Reading Poverty Through Fairtrade: Conclusion – the road to real development

World poverty has been on the global discussion agenda for decades. Yet despite so many talks surrounding the topic and so many programmes proposed, some even implemented, the face of our world does not seem to have changed much for all these years. Poor countries are still poor. Places such as Africa still exists like an icon of extreme poverty and desperation. In the public space of the developed countries, posters of children with darker skin colour needing or thanking our help are still everywhere. Their forlorn gazes fill in the occasional gaps left out by the glamour of other commercial adverts. One pleading for our sympathy, another one stirring up our desire to step in and help, together they patch up the daily route we take to commute to work, to school. They complete the overhead space in a packed underground train where we tend to aimlessly rest our eyes on.

The poor looked like this when I was a child. They still look like this now that I have grown up. They probably will look the same for the next decades to come. During all this time the dialogue about helping poor people continues, has even permeated the business-consumption level. When Haiti was struck by earthquakes in 2010, a blogger expressed her puzzlement through her blog, when she saw shops in Portland urging people to purchase so the businesses could donate a portion of the sales to Haitians. She puzzled because she failed “to see how me (herself) getting a massage or enjoying chocolates does much to help Haiti”. She really wanted to believe that shops were not “using the tragedy in Haiti to sell”. Or, is it possible while we could not count on people to do good themselves, we at least could “count on them to buy something for themselves”? So why not “sweeten the deal” and “allow shoppers to feel smug and righteous”? [17]

Perhaps, the capitalism we are living in has become so advance that it probably can take in all forms of subversion and transform them into business. From feminism and black culture noted in Naomi Kleine’s No Logo to human tragedy. CSR programmes mushroom. A supermarket can also be a foundation (e.g. Waitrose in the UK). Aside from Fair Trade, there are numerous other ethical programmes and labels developed by individual business, including companies from countries that were previously poor or colonised. Following the trend laid by the wealthy and powerful, the previously poor or colonised waste no time in starting their own philanthropic programmes as soon as their countries can afford to do so.

Under the hood of ethical branding and corporate conscience, it seems that a lot of good is being done to the world poor. But can we really lift people out of poverty with these little bits and pieces done here and there? Can we really chew, bite, eat, drink, wear, sleep or flush their poverty away?

Fairtrade: the endless dependency

Fairtrade concentrates on cash crop. Materials that Europeans want and their colonies have been shaped to produce for centuries, well into this new age of neoliberalism when crude resources are still in great need to fuel the developed countries’ manufacturing sector (now mostly offshore and very often with workers, also from the developing countries, in dire working and living conditions). Cash crop is not the reason for unfairness. Rather it is a result of the already unjust world system. Guaranteeing poor producers a minimum price of its production without getting people out of its trap will never lead people anywhere.

Quoting the Dependency Theory initiated by Hans Singer and Raúl Prebisch, our world works within a system with the economies of the developed nations situated at the core and less developed nations falling into the periphery. The periphery continues to serve and depends on the core for survival, a relationship which only leave the less developed nations more and more fragile [18]. “Sown to be eaten it is the sacred sustenance of the men who were made of maize. Sown to make money it means famine for the men who were made of maize” [19]. With Fairtrade at its current form the poor are just as dependent as ever since they are still encouraged to “sow to make money”, sow to export to the rich nations for meagre improvement in income and living standard.

When these core countries hit the credit crisis in 2008, immediately we see them cutting donation to the UN Food Aid programme. Ramzy Baroud poignantly drew together the contrast between the “trillions” that have been “spent to patch up leading world financial institutions” and the $1 billion (out of the $12.3 billion pledged) that was delivered “to offset the food crisis” [20].

With the core economies experiencing the worst financial trauma since the Great Depression, it is expectable that their consumers would need to be careful with their wallets as well. Hence a sharp reduction in the UK Fairtrade sales growth rate – from approximately 40% to 70% increase for 5 consecutive years since 2004 to a mere 14% increase between 2008 and 2009 [21]. Nevertheless, it is still increasing, as Fairtrade Foundation said. People probably just thought twice before they decided to spend a few pence/pounds more. When asked how they would describe the Fairtrade label, most regard it “trustable” (49%), “comforting” (44%) and “expensive” (44%). These figures, the cut in funding to the UN Food Programme and the drop in Fairtrade sales growth rate, together they give a clear picture in how we prioritise. Rather than a goal one cannot forsake at any time, Fair Trade is more like a purchasable activism “as long as we can afford”. It just illustrates how fragile the poor will become if they are too tied to the tastes and the pockets of the rich.

