About that Financial Times article that questioned the benefits of fair trade, saying that coffee farmers in Peru aren’t even making minimum wage –

FLO, the org that certifies fair trade farms, already responded, but now, so has the 100% fair trade company Equal Exchange and the JNC (Junta Nacional del Cafe, aka National Coffee Board of Peru), which represents 24 of the 27 Fair Trade registered coffee cooperatives in Peru.

Equal Exchange concurs with FLO, pointing out that many fair trade farms still aren’t able to sell the majority of their coffee at fair trade prices — cuz many US corps have opted NOT to support fair trade. Sez Rob Everts, exec director of Equal Exchange:

Regrettably, despite Fair Trade’s demonstrated ability to foster equitable economic development in rural communities there are too few companies importing their coffee on Fair Trade terms. Consequently the cooperatives, and their farmer members receive Fair Trade prices and financing for as little as 10 or 15% of their exports. For the typical individual farmer this means of the 1,000 pounds he or she might harvest, only 150 pounds is later sold to a Fair Trade importer like Equal Exchange. The lower prices paid for the other 850 pounds drive down the income for both the small farmer, and the temporary workers they employ for the harvest. Despite this, we know that individual farmers do try to pay the temporary workers as well as they are able.

And the JNC points out that Hal Weitzman, author of the Financial Times piece, gets the bulk of his info from just 2 interviewees. Plus, Hal just doesn’t seem familiar with what’s really going on at the farms — including local work-product exchange customs. For ex (the Spanish-to-English trans was done by a hired, not-that-great translator, so excuse the weird sentence constructions):

In Peru, 90% of coffee farmers are small producers, whose production area is from 0.5 to 10 hectares, where labor comes mostly from the household, with … an ancestral solidarity work system between families that go from one farm to the another gathering the coffee. There is also a way of harvesting called “al partir”, which means that work is paid by giving the worker the product. In both cases, there is no monetary exchange; the worker is paid with the product gathered at the farm. In the last two harvests, 2005 and 2006, the single minimum salary (without food) averaged 20% over the minimum official salary, of 16.67 soles/day or 500 soles/month, as of today.

Interestingly, the JNC isn’t all compliments when it comes to fair trade certification. In fact, JNC notes there’s a “strong debate regarding the role of FLO-CERT inspectors,” and that some of the requirements — including certification costs — “are excessive for small producers associations, in which a relevant percentage of households are illiterate or functionally illiterate.”

Still, the Board asserts that “We are convinced that Fair Trade constitutes the best alternative for the ECONOMIC, social and environmental SUSTAINABILITY for thousands of households of small coffee producers. There is no other movement or seal in the coffee market with the values and results that Fair Trade has at this time. The new seals which are arising due to the impulse of the big trading companies and roasters are fading away each day and their messages are not economically feasible for small producers.”

Wanna read the letters without my interruptions? I’ve uploaded the docs (all MSWord): The Equal Exchange letter’s here, and the JNC letter’s here (English version, Spanish version).

1 Comments