An overview of what happened: There were 2 main “tracks”:

• How to build Small Scale Farmer Solidarity, and
• What are our collective Measures of Success as leaders in this movement?

I joined the 2nd track, and went to its 3 attendant workshops:

1. Volume, (covered here and here) which asked what fair trade success would look like. Consensus: Fair trade success is not measured by volume but by stronger producer organizations and educated consumers; large public corporations should follow standards, and the standards should be set by Fair Trade organizations.

2. The Trade Relationship, which asked what a sound fair trade relationship would look like. Consensus: A sound relationship would allow for mutual learning, economic stability, and collaborative problem solving.

3. The Power of Consumers, which asked how to engage and track the consumer communities that will help demand and define the future of fair trade. Consensus (sort of): The goal’s to get 3 times more fair trade products sold than are being sold now.

Check out these and more details from the summit here, and lemme know your thoughts :) A more comprehensive summary will come out in the fall, sez Equal Exchange.

I’m still of the opinion that Rink was talking about more than consumer behavior (though I’m sure that was part of it) when he said that fair trade certification didn’t really matter — we were talking about the fair trade movement as a whole, and the directions it might go in the future.

More on that later — For now, here’s the email, the bulk of which I totally agree with — especially the need and utility of stronger fair trade certification standards. Thanks to Rodney for the convo :)
___

To further the general Fair Trade conversation, and specifically to add to the discussion that started with this post, I just wanted to share some more thoughts from Rink (Rink Dickinson, co-founder and Exec. Dir. of Equal Exchange), and some of my own.

When Rink said in the small group session at last week’s Summit that “Fair Trade Certification doesn’t matter” he meant that the presence of the Fair Trade Certified™ seal on packaging seems to have little to no effect upon consumer behavior – even though that is its raison d’etre. While we know there are individuals like you who were introduced to the bigger Fair Trade story through the seal, Rink was saying that the seal doesn’t make much difference to the average shopper.

For example, when Café Campesino and Dean’s Beans took the seal off their packages it seemed to have no effect upon their sales. In Rink’s estimation most people, even those buying products bearing the seal, just don’t know what it means. I personally would love to see someone conduct a proper market study to find out.

However, regardless of its influence upon consumers, the presence and promotion of the Fair Trade seal in the marketplace does seem to have an effect upon the companies that do, or might, use the seal (i.e. “licensees”) and this can be a good thing. Namely because some companies believe that the seal offers competitive advantages they use it. Some a lot, some very little. [Right, the crowd at Equal Exchange's 20th anniversary party]

This, of course, means they have to buy at least that coffee or cocoa, etc. on Fair Trade terms. For conventional corporations this constitutes an improvement, and better incomes for farmers. Thus Rink’s take on Starbucks’ minimal participation in the Fair Trade Certification system – it’s better than nothing.

(I’ll speak for myself now)

Yet, with all that said, that dynamic represents a system that is heavy on marketing and light on the values that inspired the creation of Fair Trade over 20 years ago. Consequently, we have a tension that you might call a divide between “gradualists” and “accelerators”. (Not great names , I know, and maybe someone has already put other, better, labels on these camps, and on yet other groups in between).

I know that some folks, like “Havenocar”, won’t like the following, which is fine, but at EE we just can’t get excited about a low bar labeling system where, say, a multi-national corporation like Nestlé can convert less than 1/10th of 1% of their coffee supply chain and then present a “Fair Trade Certified™” package of coffee on equal footing with other products that come from an authentic Fair Trade supply chain and that represent real change – not just niche-marketing. [left: Equal Exchange's roaster]

Yes, there also has to be an incentive and method for conventional corporations to gradually reform their practices, which was the purpose of the Fair Trade Certification and labeling system. We simply think that it could, and should, ask much more of the participants than it does today.

For myself I think this advocacy for a high-bar represents a kind of optimism about people, and their readiness for change. That is that we think that if you did ask more of companies (ie apply stricter standards) they would still participate.

In contrast the counter-argument seems to be predicated on the assumption that if you ask for too much firms will stay on the sidelines. Remember, too, that within corporations there are also vying camps. There will be “change agents” and the “money crowd”, and the later will probably insist that their firm do as little as possible to meet the requirements. Hence, the lower you set the bar, the less real change you get. But that’s just my theory.

Regardless, what is even more concerning to us is that with each passing year the bar actually seems to go lower, not higher. The recent Fair Trade labeling of rooibos from white owned South African plantations is a great example of a bad trend.

Obviously, all this raises as many issues as it addresses, so we’ll look forward to more postings, comments, and general conversation. Thanks again, Siel, for making this forum possible.