The road to real development

The Fairtrade Foundation says that this is not about charity. But of course it is a charity. The Foundation itself is a registered charity in the UK. Its “charitable objectives” are clearly laid out in its financial report (2008). A considerable amount of its budget comes from/spent on a section called “charitable activities” in its yearly statement, which includes expenditure on certification and licensing, market and production development, producer and product support, public education and awareness (i.e., marketing) and income from licence fees, sale of awareness-raising items (i.e., merchandises). When it comes to the consumer level, it is through tapping into the our guilt and sympathy that the Fair-Trade products are being sold to us. Also sold to us is the possible misery these producers would face if we did not choose Fair Trade. There is an element of almsgiving in the transactions. “If you are not buying (from us or similar small-scale producers) then you are hurting poor farmers!” declared Andrew Ethuru during the Fairtrade Supporter Conference. There used to be White Men’s Burden. Now we have White Shoppers’ Burden (Tim Black, Sp!ked, 2010). It maybe unspoken but the top-down relation is there, explicit in both its written or visual languages, such as the Fairtrade prayers, poems and the abundant amount of images we have discussed in this report.

At the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez spoke about “reintroducing the concept of a new international economic order”, a proposal “sponsored by the former colonial countries, the nonaligned movement in the 1970s, and put forward by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)”. According to Chomsky, this “was a very serious program to try to bring the so-called third world into international affairs on a slightly more equal footing”. [22]

Chávez' speech in 2005 is said to have received “barely any coverage” [23] but perhaps it can provide us some hint into the re-assessment of the meaning of the term “fair trade”.

Usually, people do not consider a pack of rice from Japan or a bag of dried pasta from Italiy “unfair” even the product bares no Fairtrade Mark. We just do not link the two things together. Why? Laloë, Creative Head of Fairtrade Foundation reasoned that it is because we are buying something authentically Japanese. But why does something authentically Japanese can escape the fate of falling as victims of unfair trade? What we need to look at is not the type of product but how that product enters the world market. The Japanese rice industry has always been highly subsidised and shielded from external competitions by its own government, as reported in the BBC Radio 4 Food programme [24]. The same Food Programme also investigated into the durum wheat market. Obtaining the profitable resources directly from their own fields and put them straight into machines that can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Italy has built up a giant pasta making industry. Italian-owned Barilla Group is the largest pasta maker in the world. With production plants not only back home but also all over the globe, the company produces “an equivalence of 10 billions bowls of pasta every year”. Against the tremendous noise of running machines, the company’s brand manager tells us how they strive to meet the expectations of their Japanese clients and the company’s plan to expand further into the world’s new market, such as China. [25]

If we can imagine the same for underdeveloped and developing countries in how they could own, plan, utilise and develop their own resources in a scale as massive as the durum wheat example above, if the poor could also protect their economies by measures such as barring unfairly priced foreign imports, ensure the capital flow back to the country for internal social and industrial developments, just as the Japanese (also European and US) government has been doing for ages, then perhaps we would be one step closer to a trade system that deserves the word “fair”, one step closer in real poverty reduction. What the poor countries need is not our benevolent shopping, but sovereignty, “…hence ability to control internal economic development and to enter international market systems on one’s own terms, is a crucial prerequisite to economic development”, as Chomsky observes [26].

In fact, a lot of governments from the developing nations are already working hard in gaining such sovereignty. WORLDwrite’s documentary Think Big recordes the various ideas and ambitions Ghanians have about their own country and businesses. During an interview with Chui-Yung Cheung, an independent journalist from Hong Kong, the Venezuelan economist Alfonso Alvarez said that back in the 60s and 70s, his country’s resources were controlled by foreign investors and the profits drained to the pockets of these investors. Now the country is slowly gaining the ownership of the resources (e.g. oil) back, the profit from oil will then be used on developing local society and economy. To break away from any external force Venezuela needs self-sufficiency. And they are achieving this through internal development [27]. Coffee is the most speculated commodity in the world just after oil [28]. If the Venezuelan oil policy has driven Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips away, how big the blow would be to transnationals such as Nestlé, Kraft and Starbucks if the same took place in coffee and cocoa producing countries?

