Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

The Paradox of Fair Trade

"US opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership don’t understand how it works"

.. i haven't nailed this yet, but get the feeling there is something in here shedding more
light on the thinking behind t-rump's fair trade push .. see the link included in the body below ..

In 2011, a rift opened within the fair trade movement. On one side is a group that emphasizes the interests of commodity producers in developing-world countries. On the other side is a group that targets the needs and aspirations of consumers in the developed world. In this article a longtime leader in the movement reflects on the tensions that have driven otherwise like-minded activists to form rival camps.

By Manel Modelo Winter 2014

The owner of a small farm near Matalgapa, Nicaragua, picks coffee (left). A coffee buyer makes a selection at a grocery store on the Upper East Side of New York City (right). (Photo by Jane Jarman/Corbis, left, and Richard Levine/Alamy, right)

In 2012, I joined Fair Trade USA as a consultant. Soon after I began my work for the organization, I held a series of workshops with members of its coffee supply chain and producer services team. Among the topics I covered were producer cooperatives, the coffee market, and knowledge management. In these workshops, I often used a version of the Cultural Orientations Framework developed by the executive coaching expert Philippe Rosinski.1 My goal was to explore how culture—the framework in which we view and interpret what surrounds us—affects how we think, feel, and act.

In one exercise, I sought to help workshop participants understand how their position as observers within a particular cultural framework skews the way they perceive and value “impact”—for example, the impact that the practice of fair trade has on parties that engage in it.

According to Fair Trade USA’s 2011 Almanac, the five countries from which the United States imported most of its Fair Trade coffee were, in order, Peru (25 percent), Colombia (12 percent), Honduras (11 percent), Nicaragua (10 percent), and Indonesia (9 percent).2 I shared those data with people in the workshop. Then I presented them with a comparable set of data that reflected the perspective of producing countries. This list indicated the scale of Fair Trade exports to the US market in relation to the total production of each country. From one list to the other, the ranking of countries changed. Nicaragua (6.4 percent), for example, moved from fourth place up to first place. More important, the array of countries that appeared on the list changed. Costa Rica placed third (5 percent) and Mexico placed fifth (2.4 percent), whereas Colombia (1.6 percent) and Indonesia (1.4 percent) vanished from the top-five tier.3

Suddenly, our impact assessment had changed. Which country, Peru or Nicaragua, benefited more from its fair trade relationship with the United States? What about Colombia, which had gone from second place to sixth-place also-ran status? People in the workshop began to see that “the impact of fair trade” can vary according to how they look at it. Viewing the data from an import- or consumer-based perspective yields one result, and viewing that information from an export- or producer-based perspective yields a different result. Both perspectives are valid, but only by viewing them together can we arrive at a comprehensive perception of reality.

That simple workshop exercise helps to illuminate what I have come to call the paradox of fair trade. The fair trade movement was founded to benefit small producers of coffee and other commodities—most of them located in developing countries of the Global South—by integrating them advantageously into a global export market. Yet as the movement has evolved, it has come to place a considerable emphasis on tailoring its efforts to the needs and aspirations of consumers in the Global North. In theory, fair trade can flourish on the basis of a win-win relationship between producers and consumers. In practice, however, tensions can emerge between those in the movement who emphasize the “fair” part of fair trade (for them, the interests of the producers are paramount) and those who emphasize the “trade” part (they prioritize the need to reach consumers).

Late in 2011, two of the most important organizations in the fair trade movement—Fairtrade International (Fairtrade) and Fair Trade USA—announced that they would be going their separate ways. That split marks a critical turning point in the history of fair trade, and people in the movement are still trying to make sense of it.

My goal in this article is to explore how a conflict between two opposing worldviews—two cultural frameworks—led to this internal division within the fair trade community. I will also explore how engaging with the paradox of fair trade allows us to see the interconnectedness of those cultural frameworks. In the end, I believe, the people of Fairtrade and Fair Trade USA can overcome their differences and achieve a real, transformative impact on the lives of producers and consumers alike.

The Theory and Practice of Fair Trade

[...]

When Paul Rice, founder and CEO of Fair Trade USA, was asked about the split, he said: “It’s not personal. It’s business .. http://coffeelands.crs.org/2011/10/paul-rice-weighs-in-on-fair-for-all/ .” 5 He and other leaders in the US group pointed out that other Fair Trade-certified products, such as tea and bananas, came from plantations. Why, they asked, should the core Fair Trade products (coffee, sugar, and cocoa) be available only from producers’ cooperatives? Rice signaled that Fair Trade USA would focus primarily on growth—growth in sales and, Rice hoped, growth in impact. “Fair Trade of the past was amazing. And absolutely not scalable,” he said.6 By allowing a wider range of producer entities to participate in the Fair Trade system, Rice argued, the movement would create efficiencies that would encourage large corporate buyers to obtain more products from that system. As a result, he believed, sales of Fair Trade products would increase, and the financial and social returns to all types of producers would increase as well.

.. more links with much more .. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_paradox_of_fair_trade

See also:

To link Krugman's Trump, Trade and Workers .. bits ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128438795