[Q] If what we want to fight for is not only people having just a living wage and survive on the land; but people in the poor countries can also live and enjoy lives, decide for their own countries like we do, would you think the current Fairtrade system can get us any closer to this goal?
[VR] No, in fact it actively denies Fair Trade farmers the resources to have what we have. If you look at the meaning of “ethical” which dates back to Socrates and suggests “Do as you would be done by” it is an idea entirely demeaned by the Fair Trade concept. Fair Trade is treating the developing world as a farm, just as the colonialists did. It’s certainly not about increasing productivity for poor farmers in the developing world but about satisfying Western prejudice that these goods are “organic”, “child labour free” and so on for the “feel good” effect.
What people want and need is either to live and enjoy urban life or investment in infrastructure and industry, and in the agricultural sector that means industrial farming machinery, refrigerated trucks on tarmac motorways and the latest chemical pesticides. Sadly, for the sake of some mythical harmonious relationship with nature, sustainability seeks to preserve rural isolation, an existence that denies the developing world Western levels of development.
This used to be called racism, denying our common humanity across the globe and prescribing what people can and can’t have in foreign lands. At a time when humans are rocketing to Mars, Fair Trade epitomises the low horizons of western NGOs for their peers, and will not even provide what we would consider the bare minimum living standards.
(Left) Fairtrade products on display in the Foundation’s office; (Top Right) Cocoa from harvest to export recorded in the Divine Chocolate’s flyer; (Bottom Middle & Right) Tropical Wholefoods packaging with illustrations of producer's harmonic, tribal worklife
[Q] In this year’s London Fairtrade Guide (2010), there is a quote from Andrew Kobia Ethuru which says, ‘Kenyan producers (tea) who are Fairtrade certified are enjoying doing what they like most and getting a fair price.’ Also in one of its press release from June this year, Fairtrade celebrates it has helped to encourage young people to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and come back to be coffee farmers. What is your opinion on such writing?
[VR] This is truly disgusting. The idea that anybody wants to keep working on the land for a pittance, still being at the whim of nature is a myth and certainly parents do NOT want this for their children. Today approximately seventy percent of the world lives a subsistence life, living off the land and producing just enough to get by. This is a tragedy, as is treating the developing world like a playground where we can “test out” our romantic view of environmental living, a test that, in truth, is telling poor farmers to adapt to their poverty for the sake of a more sustainable development. To dislike what progress has given us in the West is one’s prerogative; imposing this same dissatisfaction on the developing world is an outrage, and wrapping it up as an ethical act won’t change that. Please see our documentary I’m a subsistence farmer… get me out of here! Here is a link to its press kit:
http://www.worldwrite.org.uk/subsistencefarmer/presskit.pdf
Screen Still from WORLDwrite’s Fairtrade documentary The Bitter Aftertaste
This is like treating people like “museum pieces”. Yet, thinking about it, it is more than this as these Fair Trade farmers don’t represent a fascinating glimpse into the life of early man but rather represent an ideal way of life for today. This stunts development. Staying like this means they will not be able to fly to another country, not be able to see their children move on, do something different or better. It limits these people’s horizons just because of Western own prejudices against modern life.
[Q] With Fairtrade Schools, Fairtrade is actively promoting its concept amongst very young children. E.g. it is taught as part of the appropriate curriculum, etc. You are also a charity and you too work with young people, how do you see this type of promotion?
(Left) Excertp from Fairtrade Fortnight Action Guide 2011; (Right) Image from the same Action Guide featuring children’s Fairtrade activities
[VR] This is one of the worst aspects of Fairtrade, and actually one of the worst aspects of sustainable development and environmentalism as a whole – is that children are taught it as if it is truth – as if it is uncontroversial. Presenting it as a simply good and saintly thing, like giving apple pie to children. This is highly disingenuous as Fairtrade is a political issue, it is controversial, or it should be!
Also, it is not telling the British Public the truth about people’s aspirations to get off the land and out of semi subsistence toil that pays them a pittance (which is all the Fairtrade premium amounts to). It is also highly anti-democratic to approach by supporting our peers in the developing world by treating us in the West as purely “consumers”. As consumers in the West we are not equal, some can afford to shop in top end shops and Waitrose some of us can only afford the markets or Netto, but as political citizens we are equal, we can vote, change things and demand the development that our peers aspire to is supported. Fairtrade effectively blames poorer Westerners who can’t afford Fairtrade products for poverty in the developing world.
Actually the breakdown of the Fairtrade Foundation’s expenditure in 2008 is telling. It spent £2,128,000 on ‘public education and awareness’, more than it gave to producer and product support. This sums up what Fairtrade is really all about: educating the public and making us feel better rather than significantly changing conditions in the developing world.
[Q] How do you see the portraits of the poor/people from “the developing country” – on the posters, on the websites, on the packages – smiling, offering, or working hard to produce things we enjoy. Do you think such stories and imagery may foster racial stereotype & reinforce our perception in the international division of labour?
[VR] In one of documentary’s from our Pricking the Missionary Position series we interview Professor Akilaagpa Sawyerr, Secretary General, Association of African Universities who explains (and I paraphrase) that however much the NGOs (and you can include Fairtrade in this) are well meaning it is effectively promoting a global division of labour – where the West get to develop the high end technology and services and the developing world are left using a hoe and toiling the land. We agree. In our documentary called Think Big we also challenge the usual pity fest and show that Africa, for example, is not one great morass of extreme poverty or people smiling because they are poor but happy. But, I think things are different, no longer do we in the West like our way of living, our development, our modern way of life. Instead we are concerned and worried about it and born from this Western self-loathing, particularly of affluence, we once more take up the “White Man’s Burden” and treat developing countries as children who must “Do as we say, not as we have done”.
[Q] In our image world, we used to have images from “The Third World” with people looking absolutely miserable. Recently, a bigger and bigger proportion of them have turned to become the merry, now-contented poor. How do you see this change?
[VR] It is part of a redefinition of development. It is part of getting us all to accept the status quo. Make do and mend is one thing, but now it is an end goal and called development. The low horizons exemplified by this approach suggest the material comforts and welfare we rely on in the West are not appropriate and not possible for our peers. Hence piped water in every home, flushing loos, major electrification, industry, domestic appliances and so on are not campaigned for, regardless of our peers’ aspirations to have these basics.
Malawi Fairtrade producers drawing water with a borehole built with the Fairtrade premiums, briefing paper "Stirring Up the Tea Trade", 2010, photo by Annette Kay.
But of course our peers are portrayed as happy as this is no longer about saying “look at these people, they need our help, they need what we have, they need development” instead it is about saying “this is the life we should be supporting – they are happy, we are unhappy and stressed. They may be poorer than us, they may not be able to travel the world, have cars, etc but we shouldn’t be so arrogant and think this is the best or only way to live…”
[Q] As ethical branding/labelling continue to flourish, almost every little act the rich does can be missionary. How do you see this increasingly “purchasable virtues” & “consumable movement”?
[VR] Actually I am struck by how elite this ‘ethical shopping’ is. The purchase of what are deemed to be ethically acceptable products is seen as marking individuals out from the rabble. So anyone who likes, say, ordinary chocolate biscuits are sneered at as a gullible consumer while those who eat overpriced Fairtrade are viewed as cultured individuals.