Here we see the conflict of interest between the real growth of the poor and the centuries-long profit for the rich. And one can easily predict the “core” economies’ attitude to such growth. Hugo Chávez, who always openly criticises the pretence of the west, especially the United States, is probably one of the most unpopular (amongst the western mainstream media) presidents in the world. While we celebrate the huge success in building a borehole so the world poor can pump water from the ground with their hands, any large-scale construction such as highway or dam attracts fierce condemnation from the rich (which we will return), regardless the fact that these constructions can provide electricity, increase human’s mobility and on top of everything, save lives.

This probably explains why the role of the local governments are often omitted in the narrative of Fairtrade or most Western charities. It is also worth noting that majority of the world poor featured in our media are women and children – two very much politicised groups when it comes to handling foreign affairs, chosen for their presumed vulnerability.

Children need our protection. Women need our liberation. Grown men, however, are likely to be interpreted as “rivals” and “resistance” in the patriarchal thinking framework. The answer to the question featured in the Action Aid advert below is most intriguing. One wonder where Nikita’s parents are and what about the role of Nikita’s government. It is a type of cultural castration. With men deemed helpless and the country’s government out of the way, the spectators from the rich nations (men or women powered by their comparative wealth) can enter into the poor’s lives and assume the role of protectors/liberators.

No businessman likes his market share in jeopardy. No state would welcome threats to its hegemony. Challenges from unmanageable governments or supply chain, especially when they are run by people whose docility we have taken for granted for centuries, can indeed be irritating. But if the two parties entering any negotiation/cooperation are on an equal footing, surely both parties should share the same right and freedom to agree or disagree to certain terms. Thus a “fair” trade system actually means the rich having to let go of their privileges, an option hardly desirable for us. Are we prepared to sacrifice more than a few pence in our daily shopping? Are we prepared to open up to a “new international economic order”, as Chávez proposed? A new order possibly with us not being the leaders anymore? Can we tolerate that? Before we go out and advocate Fair Trade, one needs to think how much he or she is prepared to give up first. Once I had a lecture with a marketing manager from a renowned London Branding company. In pin-stripped suit, he openly said he knew very well this world was not fair but he personally was pretty comfortable being in the privileged part of the world. He knew it might not be good to others but he did not see any interest in changing it. He might be blunt. A lot of people might disagree with him. But he was honest.

If we are seriously after “fair” trade, we simply cannot hold on to any legacy (benefits) of currently unfair world order. Fairness, like democracy or freedom of speech, you either have it or you do not. There are no progressive steps in achieving it, no excuse for having some but not the rest. There can be no compromise.

Goal and Intention. Help or Hindrance.

Some may say no. As we enter the green-concerned, industrialisation-detest era, with a feeling that we in the developed world have already damaged the world enough, some actually suggest limiting the industrialisation in the developing world. Sustainable development is the proper phrase for it. The West has shown much disapproval in the construction of Interoceanic Highway between Peru and Brazil, concerns were raised that it will harm the rainforest or stimulate crimes [29]. When the Ethiopians try to gather fund to build the hydroelectric Gibe III which is meant to tame the annual flood as well as increase electricity access across the country, international NGOs joined together to campaign for its halt, claiming that the dam would disrupt the local ecosystem and the traditional lifestyles of ‘indigenous people’. The fact that every year people die and hundreds of thousands are displaced due to the heavy rainfall does not fall within their scope of concerns, wrote Nathalie Rothschild [30]. Harvard ecologist EO Wilson, in his book The Future of Life (2002), ”promotes schemes in which the rich pay the poor not to develop, in exchange for exclusive access to the undeveloped nature reserves”. Having realised that the Guatemalans he quoted as an example live on less than a dollar a day, he then suggested “ecotourism” [31]. One wonders who are the people who can afford to be an eco-tourist? Surely not the one-dollar-a-day earners in this case.

How can poor countries develop with such strangulations? Viv Regan from WORLDwrite comments that Fairtrade or similar ethical/charitable programmes are treating the developing world as a farm, are seeing people there like “museum pieces” [32]. “[P]reserving the lifestyles of ‘indigenous peoples’ really means that they do not want Ethiopia and other poor nations to modernise and have what we in the West have: industrialisation”… the international NGOs are treating Africans like “a zoologist might treat an exotic animal species”, who belong “to nature rather than to human society, as being part of a fragile ecosystem which should be preserved at the cost of social progress and material development”, observes Nathalie Rothschild, in her article about the Ethiopian Gibe III project. Such mentality is best illustrated by the the below image advertising “fair trade tours”.

