After being inspired by a very good friend of mine recently, I started looking a bit more into the concept of trade justice, in order to try to find out if I could do more to help. I made a decision. Not a massive one, a very little one in fact compared with the vastness of the issue, but a decision none-the-less. My decision; to buy only fairly traded chocolate from now on. That means no more Cadbury's, no more Galaxy, at least until they bring out fair trade varieties.
I went into work one day this week and my colleagues were talking about Easter and why it has become so commercialised, and so chocolate-oriented. As part of this discussion I mentioned my decision. The discussion then turned towards fair trade, and I was told by a colleague that fair trade was a farce in any case. This has opened a can of worms, and I am frustrated and confused and in need of a bit of clarity. I am very un-politically and uneconomically minded, and so all of these discussions overwhelm me a bit, and I don't know where to find my place or my stand in it all. Those who know me well will know what a frustrating place that is for me, so if anyone can help, I would be most grateful.
The basics of it as far as I can see is this: Fair trade promises the initial producers of the products, (coffee bean farmers for example), a fair price when trading for their goods. Generally, this means that the price of fair-trade products is higher, but one would think that was a small price to pay for giving people a fairer deal. I may be simple, but that sounds great to me. Apparently not!
The Economist says this: "The low price of commodities such as coffee is due to overproduction, and ought to be a signal to producers to switch to growing other crops. Paying a guarunteed Fairtrade premium - in effect a subsidy - both prevents this signal from getting through and, by raising the average price paid for coffee, encourages more producers to enter the market. This then drives down the price of non-fair trade coffee even further, making non-Fairtrade farmers poorer." Voting with Your Trolley - Economist.com, Dec 7th 2006
It also raises another objection as follows: "Retailers add their own enormous mark-ups to Fairtrade products and mislead consumers into thinking that all of the premium they are paying is passed on...Fairtrade coffee is used by retailers as a means of identifying price-insensitive consumers who will pay more." Voting with Your Trolley - Economist.com, Dec 7th 2006
To be honest, these arguments do seem to have a lot of logic in them. The second argument certainly has the lesser impact on me personally. I find it annoying that companies are using this to make themselves richer and trying to come accross as ethical when really they are just being greedy, but the point is that regardless of that, the producers are still being given more money for their product, and at the end of the day that is why I buy it. I can't make all the corporations less greedy, but I can buy a product which helps a poor farmer to provide for their family.
The first argument, however, stunned me into silence. What it says, in effect, is that me buying Fairtrade may help some farmers get more money, but it is likely to make others even poorer. I can't handle that. I don't want to do that, I want to help not hinder.
I want to be honest now - so here is where I am at. I read those articles on the train, and for the rest of my journey home I had to fight back tears. I was so frustrated that the only response I could make was to cry, and I couldn't even do that! This may seem like an exaggerated reaction, and maybe it was just an emotional day in general yesterday, but this is what I do. I often feel very passionately about an issue. I will be stirred into very strong emotions by something like this. It makes me so mad that there are people in the world who don't have access to clean water. It breaks my heart that there are people who live in poverty and struggle to provide for their families. It drives me crazy that I live in such relative luxury. I wonder if it is possible to care so much that you become of little or no use. If it is possible, then I think I fall in that category, because these things break my heart, and yet I do nothing. Why do I do nothing? Because I don't get it. I don't know how to help. I don't know how to make things better without making them worse.
On one hand I want to fight against what these articles are saying. Delve into them to find inconsistencies and false arguments, so that I can feel free to make my chcoclate choice again. But I have to stop and ask myself why. Why am I so annoyed that these articles might have an element of truth to them. Why does it leave me feeling so utterly gutted and useless. The honest answer is that making a small decision like that made me feel better about myself. It made me feel less guilty. At least I could say I was doing something or trying. Well, I'm sorry, but that is not good enough. This choice is not meant to be about me. It's meant to be about those poor people in the developing world. It's meant to be about actually transforming lives, not letting myself believe I am helping and ignoring all the warnings I get that say that I might not be, just because I want to feel good.
But then I am left with this question: What do I do then? Some people are convinced that the best way to help is to vote for the people that promise to do something about fair trading, and other ethical issues, (such as human trafficking). The problem with that is that politicians are so clever with their words. They can make you think that they are promising things but hide the loopholes and leave us all massively confused. I don't get politics, I am not clever enough, but I want to help so desperately.
