Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491365
32 STiR tea & coffee industry international The research results raise questions about whether the benefits of being fair trade certified including tax breaks, enhanced marketing avenues and subsidies help the workers as designed. Alternately, is it possible, as the SOAS report suggests, that Fairtrade actually increases inequalities? Fair trade organization's respond Fair trade organizations do not deny that there are limitations to their current achieve- ments; however, they were concerned that a single report in a small geographic region could be used to classify all fair trade efforts as failures. The Fairtrade Foundation, the UK member of Fairtrade International, hit back at what they saw as an indictment of their efforts, arguing that there were not enough fair trade farms included to make meaningful comparisons. Fairtrade International also released a rebuttal stating that comparisons should not be made between small-scale farms and large scale plantations because they are too dissimilar. (It should be noted that the SOAS researchers argue that the study con- trolled for these factors.) Fairtrade International notes that other studies, such as Dan- iel Jaffee's book "Brewing Justice" and a 2013 report from the University of Göttingen in Germany, "Food Standards, Certification and Poverty among Coffee Farmers in Uganda," found much more positive results. The latter reported a 30% improvement in household living standards for fair trade workers. Lee Byers, the senior advisor for coffee and tea at Fairtrade International, thinks that assessing Uganda doesn't give a clear picture of fair trade tea. He was quick to cite successes of fair trade in Malawi. "Small shareholder farmers in Malawi have seen significant impact in their communities — in health clinics and education. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, so even a modest amount of premium can help." Byers did acknowledge that there are limitations in what has been achieved so far. "It is more difficult to enact change in the hired labor sector. There are also all kinds of challenges depending on geography. Some areas and geographies are doing better than others." He thinks the biggest challenge faced in enacting change is that the market for fair trade products is currently so small. "In the tea industry our leverage is less because such a small percentage is sold under fair trade terms. We have to work with industry to make change at the industry level. We are constrained by the level of sales. In the United States, the fair trade tea market is less than 1% of sales." When asked about the SOAS report specifically, Byers was blunt in his response, his irritation evident. "I get frustrated when people only look at one market. If we're not selling stuff we're not having an impact. We have 200 tea gardens across 10 countries. The global impact cannot be measured by what goes on in a handful of gardens in one country. I would agree that our impact is limited in Ugandan tea because there's just not much tea sold from there." Dorothy Chikwiti, a worker at Fairtrade-certified Satemwa Tea Estate in Malawi. Photo by Anette C. Kay/Fairtrade International Equal Exchange Quality Control Manager Beth Ann Caspersen with Maria Kirya and Lydia Nabulumbi, quality control technicians at Gumutindo co-op in Uganda. Photo courtesy of Equal Exchange. The Fair World Project, an initiative launched by the Organic Consumers Association to "protect the use of the term 'fair trade'" and to "expand markets for authentic fair trade," also cited the need for greater sales to effect change. Executive director Dana Geffner thinks that fair trade is taking the rap for all of the failures to protect workers, arguing that they cannot be the only solution. "That would be like condemning a hospital because your knee surgery did not make your headache go away," Geffner quipped in a public response. Industry raises concerns The impact of fair trade in the coffee industry and the tea industry has been radically different. According to Rodney North, a worker-owner and The Answer Man for Equal Exchange, "Fair trade's impact in coffee has been great, whereas the impact in the tea industry has, with key exceptions, ranged from negligible to worse-than-nothing." A strong statement to be sure, but not without basis. The coffee side of fair trade has been highly invested in demo- cratically driven cooperatives of small-scale farmers. Over the past two decades, fair trade has protected these farmers against the large corporations and has given them a voice and protected their incomes.