Fair Trade or Flawed Trade?

Without coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever,” reads a placard outside Emporio café on Abel Smith Street. It’s a David Letterman quote, but even half a world away from his Late Show, the sentiment rings true: if ever there was a city fuelled by caffeine, it’s Wellington. Today, though, one’s choice of coffee can communicate much more than a straightforward need for espresso. As interest in ethical trade grows worldwide, an increasing number of New Zealanders are prioritising the purchase of fair trade coffee, as well as tea, sugar, chocolate, cotton and bananas – and Wellington, as the Southern Hemisphere’s first certified Fairtrade capital city, is leading the charge.
That said, fair trade is not without controversy. Critics of the movement argue that it does not do enough to enable farmers in the developing world to break out of the poverty cycle; that it enforces Western political views while ignoring wider issues of mechanisation and industrialisation. In particular, the global standard-setting body Fairtrade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International – which oversees the certification and labelling of products – has come under fire for its handling of the fair trade agenda. Some see it as a formal means of greenwashing, while others simply question how much of the increased retail price reaches producers in the Third World.
Even acknowledging that every movement has its detractors, it’s difficult to measure the impact that consumer choices made in New Zealand have in the developing world. So what does fair trade mean to retailers, consumers and farmers? Was the Wellington City Council right to seek certified Fairtrade status? And does the extra dollar or two at the supermarket make a real difference to growers?
“There are flaws in fair trade, but there are flaws in everything,” shrugs Geoff Marsland, self-professed “coffee baron” of Havana Coffee Works and Coffee Imports.
He would know: Havana was one of the first coffee companies in New Zealand to embrace the movement. It sells certified Fairtrade coffee, for which it pays a percentage of its annual profits to FLO International’s regional body, Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand (FTAANZ). This permits Havana to use the term ‘Fairtrade’ (one word, as opposed to two, and capitalised) and the iconic blue, green and black Fairtrade logo on its promotional material and packaging.
Even though Marsland pays a considerable amount to FLANZ each year to remain a licenced trader, he is vocal in his criticism of the movement. Mostly, he has misgivings about the product certification system, which he sees as inauthentic compared to his trips “to origin, right in the jungles of Bolivia or wherever” – souvenirs from which are scattered around his office at Havana HQ.
“Coffee’s made a lot of millionaires, and they’re not on the mountains,” he says pointedly. “One thing that really makes my blood boil about fair trade is that it’s a Western system. These places in South America, or Africa – they might’ve been doing something a certain way for 200 years, and then, all of a sudden, someone comes along, dressed in khaki and driving a Land Rover, and imposes a system on them that doesn’t necessarily work.
“Fairtrade is its own juggernaut – a lot of the levy goes back into building the brand, and that’s cool, as education’s got to be done at the retail end... But I’d like to see how much money goes through to the growers, because in a lot of situations, it doesn’t. It gets taken by the letterhead, and the Christmas parties, and all those other things that Fairtrade does,” he adds wryly.
Despite Marsland’s reservations, he participates in the scheme because he can see the value in its work with small nations and, more practically, its appeal to consumers. But in response to these perceived limitations, Havana also sells ‘real trade’ coffee, where Marsland develops a long-term relationship with farmers outside of a formal fair trade system. He sees this as an advancement on the movement’s policies and beliefs.
“You might go to an area where there are 500 coffee farmers, and two or three families that can’t afford the certification,” he points out. “They get ostracised. So where’s the fair trade in that?”
Under real trade, Marsland offers individual growers more than the international Fairtrade Premium for coffee “so that they’re getting all of that money, and we’re building a future with them.
“We’re not just there for the short term – I go, ‘I want my kids to be buying coffee off your kids’,” he says. “To me, that’s much more important than a Fairtrade banner showing that someone had one gone there and stamped something. That’s not what we’re into.”
Jessica Godfrey, marketing manager at Caffe L’affare, shares his concerns: “I worry about people who go, ‘Well, it’s got the [FLO International] label – that’s enough’.” The other implication of the label is that it might lead consumers to assume that products on the market that do not carry it are somehow unfairly traded.
“Going and meeting the growers is the best form of research,” says Godfrey. “When Zeke [Alley, L’affare’s IT manager] met our farmers, they weren’t giving him high fives for paying premium. They were still saying ‘We don’t get paid enough’ – because it’s true! We shouldn’t think that just because it’s Fairtrade certified, and they’re getting more money than other people, that everyone’s completely rooting for them.”
Rene Macauley of Peoples Coffee also believes in the importance of frequent trips to origin, having travelled to Sumatra, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico in recent years. “It’s very expensive to travel overseas from New Zealand, but we’re very much focused on it. The heart of fair trade is the producers, rather than the product.”
For all fair trade’s shortcomings, Macauley points out that the alternative, free trade, is also problematic: “Who has the majority in that transaction? I think we’d all agree that it is typically the Western corporations, not the producers. [With fair trade], we’re recognising that that’s a problem, and that coffee farmers have very little power.”
Macauley argues that working with co-operatives such as those organised under the Fairtrade scheme benefits entire communities in the developing world, as traders such as Peoples pay a Fairtrade Premium on top of the agreed price for investment in social, environmental and economic development projects. “The money that we pay our end goes through far fewer hands – it’s going directly to the farmers, and as a group, they decide what they want,” he says. “Often it’s pharmacies, roads, coffee infrastructure...”
But Murray Langham, owner of Greytown’s Schoc Chocolates (which markets itself as “ethically traded”: “We know where our chocolate comes from,” says Langham succinctly), believes that the co-op arrangement detracts from the power of individual growers. He also notes that a sudden influx of wealth has the potential to damage developing communities, pointing to anecdotal evidence that “when farmers are getting paid a lot more money, they do end up going to the brothels and getting drunk”, resulting in fractured families and a spike in sexually transmitted disease.
