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. Many African farmers, organised along tribal lines, are similarly excluded from the scheme. Other producers complain that accreditation is needlessly bureaucratic and costs five times as much as organic certifications.
I don’t have anything against cooperatives if people wish to form them, but by only supporting cooperatives and working against mechanisation the Fair Trade movement is inadvertently working to sustain poverty (in a large part due to its dominant position in the market).
People grow rich, not by just selling goods, but by increasing productivity. That means less people will be involved in growing coffee- but those people will be free to work on other things - such as processing the coffee, growing other crops, being merchants, making other goods which people desire.
We should really be boycotting Fair Trade and instead buying good quality coffee (and other produce) from independent producers and many of the other schemes which seek to aid development. I know Rainforest Alliance works to try and aid development and help save the rainforests of the world in a far more sensible manner and I’m sure there’s others.
If anyone is tempted to dismiss this article as the ravings of loony right-wingers: Alex Singleton’s work is firmly grounded in our liberal heritage, his biggest inspiration is Richard Cobden, one of the great heroes of British liberalism and radicalism. He’s travelled throughout the poorest areas of the world, talking and listening to the people who need help. He shares the desire of Fair Trade campaigners, the difference is he looks to see what people in the developing world actually want and what actually works.
I’m sure we all want a good deal for the poorest, but Fair Trade, unfortunately does not offer that. Its really in the business of selling political ideology to the poor and feel good conscience salves to the rich.