Like the European poor in traditional oil paintings, these are not people as individuals. These are species to be studied, one of the top 10, “must-see” attractions during our trip, part a beautiful, soothing, exotic scenery to enjoy.

Free the term “fair trade”

Louis from Venezuela told the Hong Kong journalist Chui-Yung Cheung that he hopes he will have a chance to travel out of the country to see the world; Cephus from Ghana says he would like a beautiful house built with solid cement and in it a jacuzzi bath because he heard how nice it is from the headmistress of the village who have just paid a visit to the UK [33]; De Roy, also from Ghana, says he wants his country “to develop beyond where the West have reached”. And why not? Surely poor countries have some most urgent issues they need to solve, such as food, sanitation. But the poor are just humans like any one of us, who aspire to achieve much more than the most basic.

Every country has its own reality. Locals have their own ideas of how they want to develop their countries. Any self-imposing external lecture, guidance, assistance or charitable interferences will only undermine local effort and the people’s potential. Not only do outsiders not understand the human reality of the place, also they will bring with them their own prejudices.

Before having Fair Trade as a system we have Fair Trade as a concept. Before it shapes itself into a concept we have “the ways of seeing” (paraphrasing John Berger’s book title). How do we see ourselves? How do we see others? Is it really about them or is it in fact just about us? Indulging yourself with a bar of nutty, creamy chocolate or with a lazy summer on a hammock by the beach is nothing but indulgence. Buying into the idea that someone’s life is being saved by such indulgence is nothing but hypocrisy and highly colonial. Schemes such as Fair Trade surely provides its therapeutical remedy to the soul of the rich, but hardly can it serve as a base for the poor to embark on a real and large-scale economic growth. Growth that can bring improvement in science, technology, education, healthcare, art and entertainment and subsequently the general living standards.

Justice and fairness are big words. Though the rich and the powerful like them in their rhetorics. De Roy says regarding justice he has nothing to say because the world has long lost its conscience. Can the poor really achieve “justice” and “fairness” in a world as such? Hard to say. But at least they are thinking hard and working hard on achieving some, if not all, of them. Perhaps what the developed world can do, if we are sincere in our intention to assist them, is to self-reflect on ourselves, our own business, governments and charities. How do we see ourselves? How do we see others? This is the main question raised in this report and allow me to suggest this as the first thing to consider before entering into the discussion of “fair” trade and all the ethical business programmes.

[17] http://stacywestbrook.com (2010), website appears to have been removed in 2011

[18] Cheung, Chui-Yung (2009), The Path to the Truth in Latin America (quote and book title translated by author of this report), Taipei: Marco Polo Press

[19] Miguel Angel Asturias (1949), Men of Maize

[20] Baroud, Ramzy (2008), Bail out the poor, Egypt: Al-Ahram Weekly

[21] The Fairtrade Foundation Annual Report and Financial Statements 2008 & 2009, Fairtrade Facts & Figures

[22] & [23] Chomsky, Noam (2007), What We Say Goes, London: Hamish Hamilton

[24] Japan’s Food Dilemma (March 2011), BBC 4 Radio Food Programme Podcast 

[25] Pasta and wonders of durum wheat (September 2010), BBC 4 Radio Food Programme Podcast

[26] Chomsky, Noam (2010), Hopes and Prospects, London: Hamish Hamilton

[27] Cheung, Chui-Yung (2009), The Path to the Truth in Latin America

[28] The Coffee business (May 2011), BBC 4 Radio Food Programme Podcast

[29] Thorne, Nick (2011), Let’s hear it for South America’s new highway, Sp!ked Online

[30] Rothschild, Nathalie (2010), They don’t give a dam about development, Sp!ked Online

[31] Kaplinsky, Joe (2002), Putting nature Before People, Sp!ked Online

[32] Interview with WORLDwrite

[33] Video: I’m a subsistence farmer, get me out of here (2007), WORLDwrite

** Report for author’s Master Degree in Graphic Branding & Identity, London College of Communications, 2010. Updated in 2011 for Web Publication.

*** Feature image from iStockphoto