In the UK, it’s Fairtrade Fortnight (as well as British Pie Week, and probably a whole load of other awareness weeks/etc.) (link: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/ )
Ostensibly, Fairtrade is a business model that attempts not to grind the grassroots production end of the supply chain into absolute poverty. In practice, it’s often a way for middle-class people with disposable income to feel (morally) better about the luxuries they enjoy. However, those two things are not necessarily incompatible.
I’m curious as to the profile of Fairtrade (or similar) in other places in the world - in the UK, it seems to be expanding. Does it have a profile/market presence where you are?
In Spain definitely: there’s both Fairtrade stores (usually owned by a charity) and many supermarkets that carry Fairtrade. There’s also Fairtrade street markets and Fairtrade booths are a common presence in general street markets.
I know both supermarkets with a Fairtrade alley and others where the regular sections have a Fairtrade subsection when applicable. It’s similar to how they treat “exotic foods”: some have a “world foods” section, some have the tortillas next to the pastas.
I was in Basel in 2006-7 and some of the area’s supermarkets carried Fairtrade too (in all three countries); I saw Fairtrade stores in France and Fairtrade booths in the Basel Christmas market. Basel is in the Swiss side of an area known as “the three borders”, it’s where Switzerland, Germany and France meet. I tended to do my shopping in France because the food and ingredients were more similar to Spanish ones, so I looked more at French stores.
I live in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, Ireland :- Greystones itself is officially a Fairtrade town, and it’s status as such is marked by road signs on the roads in.
From the news reports when the status was awarded in 2007, Greystones was Ireland’s 18th Fairtrade town, so it’s pretty well known nationally too.
All’s I really know about it is what I see in their own propaganda blurbs, which I suppose you see too, FWIW. I’ve seen a gift shop selling knick-knacks that were made in that model.
One possibly-interesting note: One of the players in the business, at least where I’ve seen, in the Mennonite Central Committee. They call their business “Ten Thousand Villages”
Google Mennonite Fair Trade or Ten Thousand Villages and you’ll find lots of reading material about it.
ETA: This is in United States. The Mennonite / Thousand Villages store I visited is in Fresno, CA.
I’m in the US. When the Christmas catalogs come each year there’s one that I think is all Fair Trade stuff. I used to live in a college town that had a bagel shop which had a sign saying they used fair trade coffee. I can’t think of anywhere else I’ve seen it.
I think in the US the movement is more towards supporting domestically made artisan good than it is to pay people in foreign countries more money for the products they are shipping to us. “Locally made” products definitely have cache, whether food, clothing, toys, etc. as well as “made in the USA” in general.
The only thing I can think of being regularly marked “fairtrade” is coffee. Personally I assume that its a bit of a farce/marketing gimmick. I don’t think most Americans know what, if any, meaning “fairtrade certified” has. I know I don’t.
Yeah I went to a coffee shop in Columbus last weekend and it happened to bill itself as “fair trade.” I just assumed it meant “No Colombians were harmed in the making of this coffee.”
I agree that America focuses much more on locally-grown than “humanely picked elsewhere.”
Whether it is or isn’t a farce is immaterial; I don’t know what it means so for the purpose of making a retail selection, I assume it means nothing.
Americans expereince a lot of “greenwashing” and I think on the whole they are fairly suspicious of the merit of nebulous, rarely seen certifications, if they give them any thought at all. IMHO, “Fairtrade” is not an important motivator in American retail; there’s certainly no movement afoot promoting its merits, and if anything it is contrary to “buy local” which is a very powerful message right now.
Buy local has its merits until someone realizes that they are paying “U.S.” wages.
I get a lot of inquiries where the person wants to have his/her product “MADE IN THE USA” until I tell them the “MADE IN THE USA” price.
Where I work, we have an actual person that goes in and checks the working conditions in order to give them a Fair Trade certification. He turned down a Pakistani company because the conditions were terrible.
One of the contingents for being a supplier, is that a percentage of the profits has to go back into the business to improve working condition and that they pay a reasonable wage (in local economic terms).
I’ve no doubt they experience a lot, in terms of load versus tolerance. I’d be really interested to know if it’s still a lot compared to other markets - but that’s a topic for another day I guess…
I’m in between two towns that are both Fairtrade towns. I wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t banged on about it in the local paper, and have a sign as you enter the towns telling you. I’ve not noticed a massive amount of Fairtrade goods on sale, I can only think of a few cafés/restaurants that only offer Fairtrade tea and coffee on their menus
Although I’m a bit dubious as to how fair Fairtrade sugar can be when the EU whops massive tariffs on processed sugar but not on the raw material (it’s the processing where most of the profit is), I do generally buy Fairtrade on other stuff that I need when it’s available. That being said, it only tends to be on things I don’t often buy such as chocolate and coffee and thus where I don’t notice the slight premium relative to the keeping it a treat premium I’m prepared to pay anyway.
I greatly admire the way the Cooperative operates on this score - Fairtrade by default where it is available on their own brand goods - which are still cheaper than the equivalent named brand. This is how it should be done in my book: reasonably priced stuff that happens to be traded this way. Outrageously cheap food isn’t reasonably priced.
I was at the grocery store yesterday and I checked out the sugar aisle.
There was an entire line of sugars promoting itself as made in the US (“Florida Crystals”). This brand was also labeled organic, and the website promotes it as a carbon-neutral product.
There was your basic standard line of name brand sugar (“Domino’s”) and a store brand, neither making any particular claims on the packaging.
There was one brand positioned as less processed (“Sugar in the Raw”).
No brand was labeled with respect to its fair trade status (in such a way as to catch the passerby’s eye. I didn’t examine the packaging closely)
In Michigan I sometimes see the label, shrug, and think “who cares.”
If I really thought about it, I’d worry about how artificially inflating the price of something is counterproductive to the world economy and if the trend continues poor people will be screwed by the higher prices.
On the other hand, I live in China where the engineers working for me make 15% of what I do, and live pretty well.
Maybe we need a GD on this. Fairtrade just assigns a price component to the ethics of the supply chain - consumers buy a bit of product, and a bit of something else that they don’t personally take home.
I don’t see why this is any different to, say, assigning a value to any other thing that isn’t tangible to the customer (such as a celebrity endorsement brand of a product), or indeed the ‘buy one, give one’ model used by some charity projects such as the One Laptop Per Child thing.
Not necessarily a GD… maybe another GQ. Honestly, I don’t know the specifics of “FairTrade” other than seeing it on packaging and not caring unless it affects the price:quality ratio.