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 –

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That was the big Q for the second workshop at the Equal Exchange summit, which asked how we could make fair trade relationships better and more dynamic.

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 –

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Despite the fact that I carried my laptop with me everywhere like a shield, I still sorta sucked with the note-taking at the Equal Exchange summit.

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 :)

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That was the question asked at the first session I attended at the Equal Exchange summit. As a group, we were given a very specific task – to finish the sentence “Fair trade success means….” with an answer that included at least one number.

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.

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One of the coolest things about hanging out at Equal Exchange’s summit: Meeting farmers and farmer reps from all over the world.

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 :)

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