All is Fair in Love and… Fairtrade

Fair Trade 101

According to the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO), the Fair Trade system was developed to address injustices in the conventional trade process that discriminate against small scale producers and push them into marginalization. “This is evident in many poor countries where poverty and economic inequalities are persistent, largely due to the failure of conventional trade to deliver sustainable livelihoods to communities,” says the organization. “WFTO’s response to this failure is Fair Trade.” WFTO, Network of European Worldshops, European Fair Trade Association, and FLO operate under a shared Charter of Fair Trade Principles and two sets of economically relevant Standards to ensure small producers in developing nations receive fair, sustainable wages for their products, providing a safety net at times when world markets fall below a sustainable level. In addition to the Fairtrade price, an additional sum called the Fairtrade Premium is collected and earmarked for a communal fund workers and farmers use to improve their social, economic, and environmental conditions. Considered a trading partnership based on dialogue, transparency, and respect, Fair Trade still encompasses a change-focused component that seeks to change the rules and practice of contemporary trade and secure human, social, and environmental rights. “The FAIRTRADE Certification Mark, which applies to products rather than companies, aims to give disadvantaged small producers more control over their own lives,” says FLO. “It addresses the injustice of low prices by ensuring that producers receive fairer terms of trade and better prices—however unfair the conventional market is.”

Fair Trade: the Movement

Religious groups and politically-motivated NGOs first inspired fair trade initiatives in the 40s—these were focused primarily on establishing aid for developing nations by selling handicrafts to wealthy westerners. The first inkling of consciousness about a system to correct how consumerism in the West was affecting developing nations began in Europe in the 60s and was seen as a political movement against neo-imperialism. The movement differed from earlier attempts at establishing fair supply chains in that it called into question traditional trade methods; actually, it called them out as fundamentally flawed. Throughout the 60s and 70s, the idea grew legs, largely because Oxfam’s Helping by Selling program established in 1965 spanned the globe (and still does) and because fair trade hit the retail sector in 1969 when the first Worldshop launched in the Netherlands. In fact, ideas about how to bridge the world’s economies and create a stronger and fairer link between price and the cost of production blossomed until alternative trade organizations (ATOs) were running from sea to sea, attacking worker and farmer exploitation and foreign domination.

From Crafts to Commodities

By the 80s, westerners were growing weary of handicrafts and ATOs were faced with changing their direction or losing face. Fuelled by the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989, the fair trade coffee movement led the way to a new level of awareness and support of marginalized food producers in developing countries. Although coffee farmers became poster children for the new age of responsible consumerism, with coffee sales making up around 50 per cent of fair trade income, the wave of support caught momentum and soon included tea, dried fruits, sugar, fruit, rice, cocoa, spices, and nuts. By 2002 agricultural goods were responsible for 70 per cent of fairly traded items, with handicrafts down to around 25 per cent. When Oxfam abandoned crafts and hopped on board the food train that same year, the wave crested and the future of fairly traded commodity items was secured.