For these reasons, Langham is “very dubious” of the movement: “While Fairtrade sounds very good, to my mind, how it’s actually administered doesn’t necessarily follow through.”
But for every critic of fair trade, there’s an equally vocal champion – sometimes in high places.
“Not many people can say that they’ve looked in the Mayor’s kitchen cupboards,” remarks Celia Wade-Brown as she shows me the Fairtrade tea and coffee on offer to her staff.
In 2009, Wellington became the first capital city in the Southern Hemisphere to receive Fairtrade city accreditation from FTAANZ – the result of three months’ campaigning. The evidence of this is a humble laminated certificate, tacked to the wall of the kitchen that adjoins Wade-Brown’s office.
“All of South America, all of Australasia, all of Southern Africa, and we managed to do it first,” she says with evident pride. “It makes Wellington appear a capital that cares... It’s looking outwards at the connections we’ve got.”
In order to be awarded Fairtrade status, an area must meet five criteria. The local council must pass a resolution expressing support for the movement, and serve Fairtrade tea and coffee at its meetings and in its offices; a range of certified products must be available in a number of shops and cafes relative to the region’s population; a number of local workplaces and organisations must use Fairtrade products; and a steering group must be convened to ensure continual commitment to the cause. David Perks, chief executive of Positively Wellington Tourism, says the certification reflects Wellington’s being “a fairly liberal city with a social conscience. It’s absolutely consistent with the way that we market the city, both as a destination and as a good place to live,” he says. “It fits very comfortably with being a Wellingtonian.”
Along with Wade-Brown, Stephanie Fry of Celcius Coffee in Petone was part of the team that helped to secure Wellington Fairtrade status. She considers the result “monumental” and regrets that it’s not more widely celebrated.
“It feels like we’ve created this amazing thing that the whole city should be so proud of, yet people still don’t know about it,” she sighs. “It’s not being put out there. My concern is the amount of work needed to keep us at that level – it’s about getting more and more people behind it to support it. There’s still only a very small percentage of businesses that are passionate about supporting this.”
That said, Fry notes that local and central government, as well as large businesses, are leading a shift towards fair trade in Wellington. More than a tonne of Fairtrade certified Celcius Coffee was sold through OfficeMax’s corporate catalogue within the first eight months it was available, which Fry says is “quite phenomenal”.
“Obviously a lot of departments have been tasked with becoming sustainable right across the board, so drilling right down to the coffee is important to them, and when staff see that, they start looking at what options are available to them in their day-to-day consumption.”
Wade-Brown points out that coffee, an everyday essential for some, can be an accessible means of contributing to the fair trade movement on a regular basis: “It just reminds us that it’s not the once-a-year donation that makes a difference... it’s about what you do every day.”
Wellington’s coffee industry is so competitive that the global price increase cannot easily be passed onto the consumer, meaning that coffee remains an inexpensive means of making a sustainable choice. For more boutique fair trade retailers, however, it can be harder to market their products.
Although Gosia Piatek, of certified Fairtrade organic cottonwear label Kowtow, considers ethical trading to be a “core value” of her brand, she downplays its importance because she works “in the area of vanity”.
“Basically, we’re trying to get everybody to buy it because it’s an awesome product that’s really high quality – we don’t want to preach to the converted,” she explains. “If I were to target the people who know what Fairtrade means, I’d have a very small target market, and I’d be out of business. Our products cost a lot more than a cup of coffee.”
Piatek lets Kowtow speak for itself, noting that the high quality of the garments is what cinches a sale and “the extra cherry on top is that it’s Fairtrade”. Even then, she does not print the Fairtrade label – which she pays an annual levy to use – on the actual garments: “The logo is quite commercial, and it doesn’t go with an exclusive boutique fashion brand,” she says. “So we’ve decided to put it on our swing tags and on our website, but, y’know... in the corner...”
Piatek’s understated approach to ethical trading in the face of other companies’ showboating about their sustainable status. “Gosia is very assertive in her commitment to sustainability,” agrees Starfish founder and Kowtow stockist Laurie Foon. “But it’s style first – we understand that. We couldn’t stock Kowtow if the styling wasn’t great, but it’s fantastic, so that’s handy!”
Foon, herself a sworn advocate of ethical trading (Starfish was awarded a New Zealand Sustainable Business Award in 2007, the first fashion label to receive such recognition), believes that New Zealand has a lot to gain by establishing itself as a forerunner in the fair trade movement.
“I really think the sustainable story is the best fit for us as New Zealanders, because we’ll never be mass market – we can only be boutique, so we may as well go right where the world’s going at the moment,” she argues. “There’s a competitive advantage for us there.”
But, as Foon points out, fair trade is about more than money, labels and Western corporates: at the heart of the movement is a simple attention to “good intentions”.
“I don’t want to start sounding like a hippie here, but everything we make or do has some energy about it,” she says. “So everything you make, if you can make it with love – I think that’s the secret for mankind to go forward. Just taking care.”
But what must happen for the fair trade movement to go forward? Marsland, Langham and others’ concerns suggest that serious consideration should be given as to whether we can ‘take care’ of producers in developing nations outside of a formal, corporate scheme that abides by Western values. But while fair trade might not be perfect, neither is it entirely flawed. For now, it’s important that we look towards sustainable practice, whatever the cost – and, while the Fairtrade certification scheme exists, that cost will likely be the extra dollar or so per kilo of coffee that that black, green and blue label reassures us goes towards the greater good.