In the developed world, we might not know how much of our weekly food spending ends up in the pockets of the producers of Fairtrade fruit, coffee, tea and other consumables, but when faced with shelves of pearly-toothed beneficiaries beaming at us from packs of coffee it’s hard to refuse buying into it.
According to the Fairtrade Foundation, we spent £500m on fairly-traded goods in 2007, and sales are estimated to have been higher last year. With an estimated three million Fairtrade bananas being eaten a day, it makes you wonder what is the actual impact on world trade of our lunch box choices.
I remember when Fairtrade products started popping up in the mid-90s in branches of the Co-op and charity giant Oxfam. I was a teenager at the time, and, naïve as it sounds, I hadn’t stopped to consider that people might be being ripped off for the sake of a chocolate bar.
Today, I won’t go out of my way to buy Fairtrade – if it’s there, I’ll take it, but I’ll admit that I’ve been pretty cynical about the whole thing in recent years.
The aim of Fairtrade is clear – to get a better deal for farmers in the developing world. But I’m not sure I believe that we consumers can spend our way to a poverty-free developing world.
Yet considering that farmers don’t get much cash from non-Fairtrade brands, I reckon that if we don’t buy Fairtrade goods, they’ll get nothing. So I’m open to persuasion – and am regrettably resigned to shop.
Londoner Cis O’Boyle, 34, started buying Fairtrade products five years ago, initially without knowing much about it. ‘Most of my friends are pale-vegan-organic-hardcore types, and I just went along with it. Now I’m more informed. If I’m going to buy tea I feel better knowing that Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade.’
It helps that we no longer have to trek to a shop full of sandlewood and dreamcatchers to get that ethical chocolate fix. Now, we just have to trot along to our nearest supermarket.
What’s more, it’s likely that the black stuff in your latté will be Fairtrade. And in high street fashion stores, it’s clear that there’s money to be made in selling goods that don’t screw the little people over. Yes, ethical shopping has become bigger business.
There are more than 4500 food, drink and clothing items that carry the Fairtrade mark in the UK – a certified stamp awarded by the Fairtrade Foundation, which ensures that producers get a fair price.
All this means we can happily tuck into pretty much anything we fancy – cake, chocolate and flowers – in an ethically sourced cotton vest, feeling smug that what we are doing is helping those living in third world economies.
But Ceri Dingle, director of WORLDwrite, a UK-based charity that runs educational projects to promote a better understanding of international issues, believes that, far from helping, Fairtrade is missing the mark. She believes that the system keeps farmers stuck tending the land, when they might want to hang up their tools and live a different life.
‘Our beef with Fairtrade is that, regardless of its sincerity – I’m sure it’s all well-meaning – it demeans and belittles the aspirations people have in the developing world, which is to have the same living standards we have in the West.
‘Fairtrade treats the developing world as a farm and perpetuates the West’s monopoly on technology. People in poorer communities have to scrape a living by tilling the soil. It’s about making us feel better about ourselves, or that all you’ve got to do is buy a different chocolate bar. And that’s such a lie. The truth is that the British public does care, so let’s tell them that we can’t change the world by what we put in our shopping trolleys.’
She refers to the Foundation’s system as the ‘missionary position’, and believes that it’s no different from Christian missionaries in Africa offering charity to the locals.
‘There’s no vision to end poverty through Fairtrade, because farmers are dependent on British middle-class people buying their products. I can’t think of a single country that has ever got out of poverty by working on a farm,’ says Dingle. ‘When we ask workers if the system helps, they say “yes,” but when we ask them what they want instead, they say they want their kids out of this life.’
So if our purchasing isn’t powerful enough to make a difference, why bother? We may as well sink back into our sofas with a box of cheap chocolates, guilt-free.
But Chris Davis, head of policy and producer relations at the Fairtrade Foundation, says that it does help improve farmers’ lives.
‘The idea that we are keeping farmers trapped is nonsense. Two billion people – that’s a third of the world’s population – are dependent on small-scale agriculture and are earning less than $2 a day. If we’re going to enable that group to move out of poverty, we need to look at how to help them meet their immediate needs.
