Alex Singleton’s most recent posting here was on the subject of libertarians in the mainstream media, one in particular. Maybe that has some connection to the fact that Alex seems to be becoming a mainstream media person himself. A few days before that Samizdata piece about a fellow journalist, he did another Samizdata posting about Fairtrade beer, and he returned to the subject of Fairtrade, this time Fairtrade coffee (at the time of me writing this there is a problem with that link – hopefully it will soon work again), in a piece last Friday in one of the Telegraph blogs which he now regularly writes for. Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph (paper version and online) included a shorter version of that same piece. This was the bit (I’m quoting the longer Friday version) which I found most interesting, and most depressing:
Despite Fairtrade’s moral halo, there are other, more ethical forms of coffee available. Most Fairtrade coffee on sale in UK supermarkets and on the high street is roasted and packaged in Europe, principally in Belgium and Germany. This is unnecessary and retards development. Farmers working for Costa Rica’s Café Britt have been climbing the economic ladder by not just growing beans but by also doing all of the processing, roasting and packaging and branding themselves. Shipping unroasted green beans to Europe causes them to deteriorate, so not only is Café Britt doing far more to promote economic development than Fairtrade rivals, it is also creating better tasting coffee.
But Café Britt is not welcome on the Fairtrade scheme. Most of Café Britt’s farmers are self-employed small businesspeople who own the land they farm. This is wholly unacceptable to the rigid ideologues at FLO International, Fairtrade’s international certifiers, who will only accredit the farmers if they give up their small business status and join together into a co-operative. “It’s like outlawing private enterprise,” says Dan Cox, former head of the Speciality Coffee Association of America. …
Fairtrade is, in other words, a front organisation, crafted by unregenerate collectivists to con believers in nice capitalism to buy something which is neither nice nor capitalist. And the way to deal with cons is to expose them for what they are, so that only those who really do believe in the actual values being promoted here continue to support the thing. Telegraph commenters declared themselves angry and disillusioned, and congratulated Alex on a well-researched piece. I long ago stopped being angry about such people as those behind Fairtrade. I expect duplicity and destructiveness and inferior produce from this quarter. But I do congratulate Alex on a good piece of journalism, and on managing to get paid for doing it.
UPDATE: Patrick Crozier weighs in, quoting another commenter.
‘Fair Trade’
Sue the bastards for misleading advertising.
I have loathed Fair Trade brand for years, as a system designed to assuage ignorant, and baseless, middle class guilt while acting to keep people in poverty.
A couple of years ago, on being told I was drinking FT coffee, I put it down and refused to touch it. No one present could understand my reasons.
I went to Waitrose today and wanted some Bananas. I didn’t buy any, because they were all “fair trade”.
It is not only Mr Singleton that is singing the ‘benefits’ of Fairtrade in The Telegraph, but Janet Daley(Link), Richard Gray(Link), and Lewis Carter(Link) are at it too. They all mention this(Link) Adam Smith Institute report on the subject. Pity it is only The Telegraph, but at least someone is putting forward the case that ‘fair trade=free trade’.
Gib, I think pretty much all of the supermarkets have gone totally fair trade on the banana front. Sainsburys certainly have.
FT bananas have now become a cartel, and since I live nowhere near a market, I can only buy from the cartel.
I’m not sure whether this change by the supermarkets is the result of market testing, to curry favour with our rulers or because the FT bandits have cornered the trade and non FT bananas are difficult to get. I suspect the latter, and I’m sure that the Panorama programme pointing out the iniquities of the supposed Fair Trade business will be broadcast any day now.
Or maybe it’s just a marketing ploy in the same way that low carbon footprints and general greenery is used to sell eveything from banks to washing up liquids these days.
And the really sad thing? It works.
While I fully agree with the sentiments regarding Fairtrade expressed here, as a coffee snob, I was startled by the claim that Shipping unroasted green beans to Europe causes them to deteriorate which was edited from the shorter version.
Green vs roasted coffee beans is not like raw vs. cooked meat. Green coffee beans will keep for several years, and are more suitable for transport than roasted coffee, which is sensitive to oxygen and deteriorates rapidly after roasting.
Morrison’s hasn’t. And I don’t know for sure, but I’d be surprised if Tesco had.
That’s really eye-opening. Before knowing all of that, I was suspicious of fair trade because it’s such a vague term with such vague explanations as to what it means. You don’t need vague, feel-good, wishy-washy definitions if you’re doing something good. You need such definitions only to obscure and hide less-than-noble intentions.
And who defines “fair” and how do we prevent “fair trade” from meaning something influenced by socialist notions about the value of labor and the alleged “rights” that are the exclusive domain of those who sell their labor? I prefer the term “free trade” and I can clearly define and defend it. Free trade is the voluntary, uncoerced exchange of value between individuals on the basis of mutual consent for mutual benefit, which is also free from forcible interference by a third party.
