUSA fair trade label as something that opens the door for consumers to find out more. Rink, on the other hand, seems to see it as something that closes the door to a more sensitive and nuanced discussion about what fair trade really means, both in ideology and in practice.
More on this on a part II post — I’ll send this and the future post on to Rink to see if he’d like to put in his 2 cents –
wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if the entire USA was populated by highly educated New Englanders that spend a tremendous amount of time having sensitive and nuanced discussions about what fair trade really means?
well, unfortunately (of fortunately, depending on your view of Equal Exchange), the majority of the US population isn’t like the above. people need labels. people should to be able to make a purchase that is in line with their values in a matter of seconds. you can’t expect consumers to be as committed as Equal Exchange would like them to be. sure, it would be wonderful if we all had buying habits in lockstep with the hardest of the harcore of every movement out there, but it’s plainly unrealistic.
Rink has missed the boat on a few key points: One large one, is that TransFair USA, as I understand it, never set out to certify companies. again, they don’t certify companies. if they did, then you could accuse them of watering down what fair trade really meant. saying “he wouldn’t be so happy if companies like Starbucks left, cuz that would mean that the mermaid wouldn’t even bother to meet the minimum standards of fair trade certification” is incorrect-because Starbucks is not certified. the standards of Fair Trade Certification are for producers, not manufacturers in the global north.
does Rink think fair trade certification for producers should also be abandoned? without FLO, without TransFair and it’s like in other countries, the whole system breaks down. who is going to ensure that products are what they are? who is going to ensure that the farmers & co-ops are maintaining their commitments to social, economic, and environmental sustainability? without any type of independent third party to verify producer standards, what happens?
it often seems that the hardcore of the fair trade movement frankly don’t give a damn if the average american consumer has an opportunity to buy Fair Trade goods. their opposition to Fair Trade products showing up in more traditional retail environments is tantamount to elitism. “dumbing down” automatically implies that something has been simplified for what is percieved as a less intelligent audience. if a package of Fair Trade Certified coffee says “By choosing this Fair Trade Certified product you are directly supporting a better life for farming families through fair prices, direct trade, community development, and environmental stewardship. To find out more, visit http://www.fairtradecertified.org” like it says on this package of Earth Fare coffee in front of me, how is that a bad thing? consumers get the basic message, and if they want to learn more, they can on their own innitiative. what if the simple message attracts a consumer who then decides to learn more and do their own investigating? what if this consumer, who’s attention was caught by this “dumbed-down” label, became a stridently blogging Fair Trade advocate? but what if they don’t, yet continue to buy Fair Trade? is that bad?
Rink is on the inside, like many others who criticize TransFair. they come from the perspective of people who have lived and breathed Fair Trade for the better part of their lives. but do these hardcores ever step outside of themselves and consider the the vast overwhelming number of people in this country who have never heard about Fair Trade? how do people like Rink plan to bring Fair Trade to scale? does it require the EqualExchangification of every company in the USA? do nuanced and sensitive discussions of Fair Trade at the consumer level have to happen in order for Fair Trade to work?
one of Fair Trade’s strengths is that there are so many different stakeholders with different views on what Fair Trade is all about. it’s also potentially the greatest threat to Fair Trade’s survival in this country. sure, people like Rink have been involved in Fair Trade for decades, but that doesn’t excuse them to make mis-informed inflammatory statements. and if Rink is so down on Fair Trade Certification, why dosn’t Equal Exchange just leave the system?
sensitive and nuanced discussions about Fair Trade still happen and will happen, it’s just a question of 1) inviting everyone to the table 2) not acting like your time in the Fair Trade movement entitles you to dictate its definition 3) and accepting the possibility that a broader offering of Fair Trade Certified products to a wider consumer base might be a good thing.
Comment by Max Havenocar — July 18, 2006 @ 12:44 pm
Hey Max — Thanks for the detailed response! More later after I have a lil more time to digest, but I wanted to try and clarify for everyone reading here the confusion re: fair trade certification and licensing.
First, the producer co-ops themselves have to get certified as fair trade, in order to get fair trade prices (among many other benefits) for their products. That certification’s done by FLO.
Second, for companies that want to sell fair trade products in the US market, they have to get fair trade LICENSED as companies. TFUSA is the org that licenses companies; to be licensed, each company has to make some level of commitment to fair trade. It is this part that TFUSA gets a lot of criticism for, because many fair trade diehards feel that TFUSA’s requirements for the companies just aren’t strong enough.