Rodney

But that night, I’d been drinking lots to prep for the panel I’d put together. And while we said hello, and Jordan knew about green LA girl, he didn’t recognize me.

So we met again the way all cool people do these days — via the web :P Jordan made some amazing comments via the USFT listserv, and I quoted him here. Then, Jordan wanted advice on starting a blog for his fair trade banana company, Oke USA. So we chatted on the phone ’bout that.

And when I got to Boston, we got to chat for reals.

This guy really puts my pitiful undergrad existence shame. How? Jordan spent a summer in Ethiopia for Oxfam America (where he first met Tadesse), then spent a summer in Peru to learn how indigenous communities are facing modernization. In Sept. 2003, he went to Cancun as intern for Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The same year, he got arrested protesting at the WTO talks. Then in Spring 2004, he went to El Salvador with HACIA (Harvard Association Cultivating Interamerican) Democracy. And in 2004-2005, Jordan lived in Morocco, teaching and hanging out with his now-sorta-fiance.

And the guy’s a couple years younger than me, the bastard.

All this is to say that I really look up to the guy, cuz he’s done all the things I wish I’d done but didn’t do cuz I was too self-absorbed.

So I asked Jordan a lotta Qs, specifically about the state of fair trade certification these days. Below’s some of what he said [For those new to the discussions about fair trade certification, read this first]:

“I think that TransFair currently doesn’t represent current stakeholders, and it should [represent them] — the people who built and fuelled the movement. TransFair wants to steer the car that’s being fuelled by other people. They don’t wanna be back there pushing the car, but they want to determine where it goes.”

“TransFair’s seized and has been allowed to seize a lot of power. So the activists and the mission-driven companies and the NGOs have to say whether that’s alright or not…. Someone’s gotta step up and show some leadership.”

“Equal Exchange and people like it — we started fair trade. We gave the power to TransFair, and we shouldn’t cede it to them.”

“There should be NGOs and mission-driven companies represented on the board of TransFair if it’s going to be a strategizing, market building organization. Otherwise, they should just be a certifying organization, not a marketing organization, a brand. Right now they’re a brand.”

When I asked how fair trade certification could be fixed, Jordan batted around a lotta ideas, from ousting Paul Rice, the current CEO of TransFair USA, to convening some sort of coalition — for ex the people who put together the Fair Trade Futures conference last year.

But these were just ideas. Jordan said that, ultimately, he didn’t know who exactly should lead the charge, or how, exactly.

Many activists are really looking to the NGOs and mission-driven companies to take action — NOT to abandon fair trade certification, but to make a more concerted effort to have a say in shaping it –

Yes, we already have short videos from Oxfam and TransFair USA. But Black Gold does more than that.

What this film does brilliantly is juxtapose the bon vivants of the western world (us) — delicately sipping their high-priced espresso drinks — with the crushingly poor farmers producing those same espresso beans.

After a long day at the Equal Exchange summit, four of us watched this film Saturday night in Boston, on my laptop, We got a copy of the DVD from Tadesse, the Ethiopean dude featured in the film, shown travelling all over the world in an effort to get a better price for the farmers he represents.

Jordan, one of the wachees, had actually worked in the Ethiopian towns shown in the film. “I think this was a really valiant effort,” he said. “This is the best one [film about fair trade] that I’ve seen.” [Tadesse and me at Logan airport on Sunday morning]

Black Gold isn’t didactic. No one’s narrating; no one’s providing a clear or clean “analysis” of the situation. The film just shows us what some of the problems are — from the unfair farm subsidies of western countries, to the less-than-level playing ground at the WTO, to the aid the west provides to African countries in lieu of fair trade.

Of course, we each had our own ideas about other stuff the film coulda / shoulda covered but didn’t / couldn’t.

Some quotes from our discussion afterwards: The film could’ve gotten into “what the international coffee laws used to do. I feel like it didn’t get too into detail about what kinds of market regulation solutions could’ve been.” The film could’ve talked about “what different actors think the solution could be.” The film could’ve covered “why coffee market prices are so low.”

But one film can’t do everything, and overall, Black Gold really does a helluva lot. Already, Starbucks is feeling the heat.

Wanna see it? LA peeps can see Black Gold between August 18 – 24, cuz the film’s been selected for Docuweek, hosted at the Arclight Hollywood. The rest of the country should be able to see it in theaters in Sept. and Oct.

In the meantime, here’s an interview with Nick, one of the directors, on CNN.

