Should
concern about fair economic practices be a consideration in what we buy? How can a consumer be guaranteed good
information? Do you think that
skepticism about fair trade certification is justified, or do third party
organizations like this provide the only labels that can be trusted? Would you
be willing to pay more for a cup of coffee or a bar of chocolate if you knew
that farmers were getting a fair price?
I appreciate this article as it synthesises the issue of fair trade labelling with all its pros but also flaws. In my opinion fair trade certifying is an essential idea and should be implemented into trading goods as well as services. Nonetheless, its concept should be optimized in a way that it would not be possible to misuse it and it would really protect workers’ rights.
ReplyDeleteIf we agree on that supplement of fair trade and protection of workers’ rights is a must we may concentrate on how to fulfil these demands. According to the article, there are some companies which mark products with various fair trade certificates and labels. On the contrary, the different approach is direct trade which is based on reduction of middlemen while trading.
As mentioned in the article, the problem of the fair trade labelling is that some companies which assign these labels often tend “to make a profit while appearing socially responsible”. This might have played a significant role when Fair Trade USA’s split from Fairtrade International in order to create trading rules that would make it easier to certify larger plantations’ and corporations’ products. If we look closer at the direct trade principles we may find out that there is no third party to control and to certify the products. Moreover, it is done by company itself so reliability of the system varies according to company.
To improve pre-existing systems I suggest founding an international organisation or committee which would set and regulate the rules of fair trade certifying so that we would limit the possibility of misusing these labels. This organisation would be controlled by country representatives involved in particular trade. Involvement of concrete countries would, as I hope, strengthen the reliability of whole system as any of them would not like to lose their renomé.
All in all, both approaches to providing fair trade have an important message: protection of workers’ rights. Nevertheless, each of these systems has defects caused by some fair or direct trade organisations’ efforts to make a profit. So let us improve it. We can carry it out by taking the message of previous systems and afterwards creating an international organisation controlled by a group of countries forming really fair trade rules.
The world we live in today, where everything revolves around money and the most important goal is to make profit, is full of unfair financial frauds and low quality and great quantity of goods. Therefore, it is very enjoyable when you can taste and buy something so genuine as Fairtrade goods and taste the real delicacy of this world. However, my question is, can we really trust Fairtrade and their whole business? Is it not just another fraud and game on the market, where vendors claim that the goods are strictly from sufficiently-paid farmers and are of singular quality, but the truth is that the farming processes do not differ from the cheap goods' or are altered just slightly, as well as the workforce is still underpaid? In my opinion, nothing and nobody in this world nowadays can be 100% trusted, consequently, even if you manage to gather as much information about your Fairtrade purchase as possible, I still would not be perfectly sure about it and believe every word they say because there is always a possibility that they just want your money. But let's not look at Fairtrade as something simulated, and let's believe that it really is a solution to escaping from the corrupted shoddy business.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I am really fond of people being interested in conserving human rights and giving everybody the opportunity to be evaluated fairly for their work. As fair trade started achieving real success only in 1997 when Fairtrade International was created, I can say that Fairtrade is not that widespread and just keeps on rising its popularity these days, as I, for example, had not known about Fairtrade since a Geography lesson in 2014. So I am not surprised that the whole system is not stable enough yet, and that there are many arguments about the companies' functioning. I deem the fact that Fair Trade USA decided to leave Fairtrade International in 2011 as very dangerous and unfair towards the whole system, as they altered the rules in order to give chances to larger plantations, which I agree "are often less likely to protect workers' rights." Maybe again, the company realised they were not earning as much money as they could, so they decided to dispense with control of other countries and then were able to adjust the rules to higher income. If it were up to me, I would certainly trust company with more members and therefore higher control than just a solitary Fair Trade USA.
Secondly, who I would really trust is the company called Equal Exchange, as it in addition to just usual fair trade also "makes sure every ingredient is fair trade, including the sugar." Because after all, the cocoa beans in a chocolate are just one of several crucial ingredients, however, if the others are gained deceitfully, how is it a unique and fair product? I also love the idea of the Domestic Fair Trade Association: "a farmworker's voice is just as strong and important as a CEO's voice." I dare to say that a farmer is not as educated as a CEO, thus can be fooled easily by showing them how super advantageous your offer is, even though it is not, but they might not even know what all possibilities are and what they are truly worth, and accept the offer just because it is higher than the offer from normal companies. But if more farmers were able to meet up together with CEO(s) and discuss and open up about their real requests and possibilities, they could make some really fair and advantageous trades. The same threat of inconvenient trades might be there within the Direct Trade. Sometimes, the third party is nothing but a profit for you, mostly if you are new in this business. On the other hand, sometimes not even a certification system can protect you from frauds, as "certification systems are a fix, a Band-Aid. They do not get at the root of cause of hunger, landlessness or poverty."
To sum it up, I really support all the fair-trade-based organizations, but I still do not believe everything they claim for 100%.
It has been an issue often brought up during past decades. There is a significant economical and social gap between the poor countries situated in Africa or South America and those developed ones in Europe and North America. The world leaders worked out many plans how to launch the economies of these countries to start the process of social changes. One of the ideas that was implemented in these countries was fair trade and it seems it has been working quite effectively.
