Fair Trade and Its Environment

A couple of months ago I was asked to respond to a kind of questionnaire. I will use some of the responses I made at that time and I hope I do not fail the test here!

1. What do you think is the essence, the backbone of fair trade?

Fair trade is based on the creation of a solidarity economy. It demonstrates a different way of marketing, whereby organized small producer organizations can offer their products to regional, national and international consumers with prices that cover the real cost of production and reflect the social cost to the organizations and their families in such a way that this can create a dignified economy of the poor. This can and has to create urgent and needed alternative economic models to those of exploitation, exclusion and powerless individualization. The backbone of fair trade is the Organization of small producers in democratic, republican and culturally distinct forms and entities.

2. What was the main reason to start Max Havelaar? (Fair trade with a seal)

The main reason for starting (- in 1988 in the Netherlands with peasants from UCIRI) Max Havelaar was the experience of exclusion, poverty and extreme exploitation of indigenous coffee producers, their fight against the “coyotes” ( exploitative middle men), and Government agencies which kept the small producers in conditions of slavery, dependent on a strain of neoliberal markets from which they were excluded and shunted aside.

3. What do you consider are the main benefits of fair trade for small producers?

The primary benefit of fair trade for small producers is that it has given them the opportunity and the ability to create their own improvements, whether it be to their own homes, to their lands, to the environment, and by cultivating products in an organic way. Furthermore, through organizing, it gave them the ability to demand that regional and national governments implement services to which small farmers are entitled, such as education, infrastructure, improvements to drinking water, access to electricity, the internet and a telephone system as well as passable roads. This social empowerment, culturally and politically, was made possible by being organized and establishing minimum safety standards for food, selling surplus products such as coffee and many other goods, with the condition that it cover, at a minimum, their investment and social costs. In this way, culturally, indigenous peoples began to recover their dignity and their being an ancestral part of society. They maintained their ethnic differences by recovering their way of life and customs, their ancestral languages and faith in themselves, and by becoming aware of the hidden neo-colonial mechanism that harasses their existence.

4. How would you describe the current state of fair trade?

The current state of fair trade is complicated, confusing and full of contradictions. Different interests are at play in the 'family' (WFTO, FLO, and others) of those involved in fair trade and at times are not compatible with the real interests of organized small producers. We underestimate the residual existence of a social and economic colonialism by the coordinating entities, especially those of Western policymakers with their pursuit of development, progress, benevolence, and a lack of understanding and appreciation for cultural and social differences. To learn to respect diversity, we need to learn to apply a real republican model of the equality of human beings. A serious lack of political analysis and insight of the current world situation causes internal stresses, erratic and undemocratic decisions and undermines any real sense of republicanism.

5. What are the main challenges of fair trade?

The main challenge of fair trade is to thoroughly analyze politically the world we are living in, at the regional, national and international level, to counter the prevailing discouragement of creating another economy with real solidarity and a human face. Fair trade easily falls into the trap of being mainly an economic endeavour - get a better price for your product and that is it! This is not fair trade for the majority of the population of the countryside, particularly small producers. We can easily forget that life is more than just “dollars and cents”, even though we can acknowledge that an adequate income is important to maintain the family. The creation of a supposedly worthy place in the conventional market is an aberration. The big question we have to answer is how to create a decent economy for small producers where solidarity really exists and perseveres. The neoliberal model, impregnated in all its magnitude, is not a feasible model to eliminate inequality and extreme poverty. Poverty is not the problem. The lack of democratic control over the market and the economy, that is the main problem. The accumulation of power, be it in terms of capital or political power, is the main cause of maintaining and increasing misery, creating more and more inequality and exclusion. Re-establishing the real power over economic and market forces is therefore the main task of Fair Trade. It is for this reason that we in Latin America have established our own Fair Trade system with the small farmers seal (SSP) for our own local, regional and South-to-South market. This is the political quest of and for small producers, organized in democratic and republican unions.

