The History of Authentic Fair Trade

By Phyllis Robinson and Nicholas Reid

A free comic when buying from Equal Exchange which partners with local farms, I now am learning more about what fair trade is about.

Intro has people ordering coffee and wondering why it is served with the “blood and misery of a thousand small farmers“ in the coffee. This starts the story of how coffee and fair trade stems in the mid 1800s and growth in Latin America. Latin American gov’ts were looking to grow their econ’s by exporting crops like coffee and gave land titles to euro immigrants wanting to build their finances on new land, but the lands they were trying to give them already belonged to the indigenous who were made to leave and make room for the plantations. Then the landowners had no one to work on the lands, a bill passing for a vagrancy law where anyone who isn’t working will be put in jail or made to work on a plantation.

From then to the 1900s, forced labor was supported as successful cheap labor for plantation owners. Banks were giving out loans, the gov’t approved of roads and more electricity, the plantation owners became wealthier and the workers got poorer, and when stating needing more money, were denied. If the workers or their family became ill, they were denied time off to go to hospital and could be fired outrightly. If not, they would have to deal with paying what they owed at their grocer since they didn’t get paid until certain times and so would owe the plantation $1000, and wouldn’t be able to shop anywhere else on credit so would be indebted to the plantation beyond lifespan.

So, if fired, they’d also be made destitute, put out on the street, and blacklisted. If they tried to fight back by organizing for better conditions, they risked being vanished or murdered. Despite still attempting to fight back, plantation owners maintained power and conditions stayed inhumane, change seeming unlikely. Fair trade came from Europe and at first hadn’t anything to do with coffee farmers, it was a response to the major refugee problem created by WWII.

Due to millions of people being displaced, the refugees had no way to support themselves so made crafts, like baskets, belt buckles, etc, and int’l aid orgs helped them sell to consumers, which is how fair trade came to be. People wanted to aid those when knowing the story of who made the product. It spread to the U.S., and churches and other orgs began importing handicrafts. Life being hard on the plantations and the owners unwilling to improve living and work conditions didn’t stop the workers from trying different strategies to change it, but it didn’t seem possible.

Labor orgs, churches and women’s groups attempted to aid the farmers on organizing and demanding their rights, and landowners would respond by calling the army and sometimes backed by U.S. military aid (Against farmers). Due to how many ways the farmers were being resisted, they were sometimes made to fight violence with violence. In some countries, peasants were given a chance to once again become independent small farmers, like in Nicaragua, the Sandinista gov’t giving farmers land and forming cooperatives, which they pooled their resources together and market their crops as one business. The co-ops were run by a general manager and elected board made of the farmers to oversee the business, and vote on important issues.

So, it got better but not by too much, since having the land wasn’t enough, what with the plantations still having the advantages in the market and support of the gov’t and banks. The banks would also refuse loans to the farmers since their crops were only harvested once a year and the farmers couldn’t support their families until the time they could harvest and sell again. Due to this, the farmers also didn’t have a way to sell their coffee so would turn to coyotes to sell their product which sometimes wouldn’t help since the market was flooded with coffee product so wouldn’t be able to sell it for what it’s worth. This gave the idea of those from other countries trying to aid their sales by importing coffee from the coops and be a new form of int’l trade, which is how it went from charity with non-profits to a sustainable business model of alternative trade organizations springing up in Europe.

This also came with a set of Fair Trade Principles which would be followed in order to qualify producers and traders. So while U.S. was doing fair trade with handicrafts, during this time it didn’t include farmers products. 3 guys working at a co-op decided to try and be more productive and decided to become a business which looked out for the farmers and allow for them to pay higher prices for their product, and so settle on also becoming a co-op so they could work in tandem with the farmers co-op. A year later, in 1986, they make the worker-owned ATO, Equal Exchange (the company I’ve been buying dates from).

Fair trade has helped farmers greatly but much more needs to be done. Fair trade farmers do get more stability and aid then those who stay beholden to trying to find a market for their coffee independently, and also get more choice as to who they want to sell their product to and which farmers they’d like to aid. So despite farmer organizations benefiting from fair trade, it still needs to be protected from corporatizing the system which doesn’t look out for the farmers best interest in the long run and could reverse all the positive momentum made. Transfair USA headquarters response to fair trade with small farmers decide to try certifying ‘fair‘ plantations, which would be easier to work with and get corporations on board more quickly.

Once big corps like Starbucks and Nestle started making demands of the free trade products be a certain way or provided faster, the co-ops fair trade was being pushed out by plantations once again. In the UK Transfair counterpart, the fair trade foundation certified Nestle despite protests. Same thing happens with Dole and bananas making fair trade products, which confused consumers since they now didn’t know whether to boycott or buy from these larger companies claiming free trade. Transfair changes it’s name to Fair Trade USA, which hijacks the name, but the original founders decide to keep their namesake but make it so small farmers would know which co-op was aimed for them, due to a new certification system.

The point being, to be aware which fair trade entities one plans on buying from and make sure it’s local or small farmers being aided. After, successful co-ops are listed from around the world and how they’ve grown their success, from Peru, Mexico (which was first working with Starbucks until they started to try and tell the farmers how to make their coffee, so they were accepted by Equal Exchange), and others.

Well, I found this pretty informing, considering I have also been quite confused about fair trade products, and I’m glad I found one outlet which could lead to others eventually.