Jeffrey Taylor-Kantz

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Final Paper

The fair trade movement is a relatively new human rights campaign with the long-

term goals of eliminating labor exploitation and expanding labor rights, as well as

alleviating poverty in developing nations. It is a movement born of high ideals and pure

intentions. However, integrating an ideal into the complex and change-resistant systems

of the real world is always much more difficult than people believe. When idealism is

exposed to the harsh environment of reality, it often becomes somehow warped or

corrupted, or sometimes just poorly implemented, and the fair trade movement is no

exception. The model of fair trade certification is full of some significant problems and

holes that can actually end up harming the ideal it was founded on in the first place. But

be not disheartened! Just as it is true that trying to implement an ideal in societies

across all the world will always be an extremely arduous and sometimes dangerous

endeavor, it is also true that any cause worth fighting for will be extremely difficult. It is

always paramount to not let yourself be blinded by your ideals, and to always be open

to discomfiting realities if you wish to see the world change for the better. As a matter of

fact, the very worthiness of your cause demands that you stare reality in the face with a

critical eye, even if it causes you to find shortcomings in your own efforts. Only when

you are capable of analyzing your own faults can you hope to do anything to improve

the world around you. It is with this philosophy in mind that we must stare closely at the

fair trade movement and analyze its faults, because it is a cause worth fighting for.

Wanting to end labor exploitation is not enough; we must work within the confines of

reality to see that vision come to fruition. The model of the movement has some

significant flaws both on the front-end: when communicating with consumers, and the
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back-end: when dealing with actual growers. For the sake of keeping our scope

focused, we will be focusing on fair trade only in raw agricultural products.

One of the factors that makes the fair trade movement a cause worth fighting for

is that it truly has a lot of potential to affect real change in economic society. Studies

have shown that first-world consumers of coffee are very receptive to fair trade labels

and are willing to pay significantly higher premiums for product with a free trade label

than product with an organic label [1]. Fair trade labels allow people to feel like they are

doing something morally righteous (a very powerful motivator among certain people)

while not having to do much work or research themselves (also a very compelling

motivator among certain people). This means that as long as consumers trust fair trade

certifiers to accurately and honestly audit the production process, and as long as fair

trade certifiers actually do accurately and honestly audit regardless of consumer trust,

then this movement can mobilize a tremendously numerous population of consumers to

change their buying practices to reward companies that promote labor rights in their

agricultural production and punish companies that do not. However, that still requires

that fair trade certifiers maintain a relationship of trust with consumers, and there are

currently a number of problems with the current system of fair trade certification that

could easily lead to the rapid loss of public trust. One of the routes too loss of trust

stems from the exact thing that gives the fair trade movement its potential: consumers

are willing to pay more for fair trade goods. Nowadays, every company wants to be able

to put a fair trade label on their products so they can increase demand and prices.

Sometimes the standards that allow a company to place a fair trade label on their

product are worryingly lax. While the certification process if often strict, the label does
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not always tell the whole story. A company will sometimes put a fair trade label on a

product if only some of its ingredients are fairly sourced, but the label can mislead the

consumer into thinking 100% of the product is fairly sourced [2]. If enough consumers

become aware of these practices, they will become cynical about the honesty of fair

trade labels and the movement will lose all of its power. Luckily this is less of an issue in

raw agricultural products, since there is only one ingredient that needs to be fair trade

certified, but the trend poses a threat to the movement as a whole. The fact the fair

trade movement has so much potential power is a double edged sword, as this tends to

make efforts vulnerable to corruption. The misleading labelling mentioned earlier is

among the least insidious ways that the power of the free trade movement can be

misused for personal gain. Situations such as that serve to threaten the public

perception of the legitimacy of fair trade labels in a greedy bid to increase the

desirability of a product.

However, the much more existential danger to the core ideals of the movement is

not the possibility of losing public faith in fair trade labels. If that happened, the ideals

would be secure, but the movement would have to find other methods of securing the

trust of consumers. No, the true threat to the movement is not the loss of faith, but

rather the preservation of faith combined with the compromise of ideals and practices. If

a fair trade certifier relaxes its standards or has corruption in the auditing process, but

manages to keep this secret enough to not lose the trust of the public, then consumers

will become complacent, convinced that they are helping to do good, and the forward

progress of the movement will be completely halted. We must make sure that the fair

trade certification model remains honest, transparent, and accountable or it will it may
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prove more harmful to the cause than merely doing nothing. One of my former

professors is Dr. Angelina Godoy, the current director of the Center for Human Rights at

the University of Washington. I took a human rights class from her, and she described a

time when she saw firsthand the potential for corruption within the fair trade certification

system. She was invited to come perform research on the environmental and labor

conditions of an agricultural plantation in Latin America by the disenfranchised laborers

there. I will refrain from writing too many details about the anecdote such as the crop

produced or the country where it took place, because the workers abruptly asked her to

stop her research after their lawyer was found dead under mysterious circumstances.

