There is a fair trade boil-over brewing around the entry of corporate giants into the fair trade market place. The latest entry is chocolate giant Cadbury. Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, McDonalds and Nestle’s entry into fair trade have stired the pot as well. Cadbury’s deal to certify their Dairy Milk bars as fair trade continues to raise complicated questions about fair trade and who is a fair trader. A slope that can be made slippery to be sure, and one with an outcome sure to affect the lives and wallets of many.
The Guardian Newspaper’s Bibi van der Zee nut-shelled the problem this way:
“What is the problem here? As far as the Fairtrade Foundation is concerned there is probably no problem at all – they want to increase demand and now, hurray, they have. But the fairtrade movement is a broad one, which long predates the existence of the Fairtrade Foundation and its label, and many members of that movement will be feeling some of the unease over this deal that they felt over the deal with Nestle. There are two central problems. Firstly the Fairtrade chocolate producers like Divine have been slowly but surely carving out this market for a decade or so now. And here come great big Cadbury with their massive distribution, their hierarchical structures, their huge marketing budgets … and possibly blows them all out of the water. Is that fair?” Full article and reader comments.
The Fair Trade movement with its many leading organizations struggles to unify efforts to mount one powerful and cohesive message/campaign, thereby diffusing the momentum. The current standards most Fair Traders follow are defined by the World Fair Trade Organization, – formerly International Fair Trade Organization – are focused on transactions with producers in the “developing” world to marketers and consumers in the “developed” world. Brief on the 10 standards.
No doubt with 75% of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day mainly residing in the “developing” regions of the world (World Bank), and an estimated 27 million living in slavery due to improvised circumstances (Kevin Bales), the bulk of our attention as fair traders should be on leveling the playing field of opportunities for those with the least and the least opportunities to get out of poverty. That is what Fair Trade is about, eliminating poverty through fair trade.
However, we can not lose sight of the need for fair trade in the “developed” regions of the world. To be a fair trader means the entire process is transparent, all are receiving a fair and living wage, there is health and safety in the work environment, gender equality exists for all, and practices and materials healthy for the environment are in use. With the global economic crisis pushing on all of us, and pushing the “developing” world further into poverty, fair trade in the “developed” world would go a long way to eradicating the greed, corruption, and inequalities jump starting the cycles of poverty in the first place.
I challenge those of you in the “developed” world to be the tipping point by choosing to adopt the 10 fair trade standards in your place of work and by voting for fair trade with your dollars when you shop. The benefits to people, your profit, and the planet are enormous. Conscious consumerism is rising even faster in this time of economic crisis. If you are going to part with your money it difficult times, you want it to go as far is it can. What could be farther than a living wage for the producer and a better environment? As a company adopting fair trade and green strategies increases productivity, reduces costs, and provides real news for PR and marketing campaigns. This is our mission at P3 Strategies, transitioning organizations from single to triple bottom line success for people, profit, and the planet (P3) through successful green and fair trade organizational and fair trade models. For daily fair trade and P3 ideas join me and many other fair traders and socially responsible business thinkers on Twitter.
