Following our earlier blog about Fairtrade Yorkshire welcoming the Tour de France, comes more Fairtrade pedalling, this time from CAFOD. They are planning a summer of cycling to support those most in need around the world. Check it out here.
Another day, another article bemoaning the ills of Fairtrade. This time it's the Economist with a review of Ndongo Sylla's new book, "The Fair Trade Scandal - Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich." I haven't read the book and therefore have to interpret its message through the lens of the Economist, who - unsurprisingly - think that Fairtrade is probably, you know, a pretty bad thing.
The arguments are familiar - Fairtrade benefits big business rather than small farmers, the beneficiaries are mostly countries like Mexico and South Africa who should be able to stand on their own two feet, and the actual cash trickling down to the lowest levels of the supply chain are very small.
I am looking forward to reading the book to find out whether it's just another list of problems, or whether there are solutions being proposed to improve the Fairtrade system. Unlike the Economist, the author (who works for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and has a background in development) is presumably on the side of greater intervention to make trade fairer. At Eighteen Rabbit we are firmly on the side of people working to make the world a fairer, more equitable place. Constructive criticism is an essential part of that, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't going to benefit anyone.
*UPDATE*: On Twitter, @rmelling1 is suggesting that the SCB bananas pictured could in fact be Fairtrade - whcih would be a relief. Though eyebrows will still be raised as the SCB website shows their Fairtrade bananas seem to be clearly labelled as such...
The Co-op, as we know, was the first UK supermarket to stock only Fairtrade bananas. This was thrown into sharp focus during Fairtrade Fortnight as the "Stick With Foncho" campaign looked at banana trading between the UK and the rest of the world.
So why has blogger Jessica Warrey found what seem to be non-Fairtrade bananas in her local Co-op? And why won't the Co-op respond?
Hey @CooperativeFood your websites says you only sell fair trade bananas, I saw differently pic.twitter.com/ccSEclK9KT
— Jessica (@jessicawarrey) July 5, 2014
The dust hasn’t yet settled on the SOAS report which exposed worrying flaws in Fairtrade certification. I’m still digesting the various reports and responses, so more on that in a future post. Shortly after the report was released, the Guardian issued a poll asking if people still trusted ethical labels. A whopping 68% said they didn’t. Here’s one of the comments: “I never trusted ethical labels in the first place. I always assumed that the people behind them were a bunch of greedy liars. Good to see I was proved right.”
Even if you don’t feel as strongly as this commentator, perhaps, like me, you’d appreciate greater explanation of what the various labels mean. This analysis is really useful in comparing different fair trade labelling – and I was interested to read that the Fair for Life label which some of our Zotter chocolate carries, is deemed to be the best.
As mentioned before, much of what we sell at Eighteen Rabbit can’t carry an ethical or fairtrade label. There isn’t yet a suitable system in place for crafts, or at least not for the small scale producers we work with. But if there was, I wonder if it would appeal to our customers. It seems that certification for what we might consider as ‘simple’ products such as coffee, chocolate and bananas is fraught with difficulty, so how could we go about creating a label for products which involve several materials? And how would the tiny producer groups that we work with be able to fund the certification process? Are customers looking for the reassurance of a label, or for transparent information about who produced the goods and how?
We’ve tried to explain the sourcing of our products through the stories of those making them. For example, Just Trade (our fab new jewellery supplier) tell you who made the product and where on the back of the packaging. Our new Cards from Africa (in store only) are hand signed by the maker, and their website contains oodles of information about their fair trade policies. We hope that this gives you all the reassurances you need, but we do welcome your feedback.
Fairtrade Yorkshire: on the road to a fairer future from Worth the Tour on Vimeo.
This is a great little film from committed fairtrade campaigners in Yorkshire.