What does the ‘fair’ in fair-trade actually mean?
How does ‘fair’ differ from ‘unfair’ trade? What is a ‘fair’ price? How is ‘fairness’ in trading measured? Who gets to say what’s fair? Is ‘fairness’ a collaborative construction between benefactors and beneficiaries? Is that ‘fair’? How do our understandings what’s ‘fair’ impact on the why, what and how of our fairer trading partnerships?
These are interesting and important questions: important not because there is a one best answer and we need to find it out, but important because exploring the possibilities and probabilities of and for ‘fairness’ offers greater clarity and purpose to our practice. Without this clarity, shared understanding and agreement, discussions of how we can best achieve ‘fair’ tend to go round and round in ever diminishing circles of meaning.
In my explorations, the idea of what is ‘fair’ and what is ‘fairness’ is not actually defined concisely anywhere in the core fair trade literature. The fair trade ‘movement’ offers a vague sense of fairness in international trading being about equality of outcomes and generating beneficial consequences for the poorest of the poor. Their agenda for making trading fairer is about empowering these poor producers to have more control and more say about their engagement with international trade.
…But wait there’s a catch, an irony, maybe even a paradox here!
It seems that the benefactors of fairer trading practices, those who make up the now global fair trade networks, are the principle and perhaps only definers and designers of what is the ‘fair’ in fair trade. It is the perceptions of those in the ‘North’ that dominate the conceptualization and practice of fairer trading.
The voices and perceptions of the beneficiaries – the poor producers –the ‘South’ are at best inaudible, at worse absent from discussions and determinations of what is fair and what constitutes fairness in international trade. It might even be suggested that meanings and understandings of fairness in trade are actually imposed by the fair trade ‘North’.
The real paradox is revealed when the movement’s mantra of the ‘trade unfairness’ as “a lack of producer power, participation and agency” is apparently exemplified in who gets to say what’s fair.
Sure, there a many and varied examples of producers participating in discussions and decision-making in the ‘how’ of fairer trading. Sure, there are some fair trade organizations that consider their producer involvement as exceptional and pride themselves on their producer engagement practices.
However, what is also clear is that these engagements about the ‘how’ are undertaken within predetermined Fair Trade network notions of ‘what’ constitutes ‘fair’ and ‘fairness’. Across the fair trade producer spectrum, be it in large-scale commodities or niche-market crafts, producers are neither active nor fully engaged in partnerships where THEIR vision and values of what is ‘fair’ is adopted, respected and promoted.
Maybe it IS time to rethink how we currently do fair trade? Maybe it IS time to give the producers genuine control and power of the ‘what’ in fair trade? Maybe it IS time for the ‘localisation’ of the movement, where the values and priorities of the producers are the determinants of what we in the North do and how we do it in the name of fair trade?
Maybe as Lapierre-Fortin suggests, a system deemed and publicized as ‘fair’ ought to gain insights into what its intended beneficiaries believe is currently unfair, why and how the situation could be made more ‘fair’ to ensure that they truly fulfill their mandate and reach the objectives that matter.
Maybe it is time to stop all these “how to be fairer” debates and discussions among ourselves and actually ask all those producers in their local contexts … “Please tell me what YOU think is fair”? Genuinely care about their responses. And then, as advocates of fairer trading, act and react in supporting the realisation of THEIR fairness aspirations.
At all costs, let’s work together to prevent a reoccurrence of this comment by a fair trade producer…
“When you’re poor, if someone helps you, you have to accept everything that he does or says to you”.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
OK, so what do you then do if the aspirations for ‘fairness’ of the producers are so high as to make it impossible to sell the product? What is better – slightly more fair trade or no trade?
Hi Joe,
Thanks once again for your challenging questions. You seem to be suggesting that producers would have difficulty in developing realistic aspirations of what fair might be or how their conception of fairness might be achieved. I wonder why you went straight to this perspective? What do you think producers would say in response to your question?