ReplyDeleteFair trade is a movement with the aim to improve trading conditions and that advocates higher payments to the exporters of the commodities such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, etc. An example of a good working fair trade company is Equal Exchange, a cooperative firm that operates on smaller plantations . For them, the rights of the workers is crucial part in their business strategy as they offer better working standards for their employees than others. And that is the main goal of fair trade. However, this rule was disobeyed when Fair Trade USA left Fairtrade International and started to work with big plantations. At this stage I have to agree with the criticiscm from Equal Exchange that stated big plantation corporations “are often less likely to protect workers’ rights“.
Because of this affair, people were concerned about the honesty of fair trade as it turned out it can be misused to make profit. Thus a lot of them moved to direct trade as an alternative trading model where there is no third-party auditing it. However is direct better than fair trade? As Lindsay Naylor said, this question is hard to answer. Both of them have positive aspects but aslo drawbacks. First of all, fair trade quarantees the minimum price to the co-operative, and not to the workers at the end of the supply chain, whereas direct trade agrees the prices personally. On the other hand, the wages for workers in fair trade model are fixed and they don´t depend on the situation on commodity market. The salaries in the other concept, however, may be affected by this aspect. Moreover, one of the biggest differencies is that fair trade provides protection of farmers, direct trade offers aspiration. The fixed prices farmers get in the first trading model are not affected by the quality of crops. The prices in the other one are, and that motivates farmers to take on extra labour to grow the best commodity as they will be consequently rewarded with some bonuses and earn more money as a result. However, I find it unfair since a plantation based in a region with good climatic attributes doesn´t need to put so much effort in growing good crops because it is almost clear it will be a good-quality one.
If it doesn´t mater whether a final product comes from fair-trade or direct-trade background, we can still say both trading models offer better job conditions and promote workers´ rights for the farmers apart from companies than do not attend in these types of trading. For the reason farmers earn the amount of money they really deserve, and are not being lied to, also the prices of final products will be higher. Now let´s imagine you had never read what I wrote and you were standing in a coffeeshop. You could choose from coffee bags with fresh coffee beans from the same region with the same quality, however, one of them would be certified as fair-trade, but the other one wouldn´t. You would have to pay 2 more euros for the fair-trade one. Which one would you prefer? I guess you would put the cheaper one in your cart and continue in your shopping with no comment. I hope after reading this you will make a better choice.
Fair-trade and direct-trade shopping is far more important than many people realize. As mentioned in the article, both fair-trade and direct-trade try to ensure the workers' rights. Furthermore, they set a standard on how the products are processed, resulting into higher quality goods.
ReplyDelete“Customers ask me why our beans have gotten more expensive, but I tell them that we want ... to give fair prices to farmers and they’re like oh, OK.”
In the 21st century, you would expect people would buy their food by looking at the content quality, and not primary at the price. In reality, most people in Slovakia are happy to save every cent they can, and do not care about some farm workers in Peru or Guatemala. Generally they even do not know what exactly "fair-trade" or "direct-trade" means.
“Direct trade is a classic example of ... a ‘just trust us’ approach to trading relations ...”
What many people do not realize is how much different direct and fair trade is. As mentioned, fair trade is patrolled by a auditing organisation, while direct trade is just a deal between the primary producer and the processing company. Nobody controls what they have agreed on and whether they really fulfill the terms. “Authentic, long-term relationships are at the core of fair trade.” There lies a threat in direct-trade for the primary producers - if the farm produces lower quality beans one year because of the weather, the processing company can buy the goods from somebody else. This often happens too late for the farm to find a new customer, resulting the farm in selling it's products under price. This could lead to much worse working conditions for the workers.
As a customer, I think companies should face far more social responsibility. If a company is proven to admittedly violate fair-trade principles, people should consider this fact before looking at the price. However, this can be very difficult in societies where state representatives openly get bribed without any harm.
In the past few years, a new form of trade labels is becoming popular in Slovakia - "Produced locally". Not only this helps the local economy, the people living around you and even your self by higher tax incomes for your region, it is also much easier to know more about the producer and his products. Therefore he has to be much more responsible in how he produces and also how he ensures the workers rights.
First of all, I would like to say that I agree with Marek when it comes to the importance of fair-trade and having our products made under great circumtances with no violation of human rights and with all principles of humanity preserved. However, Marek mentions that people should be more careful when buying products and look at the etiquete from the point of view that price does not matter, origin is important. In the majority of countries the majority of people arent that well off, I am not talking about developing countries in my substantive point, I am talking about countries which are considered developed. The sad reality is that there are many people who earn minimal wage, thus there is no wonder that they are only considering the price of given product. Mareks analysis seems to me very utopical and unreal, no matter that morally correct. Secondly, I completely agree with the point that processing companies can buy their beans from another farm and hence the quality of workers life is decreased, but I cant see a real solution to this dilemma because this principle works in every spectrum of life and bussiness. Last but not least, I appreciate Mareks effort to pinpoint the attempt of Slovak governement, however the statistics on this topic show that still the majority of products are imported and that our local farms are on the edge of bankrupt.
Delete