Out of respect for the workers’ wishes and a fear that widely publishing the research

would bring retribution down upon the workers, she never published. There were many

complex issues at play with that story; the land was being used so irresponsibly that it

would be rendered completely infertile within the decade, the workers food and water

supply consistently became contaminated when a crop duster flew over their water

tower and outdoor dinner tables. The place was a mess. However, as she entered the

plantation, there was a sign that proudly boated that the fruit produced there was

certified by the Rainforest Alliance, a certifier that promotes sustainable environmental

and labor practices in agriculture. It was painfully obvious from what she found that this

grower absolutely in no way deserved that certification, neither from an environmental

nor from a labor rights standpoint. Which raised the question of how this grower was

even able to get a certification from a well-known and well-respected certifier. She

barely had to look to find gross violations. If they had even sent an auditor down here

this plantation never would have been approved. Then she learned something that
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brought that into focus. It turned out that the Rainforest Alliance auditor that was in

charge of monitoring conditions and practices on this plantation was the brother of the

person who ran the plantation. They of course tried to spin it in such a way that this was

a good thing. “Our family and our business are so dedicated to good practices that our

own family members monitor that for us!” Of course, the truth of the matter is that this

was gross negligence on the part of the Rainforest Alliance. This not only damages the

very integrity of the movement, if this knowledge became widespread, it could also

damage every other fair trade certifier, even ones with stricter standards. After all, the

fair trade movement is not monolithic. It is made up of countless independent

organizations, big and small, and alliances of organizations. Negligence among just a

few of the plethora of actors could serve to delegitimize the whole movement in the

eyes of the public, jading consumers into thinking that morals cannot even be found

within the human rights advocacy sector. That would be a tragedy. The movement has

very high minded and worthy goals, and these ideals are worthy of respect. Trying to

bring integrity to an often bleak world is never an easy job, and anyone entering that

sector thinking that they can bring anything but their best effort and constant vigilance

will not be an effective agent of change. The very worthiness of its cause means that

the fair trade movement owes it to itself to hold their practices to the very highest

standard, higher than the corporations they are auditing. Fair trade certifiers need to

make sure that their standards are airtight. I know that this is a lot to ask. Fair trade

certifiers often do not have very many resources, certainly not as many resources as

the agricultural industries that might be actively working against them. But it is

paramount that they never let their standards drop, never let their guard down to the
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best of their ability. And if they do find themselves falling short, they need to

communicate this transparently. If they do not, then they not only risk the influence they

have over consumers by being caught misleading them, they threaten the very integrity

of their ideals. They would no longer be positive actors in the movement. They would

not even be merely ineffective actors. They would be active hindrances to the efforts to

ensure that every person is treated fairly in labor.

However, not every threatening factor comes from insidious greed. Sometimes it

is just completely unintentional miscommunication. While there are many benefits of

being a movement full of plethora independent actors and organizations all working

toward the same goal, there are also some serious problems that this lack of monolithic

unity can cause. The fair trade movement does not have a strict party line besides their

long term goals of ending labor exploitation and other related problems. Sometimes

different actors within the movement operate on vastly different philosophies regarding

the best way to achieve their goals. I have encountered two main schools of thought on

the best way to achieve the goals of the fair trade movement. The first is to have very

strict and uncompromising standards in their certification process so that they can look

a consumer dead in the eye and honestly tell them that the product there are buying

was not made with slave labor. The other is warier of how entrenched the cultural and

economic structures that cause labor exploitation are. They would rather bring

producers to the table and get them to agree to any change at all, with gradually

increasing standards so that they can actually bring change over time instead of taking

one big swing at the entire economic system, failing to change anything, and then go

bankrupt. These two philosophies are largely mutually exclusive, and each has their
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merits. As a matter of fact, I believe that both philosophies can play an important role in

achieving the goals of the movement. However, the different actors are not always good

about communicating which philosophy they follow. When talking about their ideals to

the public, they usually only bring up their long-term goals, and labels on products

certainly do not communicate all their nuances. This can cause some public perception

problems. For instance, if a consumer thinks they are buying a product that was made

with completely ethical practices because it was certified by an organization, but that

organization follows the more gradual philosophy, the consumer can feel lied to and

lose trust in certifiers, even if there was no misconduct. This is a big risk for such an

easy to solve problem. Certifiers need to be more transparent about how they are trying

to achieve their goals, not just what their goals are.

