Tuesday I went to this panel discussion on fair trade coffee, and I came away somewhat conflicted about the issue. It's obviously a good thing producers - they're getting paid more, thanks to the elimination of the middle man. I will say that I never heard anything about how much these folks are being paid, beyond the compensation being a "living wage" - but the long waiting list to get certified sounds like a ringing approval.
Sales aren't bad in the United States, and it was a real piece of marketing genius to pump up the price consumers will pay by building social consciousness. Consumers have basically been convinced to pay a voluntary subsidy to farmers in a faraway country to which they've almost certainly never been. As long as people are willing to pay for this, they're doing a great service to producers affiliated with the program, and that's something to be happy about.
But it's these same kinds of socially conscious ideologies that really disturb me. There's a tremendous amount of built-in hypocrisy in these arguments, and many of the attacks are downright irrational. Coffee producers in Vietnam are demonized because they sell poor quality coffee that's not grown in the most environmentally responsible way. The suggestion that unprofitable coffee producers simply grow something else is greeted with contempt - they've been growing coffee for hundreds of years, and switching to something else would force them to change their culture. But at the same time, the fair trade program requires them to make their farming practices more environmentally responsible and stop using child labor. As right minded as these changes may be, surely they too constitute a cultural change...
The problem here is that the notion of actually helping these people get where they want to be is getting mixed up with the mechanics of a particular consumer product and its market in the United States/Canada/wherever. Fair trade coffee, with its unmistakable logo and quaint packaging, is for rich, guilty liberals who self-identify as socially conscious. A backwards people who grow coffee as they have for hundreds of years, but with a care for the environment and their children's upbringing - this is just the kind of heady stuff I want to be thinking as I'm drinking.
But the real problems are bigger, institutional problems - problems that won't be fixed by what's essentially a workaround for a few lucky coffee producers. Don't get me wrong, I think fair trade coffee is a decidedly good thing. I just think we should be even more worried about things like eliminating agricultural subsidies in OECD countries, reinforcing third world rule of law and judicial structures, and building a legitimate middle class everywhere. These are things that can't be accomplished by fair trade, and will likely be hindered by the smug, simplistic ideologies that motivate it.
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