Update, 8/15/06: Here’s the schedule for the screenings :)

Posts re: what I learned at the Equal Exchange summit will continue, but for now, some interesting Boston stuff:

While I was there, I stayed in the TD room, dubbed as such cuz the room contains Teddy Roosevelt’s crib (left). Thanks again to Jordan (right) for putting me up in his Harvard-owned place –

Also, I lost my reusable mug! This is no lil matter, cuz I’d put considerable effort into decorating the damn thing :( By considerable effort, I mean peeling stickers and sticking ‘em on.

Still, I’d given serious consideration to my sticker selection process. Also, I’d felt tots smug using this reusable mug while everyone else used their disposable shit…. If anyone at Bridgewater State College finds it, please email me and lemme know –

Jordan said he’d read my alcohol posts, but that he didn’t see too much drinking while I was there. That’s true — jetlag does odd things to me. On the other hand, I did have 5 drinks on Saturday, which was way over the sticker-worthy limit. Not sure what Jordan’s def. for too much drinking is.

In any case, I now have 4 stickers for July — 2 of them garnered over my weekend in Boston. Yey!

But since I’ve gotten back, I’ve been making up for lost time. I woke up today really hung over, then slumped around the apt. before going for a walk on the beach to cheer myself up, then headed over to a green biz event at 4, where I drank 2 glasses of wine to cope.

Then I got home and bought a bottle of Cabernet at the nearby liquor store.

It’s good to be home –

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 –

After a few opening remarks from Michael of Red Tomato, we split into four groups. I went into the discussion on “Strong autonomous links in a cooperative supply chain,” which asked: What are the key ingredients to make sure all partners in the fair trade relationship are satisfied?

Most strikingly, Ancelmo of CEPICAFE, a nonprofit that represents a number of fair trade coffee and sugar cane co-ops in Peru, spoke out about big corps entering the fair trade movement. While he said that fair trade has been a huge boon for co-ops, he also remarked that due to mechanization and such, only about 50% of his co-op’s products are being sold. “Today we’re a little worried because we have a lot of production and we don’t have the market for the production.”

However, despite this overabundance of unsold stuff, Ancelmo said “But I continue thinking that the big nationals are actually doing us harm because they are bringing products that are cheaper in the supermarkets, and they’re not marketing what’s quality.”

With the bigger companies, Ancelmo said, there’s not much of a financial incentive to improve quality — an incentive that he feels is necessary to develop the market.

He named the fear that the big corps would put smaller, more quality-focused fair trade companies out of business: “Once they [the big corps] have finished up with the smaller producers, then they’ll be able to control the markets.”

And Ancelmo pointed to a problem many involved in fair trade have been concerned about for years now: “Companies like Equal Exchange don’t seem to have any power on deciding what kind of company can get the label,” he said. “Companies like Equal Exchange have to be united with other companies to have a say in the labels.”

Equal Exchange — We’re lookin’ to you to help make things happen.

Ancelmo’s comments were especially interesting to me, because I’ve listened to many smaller US coffee companies say that one of their major reasons they’re not fair trade certified is cuz certification doesn’t have a criterion that screens for quality. But Ancelmo seems to be saying that there IS lots more quality fair trade coffee than there are small companies willing to buy the stuff…

I’d love it if others in the fair trade community would help clarify things a bit for me –

Update, 7/17/06: Here are deets on the 3rd and final workshop –

For ex: We split into 3 groups for the discussion part of the workshop, “Volume: Enter the Giants — Volume, Values, & Viability.” While I’m proud to say that I wrote down the topic of my section — The Role of Corporations (more specifically, publicly traded companies) – I didn’t do the same for the other two groups.

I’m pretty sure they each answered one of these two Qs: “How much volume is enough?” and “What kind of fair trade volume has the most value to the movement?” But I’m not sure… Can someone help me out here? Julia? Rodney? Jordan?

In any case, in my group, we were discussing big corps, and our end goal was to finish this sentence: “Fair trade success means …”

Before I go into the discussion, lemme set the scene a lil bit. Everyone invited to this summit was someone with a serious commitment to fair trade. I mean, while I’d like to think of myself as committed, the FOUNDERS of the fair trade movement were there.

Most of these people live and breathe fair trade – It’s both their passion and their livelihood. There were 30-some of us in a circle in a classroom for this discussion, and this lil crowd included Tom Bullock, chairman of the board at TransFair, a buncha people from Equal Exchange, Noel Oettle of the Environmental Monitoring Group in South Africa, and other diehard fair trade activists.

And me.

What was a lil surprising to me was that there was pretty much a consensus that big corps DO have a role to play in fair trade. In fact, at one point, someone posed the question: How many people are happy that Starbucks is in fair trade? Lots of hands went up.