I sometimes wish you could 'see' feelings. They are so hard to describe, and this issue for me brings out a lot of them. I want to ackowledge them and use them for good, but they can be so powerful that the only thing I can do is try to surpress them and simply let them go, because I do not know how to respond to them in a better way. Does anyone else have this problem? What can we do? And how do we know that what we end up doing is actually helping long term, and not just making us feel better or less guilty in the present?
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14 comments:
Firstly, I don’t think its wrong that you made a choice that you felt good about. What is so wrong with feeling good about a decision that you have made? Whether it was about you feeling good or not- its still good. The rightness of your decision would not be any better if you felt indifferent or bad even, would it?!
Secondly, the argument against fair-trade is flawed. Chocolate, for example, is a massive market. It’s profit gained from slave labour. It is not ‘overproduced’ we just buy a hell of a lot of it! Even if it is overproduced, the very unpleasant truth is that sometimes growing these crops is all that these people can do to help themselves. Therefore, buying fair-trade may not help everyone but it helps someone and that’s all you can do. Without it cocoa growers would still be getting paid next to nothing. It helps. You can’t fight every battle all at once. Doing it makes a difference. Not doing it wouldn’t. And the sad fact is that you will always feel helpless because of that. Making smart, informed decision about what you buy, who from, who you vote for, who you give your money to, supporting protestors of slave labour and African debt. Realistically those are the choices you can make that can make a difference. They may not be huge ones, but they still make a difference.
An old man was picking up objects off the beach and tossing them out into the sea. A young man approached him and saw that the objects were starfish. "Why in the world are you throwing starfish into the water?" he asked.
"If the starfish are still on the beach when the tide goes out and the sun rises high in the sky, they will die," replied the old man.
"That is ridiculous," retorted the young man skeptically. "There are thousands of miles of beach and millions of starfish. You can't really believe that what you're doing could possibly make a difference!"
The wise old man picked up another starfish, tossed it out into the waves, and said thoughtfully,
"It made a difference to that one."
kirst, that last paragraph can apply to so much. i very often think "...how do we know that what we end up doing is actually helping... and not just making us feel better or less guilty in the present?" but i guess we will never know!
Kirsty, I'm not gonna comment on the content of this blog, but I am gonna comment on the emotions that I recognise expressed in it.
You have got a big heart my friend and I love you for that.
What can we do to help you - is there SOMETHING we can do as a group of people that isn't just what feels like lip service.
I was heartened and saddened at the same time when on the news this week,one trafficker wanted to confess that he feels bad about what he does - great, a real answer to prayer don't you think? But, he doesn't know what to do with his feelings because essentially, he too is a victim of a bigger picture. He's afraid as well. But he's one guy who can, with help make a difference.
How can we help him, how can we help you?
Liz, thanks. That was a really nice thing to say, and a really lovely response. Wow, hearing you say, 'what can we do to help you' really made me sit back and think, well actually, yeah, together, maybe we can do something which will help without hindering others. I am yet to figure out what yet. Maybe I have to make that my mission for a while. Think and pray about where there is a need that we can help with and then get into actually doing something. Don't worry, I am sure I will be letting you know how you can help as soon as I figure out what that may be.
Again, I feel frustrated even as I am typing that anything we do will be minute. I think what I am longing for deep down is an end to all injustice of this type in general - so maybe what I am hungering after is the new earth we will experience when Jesus comes again. Maybe that is the longing deep within. I just have to learn to be patient, stop dreaming too big, and start being a bit more practical and recognising, like Becks said, that even if we can't change the system, we can change a life.
I can identify with the emotion stuff. Weirdly, I've been a lot more emotional recently (even adverts on tv can make me cry, so you can imagine what these issues do to me!!!)
As to the effectiveness of fair trade, hmmmmm, let me do some digging.
Thanks Rach, I would appreciate it. xxx
Hey Kirst - found this on the Fairtrade website:
Is Fairtrade a subsidy that encourages farmers to grow more coffee and therefore contribute to global oversupply and low prices?
Absolutely not. Subsidies are government payments which lower the price of goods with the intention of encouraging their production and/or consumption or of making them more competitive than imported goods. The cost of these subsidies is borne by taxpayers or consumers.
Fairtrade, on the other hand, is a voluntary model of trade that brings consumers and companies together to offer small-scale farmers a price for their coffee that covers the cost of production and provides a sustainable livelihood so that they can send their kids to school and pay their bills.
Oversupply is usually a result of coffee growers increasing production in the brief periods when prices are high. However, it is clear that the recent surge in global coffee production, and consequent low prices, is largely a result of government agricultural export policies in Vietnam and large-scale farm expansion in Brazil. Paradoxically, in an attempt to compensate for lower prices, many small-scale farmers dependent on coffee will increase output at the expense of quality.