Sadly, the threats to the level of influence that fair trade labels have are not the

only dangers that put the goals of the movement in jeopardy. The very model of action

upon which the fair trade movement is founded has some serious flaws. Even when the

system works perfectly as intended, the certification system can work against its own

aims. American culture fetishizes the power of the economic market. This makes a

market-based solution to a significant social problem attractive and powerful to the

American psyche. However, this is a serious double-edged sword. Americans also tend

to like to feel like they are morally righteous people. That is part of what gives fair trade

labels so much potential. Yet if we make the priority of the fair trade model giving first-

world consumers the feeling of doing good, then we are not focusing on our end goals.

Research has found that in the Dominican Republic, the demands of the marked were

so prioritized over the conditions of the laborers that many workers did not even know
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that they were practicing anything “alternative.” Their poverty was not alleviated in any

way. Tomato farmers in Mexico found that the certification process completely disrupted

local social norms because of “hyperfocus on surveillance” and only served to

exacerbate socio-economic inequality [3]. This also highlights a serious disconnect

between the expectations of the consumers of fair trade goods (expectations formed by

sensational overpromises made by certifiers) and what those certifiers can actually

deliver. The major implicit flaw in the American fair trade movement is that it is

characteristically ethnocentric. In a study done on the implementation of the certification

process in Darjeeling tea plantations in India, it finds that the certification requirements

often contradict the state and national laws, and as a market force, the fair trade

movement actually undermines the efforts and regulations of the government. The fair

trade certification process often leads to the dissolution of unions in this industry, which

is the exact opposite effect that the movement originally intended [4]. American

consumers and economics rights advocated in the fair trade sector are trying to impose

what they feel are universal notions of labor rights and social justice. However, they

often are merely imposing their own cultural standards upon developing communities.

Our notion of the fair trade model is built for the American economic model, and

imposing the fair trade model on third world producers is tantamount to forcing our own

economic model on another country with complete disregard to their own culture and

their own economic model. For instance, if a developing country wanted to build

themselves into a stable socialist state (like Costa Rica), our model of fair trade would

completely disrupt their own economic model and possibly lead to exacerbating social

inequalities that they were trying to eliminate because American activists think they
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should focus on the social changes that they think are most important. There is a

solution to these deeply ingrained flaws in the fair trade model, but it will require deep

reflection on whether we are willing to change and whether we truly value the autonomy

of laborers in developing countries (the true end goal of any anti-human trafficking

effort) even if that means they follow a different cultural and economic model than we

think is best in America. Fair trade certification needs to become significantly more

granular and place-based, with standards being tailored to the culture of the area where

each grower exists. The model needs to be less focused on how to be most attractive to

the first-world market and refocus back on the communities it purports to help. If a

grower exists in a socialist nation, the certification process for that area needs to be

sensitive to that particular economic model. Countries have their own rich histories and

deeply ingrained inequalities and injustices. Forcing one model onto all of them is only

going to worsen these systems. Any efforts we make in any given place need to be

targeted to alleviate the specific hardships that happen in this area, not using a model

developed in a completely different culture. Once we improve both the model itself and

its influencing power over consumers, the fair trade movement has the potential to be

an integral tool in the fight to make sure every worker has basic rights and autonomy. If

we do not change the system, the fair trade movement will become a gimmicky cash-

grab at best, and an actively harmful wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing at worst.

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Sources

1. Loureiro, Maria L., and Justus Lotade. “Do Fair Trade and Eco-Labels in Coffee

Wake up the Consumer Conscience?” Ecological Economics, vol. 53, no. 1,

2005, pp. 129–138., doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.11.002.

2. Ebben, Paula. “Fair Trade Fakes? Don't Believe All The Labels.” CBS Boston,

CBS Boston, 20 Sept. 2011, boston.cbslocal.com/2011/09/20/fair-trade-fakes-

dont-believe-all-the-labels/.

3. Getz, Christy, and Aimee Shreck. “What Organic and Fair Trade Labels Do Not

Tell Us: towards a Place-Based Understanding of Certification.” International

Journal of Consumer Studies, vol. 30, no. 5, 2006, pp. 490–501.,

doi:10.1111/j.1470-6431.2006.00533.x.

4. Besky, Sarah. “Can a Plantation Be Fair? Paradoxes and Possibilities in Fair

Trade Darjeeling Tea Certification.” Anthropology of Work Review, vol. 29, no. 1,

2008, pp. 1–9., doi:10.1111/j.1548-1417.2008.00006.x.