World Fair Trade Day

May 17, 2003 11:00 AM

"Do you know how much effort and time is put into the clothes you wear and the food you eat?"
-Sarah, 12, Bristol
Today is World Fair Trade Day. Even Dunkin' Donuts is giving it a try. Is Fair Trade potentially a better idea than boycotting?
posted by Shane (24 comments total)

Absolutely, and there needs to be legislation to encourage it, from all sides.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 11:08 AM on May 17, 2003

Fair Trade goes hand-in-hand with boycotting.

In my locale, it costs me about an extra buck to purchase a week's worth of Fair Trade coffee, versus non-Fair. That is so little skin off my ass that I have, effectively, boycotted the asshole companies that are screwing over the coffee producers.

For at least five years now I've pretty much avoided eating cheap-ass American-style chocolate bars. I far prefer Lindt 80% cocoa, which is very likely not produced from slavery chocolate.

But I discovered within the past few months that I've got access to Fair Trade chocolate. Again, the cost difference is minimal -- and the quality difference, outstanding! So, again, I've effectively boycotted all the crap chocolate producers and simultaneously support the cocoa farmers.

I'm not aware of much else in my consumer life that could be supported by fair trade. My fruit and veggies tend to be locally-produced; my clothes are mostly American-made; I don't think my toiletries are Fair-Tradeable; etc.

All in all, it takes negligble effort and cost to support Fair Trade initiatives.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:32 AM on May 17, 2003

Thanks for the link! My husband and I have been slowly trying to make all our purchases fair trade, and I knew nothing about Fair Trade Day.

I used to be glad it was a 30 minute drive to the nearest Dunkin Donuts. Now I think I'll have to encourage someone to open a downtown store.

On preview: Paul Newman's Organics makes fantastic chocolate bars, and we've corresponded with the company and confirmed they are FT, even though it doesn't tout it on the packaging.
posted by frykitty at 11:35 AM on May 17, 2003

Thanks for the link, Shane!
posted by plep at 12:05 PM on May 17, 2003

Yes, Shane--good work.
posted by brittney at 12:11 PM on May 17, 2003

Excellent link, but let me get this. My mom has been reincarnated as a 12-year-old British girl? She's not even dead!

It's good to see Wisconsin thinking of Bolivia and vice versa. The "free trade zone" currently under negotiation will never be more than a rigged arm-wrestling match until the U.S. stops preaching free trade and practicing protectionism, with the grey silhouettes of aircraft carriers just over the horizon.
posted by hairyeyeball at 12:13 PM on May 17, 2003

I have to confess that having seen the domain www.wftday.org, I just registered www.wtfday.org. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet - something childish, probably.

Anyway, nice link, I will make more effort in future to support Fair Trade.
posted by chrid at 12:31 PM on May 17, 2003

Sip on this.
posted by MarkO at 12:42 PM on May 17, 2003

Whip The French day.org?
posted by Space Coyote at 12:44 PM on May 17, 2003

"We are going to be fast and unpretentious. We're going to call a small a small,"

This, even more than lower prices, and almost as much as fair trade(thanks for the links) is yet another reason why Dunkin' beats Starbucks [self-link].
posted by jonmc at 1:07 PM on May 17, 2003

from Marko's link:

Nevertheless, the story of the current coffee glut is at bottom a story of falling costs and productivity improvements on both the supply and demand sides. In particular, prices have fallen so low primarily because of dramatically expanded production by low-cost suppliers in Brazil and Vietnam. And those low prices are a signal to high-cost producers – for example, in Central America – to supply a higher-value product or exit the market.

However well-intentioned, interventionist schemes to lift prices above market levels ignore those market realities. Accordingly, they are doomed to end in failure – or to offer cures that are worse than the disease.

posted by NortonDC at 2:21 PM on May 17, 2003

From MarkO's Sip on this link:

Nevertheless, the story of the current coffee glut is at bottom a story of falling costs and productivity improvements on both the supply and demand sides. In particular, prices have fallen so low primarily because of dramatically expanded production by low-cost suppliers in Brazil and Vietnam. And those low prices are a signal to high-cost producers – for example, in Central America – to supply a higher-value product or exit the market.

MarkO, I'm not a huge economics buff, so please feel free to expound on the material in your link. What I don't understand is, If I consciously decide to buy a more expensive coffee labelled "Fair Trade" instead of one of the less-expensive Brazilian or Vietnamese varietals, how is this going to hurt underpaid and exploited coffee laborers?

Brink Lindsey's words are not exactly elaborate or clear. (And, excuse me again, but I tend to view as jargon the words of any person with a name like "Brink Lindsey" who is a director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies and is obviously entrenched in the study of Economics. )

I don't know. I'm looking for things on Dr Lindsey right now. If you can convince me, I'll change my attitude and behavior. Seriously.

And, on a familiar related note:


posted by Shane at 2:36 PM on May 17, 2003

Um, unless they're lying, Starbucks has claimed they support Fair Trade.
posted by Down10 at 2:42 PM on May 17, 2003

My local Starbucks in London had Fair Trade as its "Coffee of the Day". I found the idea amusing. "Oh, you know, the Fair stuff is just for today. Tomorrow it's back to Unfair stuff."
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:04 PM on May 17, 2003

Marko's link doesn't bother to explain that the cheap-ass Vietnamese coffee is robusta bean, so notoriously awful that it's processed to death to make it unoffensive to the palette, and used as the "coffee" in those gawdawful flavoured instant-coffee things that Nescafe sells, in those gawdawful flavoured carafes of shite that every gas station and corner grocery has, and in those gawdawful stale flavoured beans sold in the supermarket.