Third, companies that HAVE been licensed can then sell individual products that are fair trade certified. These are the products that carry the TFUSA “fair trade certified” logo.
Meaning — for products that carry the fair trade seal, the farmer co-op has to be fair trade certified by FLO, the company selling into the US needs to be fair trade licensed, and the product that the company’s selling has to be fair trade certified by TFUSA.
So, looking at Starbucks as an example: Starbucks buys some coffee beans from FLO-certified fair trade coffee co-ops. Starbucks is also licensed to sell fair trade, via an agreement with TFUSA. And so Starbucks sells ONE fair trade certified product (Cafe Estima) which has the fair trade sticker.
Comment by Siel — July 18, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
Here’s another angle on the subject of ‘dumbing down’….:
With strong commercial interests pressing FLO to relax the standards necessary to attain fair trade certification and thus to quite literally buy fair trade credibility, FLO’s regional agents (TransFair et al) find themselves in the gun. An example of such pressure might be a company looking to launch a ‘budget’ fair trade chocolate bar which could be manufactured cheaper if only they didn’t have to use certified fair trade sugar, and who have been granted dispensation by FLO to do so. Or, perhaps an extremely large coffee transnational trying to work their plantations into the certification system while simultaneously looking to lower the share of the pie that would be available to their farmers…..
This kind of sharp activity is happening increasingly, and FLO is letting these guys in. Because they want their money.
For any principled system - such as fair trade certification -to remain meaningful, it has to be answerable to people of principle (young or old). This has not always been the case in recent times
and many traditional fair traders have had good reason to distance themselves from the mark.
Those trad fair traders who have chosen to stay certified get points for their optimism - they hope they may still have a part to play in preventing the mark from becoming even dumber in the future..
Comment by Justin — July 19, 2006 @ 2:20 am
Justin,
Please provide concrete specific examples of “commercial interests pressing FLO to relax the standards necessary to attain fair trade certification.” Unless you have documented specific examples, your remarks are nothing more than rumor and slander. You make some extremely damning statements yet you provide no proof. Either do us all a favor and provide proof to you accusassions, or go home. This yet another sad, sad fact of the fair trade movement-people like to gossip like bored teenagers or old ladies at the bridge table. It is currently very hip to hate TransFair USA and FLO in the fair trade movement. While the sheep of the movement will continue to engage in rumor mongering, I hope there are at least a few prinicipled people left who are willing to educate themselves and weigh evidence before spouting condemnations. And by the way, the expression is “under the gun.”
Do people in the movement know how FLO sets standards? Do they actually try to educate themselves on how standards are set? Do they understand that it’s a laborious and throrough multi-stakeholder process that includes fairly powerful producer groups?
People in the movement who like to bash FLO and TransFair also seem to be the ones most resistant to any growth or dynamics of change. If fair trade is trying to transform the nature of trade from the global south to the global north, shouldn’t it evolve? You’re not going to empower people in the developing world by forcing them to only adopt a co-op model that was developed in Central America. What if that model doesn’t work well in East Africa or Asia? Should farmers/farmerworkers who would benefit from a different co-op or estate model be shut out of the system because Equal Exchange or USFT or Oxfam America says so? While USFT and Oxfam have no motives to make a profit, EE, while a co-op, is not a non-profit and has clear business interests. Should they be allowed to make decisions that change the competitive landscape (by being allowed to determine who does and who doesn’t get to sell fair trade certified products?) You would think that these organizations would realize the fair trade is bigger than all of us.
Comment by Max Havenocar — July 19, 2006 @ 10:23 am
Okay guys — Let’s play nice –
I didn’t think Justin’s remarks were too off the mark, though they were perhaps too harsh at times. There IS a fear that the entry of multinationals will cause a further watering down of fair trade standards in the future.
We certainly have already seen decisions made that many fair trade stakeholders have questioned, from the entry of Nestle — a widely hated company — into the fair trade roster in the UK, to large tea plantations being permitted into the system (arguably prematurely). There was also a banana deal that TFUSA tried to put through without consulting NGOs and other stakeholders — Luckily, that deal was effectively sunk by the ensuing outrage. TFUSA does have a very top down structure, and the org really has had a history of failing to bring everyone to the table before pushing through a decision.
