The Beginners Guide to Fair Trade

I picked up this book because I'd been really excited about Fair Trade when I first learned about the movement a few years ago, but I've increasingly been feeling the same way about the Fair Trade label as I do about organics: the labelling system is useful in retail situations when you're buying through middlemen, but there's no substitute for the direct, honest interaction you get when you buy a product directly from the folks who produced it. I realize that's not always possible, especially with foods that are grown on other continents, so I can see how label and certification are useful, despite my ambivalence.

To its credit, this book touched on all of my reasons for not being excited about the labelling system, from its prominent role in many "greenwashing" marketing campaigns to the fact that its specific terms--such as the fact that all Fair Trade products have to be sold through cooperatives--sometimes exclude vendors who also trade fairly. I was encouraged to learn about the "Fair Trade premium" added to the price of all fair trade products, which puts money towards community projects in addition to the guaranteed price being payed to the producers. I was also glad to hear that most Fair Trade programs list the goal of "ongoing improvement" as one of their hallmarks, and that there is a good deal of self-reflection going on within the movement.

Still, I'm not entirely convinced. According to DeCarlo, most people on the planet need to earn $1.50 a day in order to survive, but over a billion people make less than a dollar. It sounds like the Fair Trade movement is largely directed at helping these poorer folks get up to this $1.50 a day level. But that seems like a hollow goal when you think about the much larger discrepancy between what I make, even as a not-particularly-affluent Westerner, and the incomes even of those non-Westerners who have achieved the goal of $1.50 a day.

While we can hardly go backward and dismantle the global food system, I'm still uncomfortable with the idea that trade is the answer, even Fair Trade. It seems to me that trade is the source of the problem, because it has been the impetus for displacing indigenous populations and disrupting traditional ways of life by appropriating land to grow products for export.