‘The farmers we work with say they don’t want charity, they want a return for their product. That’s where I get frustrated with this culture of dependency. If you’re going to break that dependency you need to find an alternative.’
Today, more than 7.5 million farmers, workers and their families across 59 developing countries benefit from the international Fairtrade system.
In order to win the Foundation’s seal of approval, owners of growing estates have to pay their workers higher than the market wage for helping produce their goods. Good living conditions must also be provided for workers by the owners, and specific environmental criteria need to be met, although these don’t have to be strictly organic.
The pricing system is murky, however. Retailers can whack whatever price they want on a product, meaning that the cash we hand over at the checkout isn’t what ends up in the farmers’ pockets. Davis says that the Fairtrade Foundation can’t enforce retail prices; its job is to ensure that a substantial wage is given to those at the roots of these particular food chains.
‘In Kenya,’ Davis explains, ‘I went to look at a non-Fairtrade flower farm that grows roses. Workers were earning 99 shillings a day, which is around 60p. Then, I went to a Fairtrade farm where they were earning 225 shillings, and I asked what a person would need for a roof over their head and two meals a day. The man I spoke to estimated it would be 150 shillings a day.’ So, it would seem that Fairtraders are better off.
But Dingle remains unconvinced, refusing to buy Fairtrade products, adding that the extra cash farmers make, ‘isn’t enough for them to buy a car to move out of their village, let alone get out of tending the land.’
‘It’s crazy that we have mad panics about what’s in our fridge, while some of these people wish they could afford a fridge,’ she says.
‘I buy the cheapest thing going because I don’t believe the ability to change things lies in our pockets.’
Dingle and Davis are evidently speaking to different farmers – some of who are happier with their lot, others who aren’t. But if we do stop shopping the Fairtrade way, what do we do instead?
‘The key thing is to take a step back, to stop thinking about our needs and challenge the status quo. We must stop seeing people in the developing world as victims,’ says Dingle. ‘It’s important to recognise the need to campaign. There are lots of things people can do. They can send money directly to projects – this has a greater impact on people’s lives.’
But where does that leave consumers? Is Fairtrade a) bad because it’s just a quick-fix guilt-trip-solver, b) good because it gives farmers a bit more cash, or c) bad because it doesn’t give farmers enough?
It’s a bit of a brain-boggling dilemma, but charity worker Begoña Mendez, 38, from London, who has studied Fairtrade in tourism, says, ‘It’s true that farmers depend on us to buy their products, but I guess it’s about them being dependent in a fairer way. ‘They can become more independent through Fairtrade than if they were trading with mainstream organisations that pay them less for the same product. It might not be 100% the best solution, but it’s the lesser evil.’
Regular Fairtrade consumer Andie Barlow is unsure of its efficacy, particularly when it comes to fairly-traded goods other than food. ‘There’s an emphasis on food,’ she says, ‘but clothing companies use Fairtrade labels, and then only a small percentage of it actually turns out to be so. It’s a minefield.
‘Fairtrade isn’t perfect, by any means, but more awareness and more pressure on the big guys means that there’s more likely to be change. People need to shop less, make do and mend more. The only reason those in other countries are making things for very little money is because we want it and we’ll pay for it.’
In an ideal world, sweat shops would be illegal and no-one would be ripped off for a swift buck. But as it stands with current inequalities, it’s evidently a question of whether we’re aiming to improve things in the short- or long-term. Is Fairtrade enough? Dingle is right to criticise, and campaigning is an important part of creating change, but it’s a lot to ask of people who are stuck in a treadmill lifestyle, with little enough time to spend with their partners, let alone finding space to organise protest marches.
The reality is that it’s easier to sign a petition or shop. As Davis says, ‘All great rivers start with trickles of water. The fact that people are out there buying Fairtrade shows that there is a genuine demand for it. And the Fairtrade mark is now recognised by 80% of people in the UK. That can’t be sniffed at. One of our ambitions now is to make a real concerted effort with governments to see bigger change.’
Fairtrade isn’t going to radically change the world overnight, but I’m quietly convinced it is an adequate measure until the richer governments decide to invest in struggling nations. And at the moment, who can say fairer than that? D 
For more information, visit
www.worldwrite.org.uk
www.fairtrade.org.uk