But our experience suggests that paying a higher Fairtrade price need not increase production; rather, it gives farmers other options – to invest in quality improvements and gain access to speciality markets or diversify into other crops to reduce their dependence on coffee.
Read more . . . /www.fairtrade.org.uk/downloads/pdf/Fairtrade_and_oversupply.pdf
I also spoke to someone from our church who is in the know. He said that the argument you mentioned sounds like a 'free trade' argument - which apparantly all true economists hold to - their beliefs are such that they think all trade should be 'free' (i.e. we don't mess with them, give farmers fair trade or any subsidies or anything, leave well alone and everything will balance out is their theory) - but it doesn't work because people are too greedy.
Hope this helps. Will continue to dig. xx
Rach - thanks that is very useful. I get very frustrated when there are two comopletely opposite points of view, and both seem (to uneducated me) very plausible. How do you know what or who is right? I am a firm believer in absolute truth, and as someone that relies heavily on this concept - it is really difficult for me to be comfortable when there are two opposing views.
Both cannot be right. Fairtrade cannot be both right and wrong, it must be one or the other. Who is right? How do you decide?
I think that the only way for me to ease my frustration is for me to learn more about the subject and search out the truth in it. But I am a bit lazy, and I HATE economics. It makes me panic. It reminds me of the dread I felt every time I had to go to one of my economics lectures in my first year of uni. Please don't make me do that again?!?!
I wish I had never read the articles. Is that bad? Lazy? To prefer to be ignorant than go through the bleeuurrgghh of studying stuff I don't want to?!
xxx
Wow! You've gone from consumption of chocolate to arguments about absolute truth in one easy blog. I'm impressed!
It can't be easy to apply a mathematical brain to the concept that Faitrade can appear to be both right and wrong. The truth may indeed be relative in this case and you may have to make a decision based solely on what your instincts tell you.
Maybe it will take some further investigation on your part - not simply to buy fairtrade, but within that market to look at individual suppliers (such as Traidcraft?) where it might be possible to be very specific where the produce is coming from.
But beware, by buying that chocolate some other poor farmer is going without.
That's life!
Yeah! Well in that case, life is rubbish.
I'm not sure that is quite the case. I am very sure that fairtrade suppliers (especially those running with a christian ethic) are very careful about what they do, and are making sure that the farmers growing for them are farming the right produce, and are getting a fair wage, and that they are careful to make sure what they are doing isn't hurting other farmers elsewhere. It is still a very small scale project which is worth such a small percentage of the market that it doesn't really affect the overproduction of things. Coffee is very popular, I don't think it is overproduced, and I know that the crash wasn't due to fairtrade. Also, they have economists working for them to ensure they are not doing any damage to the market. You can read it on their website.
Firstly, what Rachel found from the Fairtrade website is far more accurate than the Economist quotes. It's not a criticism, but the Economist prides itself on believing in "free trade and free markets".
This then makes Fairtrade a topic on which, due to its standpoint, it cannot be unbaised.
Secondly, yes it is true that Fairtrade products promote benefit to the few. However, this flies in the face of the current political reality of 'free trade'. The US, Britian and other Western countries provide huge subsidies to agriculture and other commodities to flood the markets of the majority world with cut price products. This is seen as 'free trade' but when fairly traded products pay a fair price to suppliers they are ridiculed.
At the end of the day, Fairtrade is an attempt to make the world a little more equal. Is it enough? No, it isn't. Does it only benefit a few? Yes it does, but that few is slowly growing.
As Christians we are required to do the just thing. I believe in fair trade. I also agree with Richardb that it might be better to source the products through organisations like Traidcraft etc.
However, if you make a choice to go down the fair trade route, then you are not condemning those who do not benefit to a worse life. It is the massive conglomerates that monopolise the western markets that are doing that. If you choose a name brand, then it is not actually going to make a difference to someones life, the companies will simply make bigger profits like Nestle which made £3.8bn profit last year!
Thanks guys for all your help with this. I appreciate it. I will stick with my decision. I think a big reason why this has been an issue for me is because I don't know enough about it to be able to justify my decisions. These points you have all made will help with that. Thanks
COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO YOUR POST but have just written this on liz's blog thought i'd put it on yours to as it amused me - Ok so K is doing the blog table, but have to say have been slightly disappointed with how much kirsty actually has - or hasn't blogged he he he shame you can't put yourself on the statistics hey k - now that would be interesting - would that make you blog more like it is with everyone else he he he he :-> just a thought luv ya -x-
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