The main issue that most concurred was an issue was this: “What control do we have over what fair trade is?”

With the publicly traded Green Mountain and Starbucks alone already making up close to 40% of the fair trade market, the issue of who defines fair trade is a hugely relevant and hugely contentious one. At least one person named the fear that the big players – with their money and influence — will take over the FT market to the point it puts Equal Exchange out of a role.

I don’t think that’ll happen – as long as fair trade committed peeps act now to ensure that fair trade standards remain strong.

I spoke up once during this discussion, to say that I agree that fair trade standards need to be set by those who’re committed to fair trade. I also said that I continue to feel a sense of inability on the part of those who’re 100% fair trade committed to shape the criteria and direction that fair trade certification’s taking right now. I mean, the current probs with fair trade certification have been under heavy discussion since before I even got really involved with fair trade. The same discussions keep happening, without getting resolved…

Here’s hoping at least some resolutions come out of this workshop.

This is the statement we came up with through the workshop: “Fair trade success means control of fair trade standards (by the 100% fair traders) with strict enforcement and application of fair trade principles to sellers in the North, in which corporations play role to achieve consumer understanding and appreciation of fair trade standards and realize responsible growth to gain 5% of the market.”

I know — It’s wordy, and grammatically bizzare. It’s a rough draft :P

I believe all participants in the summit should be getting copies of the statements that came out of the other workshops. I’m looking forward to getting that in the mail –

Update: Here are deets on the 2nd workshop :)

A tough task, yes?

The workshop, titled “Volume: Enter the Giants — Volume, Values, & Viability,” asked all the hard questions: How much volume is enough? What kind of fair trade volume has the most value to the movement? What is the role of corporations in the fair trade market?

Tom Hanlon Wilde of Equal Exchange kicked things off with a quick presentation that brought everyone up to speed on where fair trade is right now, in terms of numbers. The most interesting part, to me, was finding out what company was doing big chunks of fair trade coffee. [pic of Tom Hanlon Wilde from the Provender Alliance]

As of 2005, Equal Exchange and Cooperative Coffees – both 100% fair trade peeps — made up 13% of all fair trade coffee in the US (10% and 3%, respectively). Two publicly traded corps also had huge chunks: Green Mountain had 13%, and Starbucks, 26% [Update, 7/18/06: Rodney tells me Starbucks' 2005 US fair trade coffee market share -- measured by imports -- is actually 22%. The previous 26% figure apparently failed to account for Starbucks' fair trade volume outside the US.]. All others – about 300 individual companies – made up the remaining 48%.

After Tom, Santiago Paz Lopez stepped up to give a presentation. Santiago’s the general manager for CEPICAFE, a nonprofit that represents a number of fair trade coffee and sugar cane co-ops in Peru; he took the opportunity to talk about the goals and challenges of CEPICAFE. [pic of Santiago Paz Lopez from Equal Exchange]

What struck me most in Santiago’s presentation was the thoughts he shared on the role of the coffee co-ops and co-op orgs. He said that while people seem to want to hear that co-ops are collectively building schools and hospitals and such, that CEPICAFE saw its role somewhat differently.

Via a translator (thus the grammatical issues), he said: “For us, that’s not the role as an organization. Our role is to meet the basic needs of producers. And the basic needs of the producers are food, to make sure their students can go to school, and that they can more or less deal with the issue of health.”

Santiago’s take was that the bigger infrastructure issues needed to be dealt with at the governmental level — “The state has to intervene to solve these issues.” He pointed out that CEPICAFE and others could and should engage politically to get the government to address these issues, but said that coffee co-ops didn’t have anything close to the money or power of the government to adequately deal with these larger societal needs.

Of course, the work of orgs like CEPICAFE and other fair trade orgs still do have larger social repercussions. “Impacts are not just economic impacts. They are about social and cultural impacts,” Santiago said.

“Before being a producer was considered to be the 4th class of citizen, the lowest thing, the worst….” But with fair trade, “More than anything they [the coffee producer] can take back their dignity and feel good about what they do….”

Totally inspiring. We then split up into 3 groups to try and put together answers to the questions that the workshop started out with. That, in a post soon to come –

Update: Here’s the post ’bout the discussion in the small group I was in.

One of the farmer reps: Tadesse Meskela, the general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers’ Co-operative Union in Ethiopia and a star of sorts in the new fair trade film, Black Gold.

There he is to the left, with Jordan.

We peppered him with questions about Ethiopia and the making of Black Gold.

Then, cuz Tadesse had a copy, we watched the film earlier tonight!

A review to come –

Update, 7/18/06: Here’s the review :)