This is also the first time that publicly traded companies have made up such a huge part of the fair trade market. Starbucks and Green Mountain alone make up almost 40% of the US fair trade market. And while there are lotsa great people at TFUSA, there is certainly the sense that TFUSA’s letting companies in too hastily, at the expense of keeping fair trade standards strong.
Meaning: Fair trade certification at the moment really has its problems. But I still feel that certification is important, and that activists and mission-based companies should try and push to fix those problems instead of abandoning it…
And btw — this post was about Rink’s opinion — an important one, but not necessarily the opinion of Equal Exchange as a whole. Many within Equal Exchange also feel fair trade certification is important — I’ll write more about some of these other people’s thoughts.
I’d also like to note that this post came out of a summit that Equal Exchange threw specifically to bring lots of people to the table — something that shows Equal’s keenly aware that fair trade is bigger than all of us.
Comment by Siel — July 19, 2006 @ 10:50 am
Please allow me a brief thought on the concept of rumour and slander.
From clicking on my profile in the page above and doing a very small amount of detective work you would find that my name is Justin Purser, and that I am the coffee buyer for a fair trade organisation in New Zealand named Trade Aid Importers. Now let’s ask ourselves…. having added a link that essentially identifies myself professionally would I be more, or less, likely to engage in slander?
Here is some proof for our reader.
Fair trade chocolate without fair trade sugar is due to be released into the Australasian market soon with the blessing of the FLO mark. This can be confirmed by FTAANZ, the Australasian licensing agent for FLO, at nz at fta dot org dot nz
I agree that any claims within the FLO/non-FLO fair trade debate should be well backed up. I’d suggest that use of real names during conversations would make this more likely.
Comment by Justin — July 19, 2006 @ 2:29 pm
Well — I encourage everyone to use their names and links, if any, so others can see where they’re coming from.
On the other hand, I’ve seen a lotta readers who start out by making anonymous comments then move on to making public and personally invested comments. Not to mention all the lurkers (and to lurkers — that’s quite ok) who don’t comment at all for a long, long time.
For many, commenting on blogs is a frightening, intimidating thing — after all, blogs are forever :P Many people are not used to airing their thoughts on a public, permanently avaliable forum.
And that’s fine. After all, writing’s a vulnerable act. I encourage everyone to come out, but won’t hold it against you if you dont.
Of course, yes — your level of self-revelation does directly affect how seriously others can take your comments. And if you’re gonna make inflammatory or contentious comments, I do hope that you’ll give us the courtesy of letting us know who you are. Otherwise, you could get labelled as a troll!
Comment by Siel — July 19, 2006 @ 11:47 pm
Transfair refers to some of the members on its roster as “mission based” Indeed if you have a list of the first twenty five licensees you will see a who’s who of fair trade coffee, and all of them are “mission based”
We’re on that list and there is a growing tension between mission based fair trade roasters and the mainstreaming that is taking place. To a small degree elitism is part of the issue, however there are some much more compelling reasons for the growing disdain among the ranks of “mission based” roasters:
In 3Q 2004 Transfair abruptly changed the system for reporting and licensing fees.
From 1999-2004 Roasters paid a .10 fee for every pound that was ROASTED AND SOLD with a fair trade logo.
Without speaking a word about the upcoming changes during the specialty coffee conference in April 2004, in early may 2004 transfair asked roasters to resign a contract that would alter the fee structure and require a .10 payment for every pound of fair trade coffee PURCHASED. The fee structure offered incentives based on % of fair trade coffee, prompt payment, and most significantly a discount for volume. In order to receive any discount the roaster must have a third-party audit of their purchasing.
My company buys around 75% of our coffee with fair trade oversight, always at least .35 a pound above the $1.41 floor price for organic coffee. The remaining 25% is sourced via direct relationships and the very transparent juried competition auction format. We label less than 50% of our coffees with the transfair seals. Many of our best-selling blends contain between 50-80% fair trade coffees and we are not interested in calling them fair trade offerings.
When we crunched the numbers it was clear that our licensing fees would increase significantly. We decided to remain on our contract from 1999 with transfair, (which was an option that was not offered up front by Transfair, we learned this from another roaster just before we signed the new deal.)
We pointed this out to transfair and they simply did not believe we would pay more based on our previous purchases and future contracts. Once their accounting department reached the same conclusion the arm-twisting to sign a new contract was tabled.
We are happy to pay a licensing fee to transfair for the coffee we label as fair trade. I am not interested in paying a tribute to transfair for coffee that is not marketed with their brand image on the package.
