Agri-value chain certification schemes may not quite deliver what they suggest

Certification schemes have in recent years been very successful at creating a niche for themselves in the value chains for various products. Amongst the best known are the ISO, Globalgap, the Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade and various 'organic' certification schemes.

Each promises to deliver various socio-economic standards for the cultivating and sourcing of raw materials to producers, consumers and many others in between. While the business insiders in the sectors 'governed' by each of these certification schemes may know the details of what is verified and given the stamp of approval, most of the general public have only a hazy idea. But especially for some consumers in western countries, a product's seal of approval by one or more of these certification schemes suggests that the product is produced according to 'ethical' standards.

Among the assumed implications of what 'ethical' means are that no child labour is used (e.g. cocoa) or that farmers are paid 'fair' prices for their crops (fair trade).

But it turns out that the certification stamps may not quite mean what much of the public (western consumers mostly) assumes.

 For instance, it has recently come out that manufacturers of products containing cocoa as a key ingredient need only source 30% of the cocoa according to the Rainforest Alliance's criteria before they can use the scheme's logo as a marketing tool for the products.

To charges of misleading consumers about what it means for a product to carry a Rainforest Alliance-approved logo, the organization rather weakly protests that the acceptance of the 30% certified cocoa practice is based on a commitment by the maker of the product to up the proportion to 100% certified cocoa within five years (negotiable.)

It is understandable that a one-size-fits-all certification regime may not be practical in the case of a product like cocoa, grown and sourced in vastly differing agricultural and economic conditions across the world. But  there probably are many consumers who might feel that 30% is less than what the average person would think as an acceptable minimum requirement (certified cocoa content) for that finished product (chocolate, etc) to be able to carry the RA alliance.

Further complicating matters, certified cocoa can be mixed with uncertified (or differently certified) cocoa at several places in the value chain, meaning that 'certification' of the final product with which the cocoa will be  made can mean almost anything.

The standards for a product to win 'Fairtrade' certification are apparently higher than those of the Rainforest Alliance, but Fairtrade-certified cocoa can be mixed with non-Fairtrade cocoa before the final (certified) product's manufacture. The reasons given for this are the complicated logistics and high costs of keeping certified and non-certified coca separate. That is understood, but it also means that a 'Fairtrade' logo on a product may actually mean much less than the average consumer may think it does.

Despite all this confusion, the certification schemes partly defend themselves by stating that participant farmers are still better off than farmers who are not members, those who are totally at the whim of global supply and demand pricing.

Apart from these controversies, there have long been critics who allege that some certification schemes are merely a type of white-washing of the unfair-to-small-farmers practices of global corporates like those that dominate the cocoa/chocolate sector.

African Agriculture

Confectioner to buy cocoa direct from West African farmers

by Franz Wild

Kraft Foods Inc's South African unit will pay extra for cocoa beans sourced directly from West African farmers to make its Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar, securing it Fairtrade certification, the company said.

Thousands of farmers in the world’s top producing region for the chocolate ingredient will receive internationally agreed Fairtrade prices and a further $200 per metric ton to invest in local business and community development, the world’s second- biggest food company said in an e-mailed statement today.

Fairtrade certification requires a company to pay cocoa and sugar producers an additional amount, which is used for programs from building wells to hiring local teachers for the community.

Fairtrade Label South Africa, which confirmed that it issued the certification for Kraft, is part of a network it says represents 500,000 African small-scale producers and farm workers. The group of 24 organizations worldwide seeks to secure better deals for farmers around the world.

Bloomberg

Fair-trade coffee producers often end up poorer

by Lawrence Solomon

Coffee is one of our guilty pleasures, and not only because of the calories that can be packed into a double latte. Many of us feel guilty that our pleasure is coming at the expense of the Third World coffee farmer, so much so that we gladly pay more for “fair-trade” coffee, which certifies that farmers receive more revenue for their crop.

On World Fair Trade Day, we have something else to feel guilty about. That fair-trade cup of coffee we savour may not only fail to ease the lot of poor farmers, it may actually help to impoverish them, according to a study out recently from Germany’s University of Hohenheim.

The study, which followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair-trade market “are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers.

“Over a period of 10 years, our analysis shows that organic and organic-fair trade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers.”

These findings do not surprise me. I speak as someone who has had contact with various Third World producers in my capacity as president of Green Beanery, a company I founded seven years ago to raise funds for Energy Probe Research Foundation, a federal charity that I manage. Green Beanery sells more varieties of coffee, including fair trade and organic coffees, than any other company in Canada, giving me occasion to witness the nature of the fair-trade business, and hear first hand of its impact on small producers that supply us.