The key element here is that there is no force involved, whether that force is the obvious force of a man told at gunpoint to exchange his wallet for his own life (which is not the gunman’s to offer in the first place) or the less obvious, but equally egregious force of a citizen faced with all manner of regulatory barriers, taxes, tariffs, and other government meddling, which diminish his life and livelihood through the omnipotent and self-righteous force levied by the state.
No bananas for you! Here in Israel we buy bananas grown and sold by the evil capitalist kibbutzim. I love the irony.
we buy bananas grown and sold by the evil capitalist kibbutzim
But they, like Israel as a whole, are an example of a lefty project which has been successful. Therefore, they cannot possibly be a ‘good thing’ in the eyes of modern lefties.
Any left wing project, on becoming a success, instead of being celebrated loses its ideological purity and underdog status and becomes part of what the left are battling.
FT bananas have now become a cartel,
Trade in bananas has long been a weird cartel, and the longstanding and ongoing intra-EU banana wars are one of the weirdest trade battles I have seen. (Loosely, the French want the EU to favour bananas from their colonies in the Carribean, and the Germans prefer larger bananas from continental South America, but that is just the start). If the whole “Fairtrade” thing has become mixed up in this, I am not surprised. So in bananas, it may well be that the “Fairtrade” thing has been mixed up in a longstanding political dispute.
Alas, I have a cup of “Fairtrade” coffee in front of me now, as this is what the cafe I am in serves. My policy on this (like my policy on “organic” food) is to avoid it when it is easy to do so (such as when shopping in a supermarket) but not to get too worked up about it otherwise. The whole “capitalism is banned if you want to call it Fairtrade” thing is bad, but I think the name itself is worse. Simply, free trade is both fair and one of the greatest forces for good in the world. Getting more people to realise this is a hugely important task.
Oddly enough, free market
zealotsheroes in the late nineteenth century used to market free trade in a similar way to the way the fair trade people do now. Often they wrote it “Freetrade”, all one word and sometimes capitalised. Where are the people promoting free markets as a moral good today? Lots of people realise that it is, but they are mostly silent in the media and public relations battles. (Okay, I realise this post is in response to a group of them very pointedly not being silent, and well done to them. But even so, there is a depressing lack of zealotry in favour of free markets today.I have a new Fairtrade logo at my blog today
Good timing, Brian. I have just come back from Marks & Spencer where they have banners everywhere advertising FairTrade Fortnight. According to one banner, some tea farmers are able to invest in their future and start a training facility thanks to FairTrade. It’s going to be hard work to counter that sort of propaganda.
Even if all your criticisms are correct what is going on? A group of people voluntarily set up in business and agree to pay above the market rate to producers. The producers as a condition of accepting this money agree to organise themselves as a cooperative. If they don’t want to accept this money they are free not to enter into the contract. In the retail market, consumers freely buy the stuff, in competition with other non Fairtrade products.
As the original article makes clear other business models seem to survive quite happily. They may not have the same marketing power as the Fairtrade brand, but that is surely inevitable in a market economy.
As for advertising – is the Fairtrade hype any different from the garbage that spews across our TV and magazines plugging miracle skin and hair products?
I suspect that the venom directed here towards Fairtrade is more to do with a business model you don’t like, actually working in open competition.
Move along – nothing to see here…
Wrong. We excoriate businesses all the time on this blog for despicable practices, so why should a bunch of shits like the absurdly names Fairtrade folks get a free ride? If we bitch about Google trading with China and Microsoft foisting DRM on people, why not also attack ‘Fairtrade’ for pressuring people into collectives and then sanctimoniously trading on a holier-than-thou image?
According to Perry, Fairtrade is “pressuring people into collectives”.
So – how is this pressure being applied? Where’s the force? Are the organisers sending the boys around? Holding a gun to their heads? Seems unlikely. Perhaps they are offering them more for their produce than other buyers? Surely not…
Ian, I seem to recall that the governments in the FT producing countries are often involved in the scheme – but I could be wrong.
Even if all your criticisms are correct what is going on? A group of people voluntarily set up in business and agree to pay above the market rate to producers. The producers as a condition of accepting this money agree to organise themselves as a cooperative. If they don’t want to accept this money they are free not to enter into the contract. In the retail market, consumers freely buy the stuff, in competition with other non Fairtrade products.
As the original article makes clear other business models seem to survive quite happily. They may not have the same marketing power as the Fairtrade brand, but that is surely inevitable in a market economy.
Ummm
Your tax money is being used to provide artificial economic pressure for people to join co-operative farms. This is bad, end of story.
Screwed that one up big time.
Let me just add for the record that, having recently visited Costa Rica, Cafe Britt is some of the best coffee I’ve ever had.
Fair trade is by no means perfect but it surely is better than nothing, the basic principle is sound it has just been hi-jacked by the money makers, same as everythingelse.
Fair trade is by no means perfect but it surely is better than nothing, the basic principle is sound it has just been hi-jacked by the money makers, same as everythingelse.