6. Can fair trade guarantee the eradication of poverty and implement social justice and sustainable development?

Fair trade alone is not a guarantee of the eradication of extreme poverty. Here we have the big question: what is real poverty? I learned that it is important to distinguish between misery, extreme poverty, the lack of the necessary living conditions and a dignified poverty where the basic needs of life are guaranteed: access to housing, land and labour, health, education, water and a pleasant environment, clean rivers, accessible roads, freedom and real democracy at home, village, region, and nation. A dignified poverty economy is our utopian ideal; the fight to bring this about is today's reality for small producers. Let us be democratic and join the big majority of the planet’s population. To create power structures that guarantee social justice is the task of the organizations through arduous struggles, in conjunction with several willing local, national and international movements. One of the weak points of the fair trade family is their minimal connection with other movements such as Via Campesina, cooperative networks, the real green movements, most of the world's population. To create democratic mechanisms in the economy and the market is an ideal that the current market economy does not want to accept. Most of us know that the so called free market does not exist, but rather is manipulated by the power brokers who do not want any democratic and political restrictions. The state as guardian of the Common Good for all its citizens does not exist. On the contrary, governments, both national and multilateral, are being co-opted by the collusion of the economic power brokers. The law of the free market jungle is one with no restrictions and oversight. It is no wonder that the international economy and market is in such a mess. The neo-liberal ideology, in its classical emphasis on its theories of the market, sees this as a spontaneous order, self-sufficient in its dynamic auto-regulation. The market, in this view, is sufficient of itself to self-regulate through its own internal dynamics. The market not only does not require external orientation and input but any external interference harms its optimum performance. Such a “perfect” living being would surpass in self-regulatory potential to other living beings. In these, the complex levels of internal self-regulation interact among themselves and within the environment, so that accentuated autonomy remains relative. The dogma of the indivisible and self-sustaining market is not content with partial self-regulation. It aims for total self-regulation and that is a fiction. It only applies to players who are in the game but does not take into account those 'excluded' from this self-regulation. They dangle the potential of being included... 'some day', a day which never comes. The self-regulation of the market needs exclusion. For example, the law of supply and demand influences the setting of prices for products and services. In that law, only those who have the power of purchasing and marketing are considered. Those who do not have this power are excluded. The simple fact that the right of survival of all human beings on our planet is not considered nor permitted within the parameters of this self-regulation regime. It makes the so-called "free market" far from free for the majority of the world's population. This is the crux for the urgent need to develop another alternative market, a fair market for all. Organizing the hope for a different market means not surrendering the conscious solidarity options to any self-regulatory system.

8. The media play an important role in the era of globalization, in the habits and tastes of people. What role do the media play in the promotion, dissemination and awareness of "fair trade"?

The media plays an important role in promoting and building awareness of producers and consumers and their organizations. But what kind of communication are they promoting? How to help the poor? To show in nice videos malnourished smiling children who already go to a small school which, thanks to fair trade, the village was able to build! Analysing YouTube videos on fair trade, the majority of these do not give me much of an appetite! And, of course, all do so with the best of intentions but neither in cohesion with nor understanding of the reality and experience of the world of the people and organizations being displayed in these videos.

9. To what extent does fair trade improve access for disadvantaged producers to market and change the rules of conventional trade?

1

This can raise thousands of questions! Yes, there are many organizations that have gained access to the market, be it at the regional, national and even international level, which is very important in their journey. They learn, they regain dignity, they can begin to make improvements within their homes, villages, and regions. I don't know to what extent this has impact for real change on the conventional rules of the conventional market. Processing, bagging, selling coffee from small producers is also a business and businesses remain and are subjected to the rules of competition, promotion, and national and international laws. There is a very wide discussion about fair trade and solidarity which is of utmost importance. These are very diverse discussions (- critical, adverse, studies pro and contra, etc.). But as soon as you see that big transnational corporations have an interest in fair trade, that does not mean that one day they will change the rules of conventional trade which they themselves have instituted. They will defend these rules at all costs. One has only to view the lobbying for the planned international rules of free trade between the USA and Europe (TTIP) to understand this.

Fair trade intends to change the secure rules of conventional trade, impregnated and baptized with their quasi-divine neoliberal myth. But to do so, we have to reach a minimum of understanding among all the organisations as to where we want to go. This means that you need at least an ideal, a vision and the audacity to take the necessary steps to achieve these. Equally, you need a lot of patience, perseverance and courage. I hope we can all participate in that nice journey.

Here are some conclusions and recommendations for the movement I would like to make, taking into account several points made by Marco Coscione:

First:

Continue to develop and strengthen Fair Trade, with all its internal diversities that characterize and enrich this movement and always starting with a self-managed and real sustainable development perspective.

Second:

Remain well aware of the nerve centre of the movement: prioritize the prominence of the organized small producers over any other actors, with the conviction that ‘solutions come from below’.

Third:

Strengthen ties with the whole of the social movement, to build another path to an inclusive and sustainable development, or the good life.

Fourth:

Increasing democratization and social control of the dynamics of production, trade and consumption, based on social, human and people’s rights and the well being of our planet.

Fifth:

Decolonize the economic and political perspectives of the movement and rewrite, from the South perspective, its history, its processes and its future developments. This includes restructuring the systems of internal governance of the fair trade movement, in particular that of the WFTO and FLO. No more bureaucracy ! CLAC has already initiated this process of decolonization of Fair Trade without giving in on the principles of the small producers, struggling within the institutions in order to create, as the Zapatistas of Chiapas say: ‘let us fight for a world where all kinds of worlds are possible’.

Sixth:

Advocacy with the authorities and public institutions in each country. There is a need not only for Fair Trade towns, but above all, public Fair Trade authorities and institutions. This means that we need to protest against public institutions when they are not functioning well and in our interests. At the same time it is our responsibility to put forth feasible proposals which these institutions can implement. Political purity does not help us much. Let us slowly take over the institutions.

Seventh:

The building and/or strengthening of internal fair trade markets and, therefore, the commitment to raising awareness of responsible consumers in the countries of the (South) region.

Eighth:

The development of a South-South fair trade between Latin American countries and also with Africa and Asia. Good Chilean wine in Mexico and fine Mexican produced organic coffee in Chile!

And on top of all this let us all not forget to say a clear NO to the possible approval of a 'Transantlantic Trade and Investment Partnership' (TTIP).

1