Sorry but my answer is I haven’t asked them yet so I don’t know! In her research with cotton producers, Lapperraee-Fortin found that their responses to the questions of what is fair and how their trade could be fairer went to local issues. Their aspirations were around how to better work with or overcome their struggles with a monopolizing buyer and an ineffective, compromised union…I don’t know Joe but these seem pretty realistic to me!
Maybe your experiences have been different!
Cheers
Scott
I think the aspirations are fair, but that the market approach cannot deliver them. In that sense, the fairtrader is unlikely to be able to change blockages in the system as you describe above.
HI Joe,
Thanks for qualifying your previous comment. I am still not sure that I understand your point…So we have a situation where a cotton producer when asked by a supporter of fairer trading (not necessarily a FT buyer-that would OUR notion of fair trade) what is unfair in their trading system. The producer says I am having real difficulties working with this badly behaving buyer and this compromised union.
What would there be to stop the fairer trading supporter saying…Ok lets see if we can work together to see how we might alleviate, adjust to or better deal with these aspects or any other aspects of your trading unfairness?
Cheers
Scott
How is the fairer trading supporter going to completely change the system (bearing in mind that individual fairtraders are often extremely small)?
I think on a larger scale it is the same issue as why the cocoa farmers of the Cote d’Ivorie do are some of the world’s poorest even though they control 50% of the world cocoa harvest. We can think of reasons why they are in that weak position (eg bad communications, poor education, etc) but how does anyone change the situation in their favour? Their aspirations are entirely reasonable, and the goodwill from the fairtrader is sincere. But in reality the forces between us and them are very great and it is mind boggling to try to imagine how we could reorganise the system. Indeed, I’m not sure that it is even possible – it seems to me cocoa and cotton are entirely broken supply chains.
Hey Joe,
We have to stop meeting like this! Thanks again for your much more detailed qualifications!
I now better understand what you are meaning about the market approach and the system and the your aspirations of changing the system.
From your experiences in cotton do you think producers have the same aspirations about changing the system? Did producers ask you for help in fixing the broken supply chains?
I guess the other question to ask is whether fair and fairness can be considered at a systemic level. Some would argue that fairness and defining fairness is contextually and culturally dependent. As such it only has meaning at the local, contestable level. Systemic fairness is an indefinable concept.
As for fairer trading supporters being small…I thought there was a ‘movement’, where people who believed in fairer trading as a means to achieve social justice, worked together in solidarity, supported each other, combined resources, offered complementary skills and became a community of practice in their shared quest to make a better world?
Scott, I’m not going to pretend to know much about the people that grow cotton – the supply chain is extreme complex and I spent most of my time worrying about factories some way further up the chain. I know about the situation in the cotton fields of Africa and India but have never seen it. That said, everyone wants good schooling for their children, good healthcare and enough money to buy good food and shelter. And these basic needs are what we struggle to provide via existing and alternative supply chains. And if we cannot provide these basic and relatively simple things, what chance have we of actually being able to meet the legitimate – perhaps culturally and context appropriate – concepts of fairness?
Joe,
Thanks again!
I guess my fundamental point is that currently in our alternative fair trade supply chains the perspective of the producers about what they feel needs to be done to improve their trading circumstances (what is fair) is in most cases minimal or completely absent.
It seems to me that in our well meaning attempts to do the “right” thing for those much less fortunate than us we have determined, independent of those less fortunate, what we think they need in order to have a fairer trading system. Some might suggest that this behaviour is a carry over from our historical colonialism and paternalism towards the “South”. Some may go as far to suggest that this situation raises important questions of power, privilege and influence within the Fair Trade Movement which “can function as a way of commodifying political concern and deflecting challenge, renormalizing consumption and legitimizing a ‘kinder, gentler’ food regime that is…less nakedly exploitative” (Kruger & Du Toit, 2007, 215)
I am simply suggesting that to overcome this historical and cultural baggage (the ‘North’ being the great ‘know all’ saviors of the planet) that has infected the original ideals of the movement, it may be worth considering the deliberate ‘privileging’ of producer voices in fair trade discussions and decision-making about what is fair and what THEIR needs for greater fairness are.
Just a thought?
Cheers
Scott