I am very glad to see fair trade on the shelves of the largest grocery stores in the country. It is a positive step. It does herald the entry of the largest roasters to the fair trade movement.
Small roasters were the first to embrace transfair. It was a venture with alot of hope but very little to offer in the early days. 7 years later the incentive to join transfair is reflected in the market growth figures for the coffee industry. Nestle cannot sit on the sidelines, nor can proctor and gamble, and watch their market share decline. Now, the tables have turned. The largest roasters need transfair while many mission based roasters are finding more rewarding relationships outside of the fair trade context.
I haven’t courted the mainstream market. I won’t be selling our coffee to Wal Mart anytime soon. I am happy that fair trade has arrived in the mainstream. I simply ask this: the next time you look for a coffee source it from a local or regional roaster and look for a company that can tell you where their coffee came from, fair trade or otherwise!
Comment by Tim — July 25, 2006 @ 12:48 am
Sorry, I put my email in the website section. It is corrected in this post for the sake of transparency…
Comment by Tim — July 25, 2006 @ 12:51 am
Hey Tim — I was recently talking about this issue with a roaster in North Hollywood called Supreme Bean. They have the deal that your company chose not to sign — and as you can imagine, are not too happy about it — especially since organic certification (which they strongly support) doesn’t work that way.
As I don’t run a coffee company, I can’t crunch numbers for this — but it does certainly seem like a less-than-ideal deal for companies that have made the choice (for various reasons) not to get 100% of their coffee fair trade certified.
I really don’t like the fact that this sort of policy can provide a disincentive for coffee roasters to use fair trade coffees as components of their coffee blends.
What bothers me most — and what interests me about your post — is the seeming opacity of TFUSA in this process — i.e. not soliciting the opinions of current licensees before announcing the change, and also not letting current licensees know clearly that they could stick to their original contracts…
This opacity clearly needs to change, and I do hope that companies like yours will speak up and push and prod TFUSA in a better direction –
Comment by Siel — July 26, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
Siel,
Yes, it comes across as a disincentive when TF does this kind of thing. We can express our feelings to TF until we are blue in the face and our argument is quickly marginalized as “elitist” or “entrenched” Many of my peers have simply given up and accepted the new arrangement.
Interestingly, when we write a contract with a cooperative many times we can choose if the lot will be fair trade certified or not. The price paid to the cooperative doesn’t change, but if we select a FT option the person who handles our importing has to pay a fee to transfair, then we pay a fee to transfair.
Some of the roasters under the new fee structre have opted to seperate their lots and buy the coffees that will end up in non-FT blends without a fair trade contract. The co-op actually nets more money because in addition to the price the roasters agree to pay the cooperative the .10 premium they used to pay transfair. If the importer agrees to do the same thing then the co-op can add .05-.10 more to the selling price of the coffee. The net effect is a larger sum paid to the cooperative. Rather than send the dimes to oakland they would rather put it in the hands of the farmers. In a sense it is an act of protest.
Sadly, Transfair isn’t putting much stock in what many of the smaller outfits want. Can you blame them? Afterall, SBUX is the single largest buyer of FT coffee followed by GMCR and Equal Exchange. When 3 outfits account for just past 50% of the annual FT purchases it isn’t hard to see who has the ear of Paul Rice.
Comment by tim — July 27, 2006 @ 12:47 pm
Justin Purser, of Trade Aid in NZ, and others might like to know that in the U.S. Fair Trade Certified cocoa products like cocoa mix and chocolate bars have never required the use of Fair Trade sugar. This is despite the fact that in products like hot cocoa mix sugar makes up about 60% or more of the product by weight.
Maybe sometime Siel can do some postings on Fair Trade sugar as its SUCH a complicated story, full of trade barriers, subsidies, cold war politics and much more. Also, unlike coffee or cocoa the US produces 85% of the sugar it consumes, but that’s in part dependent upon the afore-mentioned trade barriers. It’s a case where FREE trade might actually be more FAIR, too, but I’m still learning, so look into it yourself.
Also, the FT sugar scene offers an interesting twist as the current FT leader is also the nation’s largest sugar corporation, Imperial Sugar, aka parent co. of Wholesome Sweetners, who have converted almost all their organic sugar to FT organic sugar.
For the record at Equal Exchange we’ve always used FT organic sugar in our cocoa mix, chocolates, and sell it separately, too.
Comment by Rodney North — July 31, 2006 @ 8:59 am