There is no way for coffee farmers to compete against the megacorporation coffee plantations. The robusta bean is such crap (and priced accordingly) that it's only economical to grow using commercial farming techniques: pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, automation, etcetera.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:06 PM on May 17, 2003

five fresh...how so? Mark O's links agrees with you - the Central Americans (with higher wages) need to produce higher value product (meaning high-quality coffee). They would then be competing on the value of their product rather than a misguided idea about what fair is.

I don't think the Vietnamese farmer who is having his coffee de facto boycotted will feel that the method is "fair".

There are many examples of adding value - we pay far more for a Lindt bar than a Hershey's bar, because the cocoa quality is better in the Lindt. That's what the coffee farmers should be focusing on.

If coffee were legitimately being produced at "unfair" prices (say offering a dime to the grower for a dollar's worth of raw product), then every Joe Capitalist from here to China would swoop down to Central America and offer the worker twenty, then thirty, then fifty, then ninety cents, because there are significant profits to be made even at ninety cents.

All I see with "Fair Trade" are coffee growers who are unable to compete using baseless human rights claims as a grounds for what is, very clearly, unfair trade. Simply by establishing reputations as higher quality coffee regions (the Kona region in Hawaii is by no means starving, for instance), those growers can raise their wages without such pseudo humanitarian hogwash.
posted by Kevs at 8:50 PM on May 17, 2003

What I don't understand is, If I consciously decide to buy a more expensive coffee labelled "Fair Trade" instead of one of the less-expensive Brazilian or Vietnamese varietals, how is this going to hurt underpaid and exploited coffee laborers?

The reality is that most growers will not get that higher price from fair trade certified coffee. The ones who do may get by for a few years, but it just delays the painful transition that they will have to make to other products. The sooner they face that reality the better.

If you can convince me, I'll change my attitude and behavior. Seriously.

I'm glad you're keeping such an open mind. I recommend the Cato Website and reading PJ O'Rourke's Eat The Rich, for starters.

That logo is pretty funny too.
posted by MarkO at 10:21 PM on May 17, 2003

If the product is good, and there is demand for fairly traded goods, then why would the farmer be forced to grow some other crop? Small producers are more likely to be growing for a specialist market, whilst bigger producers would be the ones to suffer from the coffee glut.
I don't know any coffee drinker who doesn't like to think that they are into 'the good shit', and they also will pay to demonstrate this.
Whilst the market controlled by the big four purchasers in general, they do not control the fairly traded part of the market (as it is not worth their while), so can it exist in isolation?
Boutique coffee houses will still demand their speciality beans, regardless of the *ahem* quality of beans that they put into Nescafe.
posted by asok at 2:16 AM on May 18, 2003

I don't think the Vietnamese farmer who is having his coffee de facto boycotted will feel that the method is "fair".

The image of the Vietnamese farmer is misguided, since it's just as fff described it, a plantation farm mass-producing utility-grade coffee. 'hurtin' them by buying fair trade coffee doesn't strike me as such a bad thing.

That something is fair trade is perceived to be a selling point, another feature bullet in the product description. No different from anything else.

o great taste
o pleasant aroma
o conistent quality
o not made by slavery

It's all good old fashioned capitalism.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:05 AM on May 18, 2003

Smooth, Space Coyote, except that some people will notice that slavery isn't a part of the coffee situation, it's a factor in the cocoa situation. Nice way to smear the distinctions between markets to promote price fixing.

And calling price fixing "good old fashioned capitalism" is quite humorous.
posted by NortonDC at 10:01 AM on May 18, 2003

Kevs, the big coffee corporations have a vested interest in keeping the prices low. They are not bidding each other up.

The big coffee corporations are also not interested in organic, sustainable agriculture. They want coffee as cheap as possible, which means large farms, intensive and destructive agricultural practices, and slavery wages.

Now, please tell me how the small farmer is supposed to make a living in these conditions.

Answer: the same way the farmers in my mainly-agricultural Okanagan valley do. Through the use of a "Locally Grown" and a "Beautiful BC Grown" slogans, the consumer is able to choose to support their community farmers.

Now ol' Juarez, workin' on his ten acres of Ecuadorean coffee farm, doesn't exactly have the name-cachet -- nor coffee volume -- to establish an identity that's going to grab me.

That's where the Fair Trade name comes in. It means several things:
* the coffee is coming from a family or small farm.
* the workers are getting fairly paid
* the farming methods are more earth-friendly than those in the big commercial operations
posted by five fresh fish at 11:11 AM on May 18, 2003

Simply by establishing reputations as higher quality coffee regions... those growers can raise their wages without such pseudo humanitarian hogwash.

It still sounds to me like you folks are arguing on the basis that all fair trade coffee is Robusta trying to increase profits instead of switching to Arabica. This is not the case.

...(the Kona region in Hawaii is by no means starving, for instance)...

Kona is really a special case: it is grown on volcanic lava, with little or no chance of disease or infestation. The individual flavor and quality of a varietal is largely the result of soil and weather conditions (like tea, it all comes from the same plant), and this is never more true than with Kona.
posted by Shane at 12:18 PM on May 18, 2003

Off-topic: I still maintain that true Jamaican Blue Mountain has some relation to the Coca plant. That is one smooth buzz...
posted by Shane at 12:39 PM on May 18, 2003

As long as it has caffeine, I don't care what my coffee tastes like.
Kroger's Breakfast Blend, 12 oz can, $1.29
posted by mischief at 12:38 AM on May 19, 2003