The fair-trade business is filled with contradictions.

For starters, it discriminates against the very poorest of the world’s coffee farmers, most of whom are African, by requiring them to pay high certification fees. These fees — one of the factors that the German study cites as contributing to the farmers’ impoverishment — are especially perverse, given that the majority of Third World farmers are not only too poor to pay the certification fees, they’re also too poor to pay for the fertilizers and the pesticides that would disqualify coffee as certified organic.

Their coffee is organic by default, but because the farmers can’t provide the fees that certification agencies demand to fly down and check on their operations, the farmers lose out on the premium prices that can be fetched by certified coffee.

To add to the perversity, it’s an open secret that the certification process is lax and almost impossible to police, making it little more than a high-priced honour system. Although the certification associations have done their best to tighten flaws in the system, farmers and middlemen who want to get around the system inevitably do, bagging unearned profits. Those who remain scrupulous and follow the onerous and costly regulations — another source of inefficiency the German study notes in its analysis — lose out.

The study, published in the journal Ecological Economics, recommends that policy “move from certification schemes to investments in the farm and business management skills of producers” — in other words, phase out the certification fees.

Most merchants of certified coffees are aware of these contradictions, but most won’t be aware of other problems in the certification business. For Third World farmers to qualify as fair-trade producers, and thus obtain higher prices for their coffee, farmers must join co-operatives. In some Third World societies, farmers readily accept the compromises of communal enterprise. In others, they balk. In patriarchal African societies, for example, the small coffee farm is the family business, its management a source of pride to the male head of the household. Joining a co-operative, and being told when and what and how to plant entails loss of dignity.

The contradictions are acknowledged even by many fair-trade merchants, who often refer instead to anecdotal reports of less quantifiable benefits such as better health care or schooling in a village or even, most tangentially, improved habitat for birds or wildlife.

The contradictions extend to consumers of coffee in the West. Several years ago, I received a call from a church in Kingston, inquiring whether Green Beanery could supply it with freshly roasted fair-trade coffee on a weekly basis.

Along the way, the church officer mentioned that the parishioners wanted to do what they could to help poor farmers in the Third World. I replied that I’d be happy to supply the church, but I also advised him that fair-trade coffee would not help the poorest of farmers — these smallholders are actually hurt when Western consumers forsake them for coffee produced by better-off farmers who can afford the certification fees.

I also mentioned that various coffees produced by small farmers in some of the neediest parts of Africa would taste superb while costing the church less, allowing it to spend the difference on some other worthwhile cause.

After a long pause, the church official replied something like: “I still think the parishioners would feel better knowing that they were drinking fair-trade coffee.”

Some believe that certified coffee is superior in some way. But it is not always so. The small-scale farms whose local ecologies produce distinctive, niche coffee beans can’t operate on a scale that would justify official certification. As the German study notes, “Certified coffees have distinct production and marketing systems with different associated costs than the conventional system.”

Neither is certified coffee different at all. In fact, at Green Beanery we have received bags of coffee, some labelled fair trade, some not, grown on the very same farm and identical in every respect. The fair-trade certified farmer himself can’t tell which beans will be sold as fair trade and which not — that decision is made by the higher-ups.

Because the fair-trade associations are intent on keeping the price of fair-trade coffee up, they limit the supply of coffee that can be labelled as certified. To the certified farmer’s chagrin, most of his fair-trade certified crop could end up being sold as uncertified conventional coffee.

And in this well-intentioned price-fixing game, the fair-trade farmer is the pawn and the joke is on the customer.

Financial Post

Sao Tome and Principe farmers benefit from fair trade cocoa

by Martin Plaut


Farmers on the islands of Sao Tome and Principe, off the coast of West Africa, are again enjoying the sweet taste of success thanks to high-quality, organic, fair-trade cocoa - the raw ingredient for chocolate.

Once in the doldrums, production of the country's cocoa crop has risen sharply, registering a 10-fold increase since 2004.

Many of the small farmers, who were previously living on the edge of poverty, have seen a boost to their incomes. The key to the success has been the development of farmers' co-operatives, which have allowed the farmers to cut out the middlemen who took a large chunk of the profits.

"My life is different now," says Jose Esperansa, a small-scale cocoa farmer, who is now the managing director of CECEAQ-11, a cocoa-fermenting, drying and exporting co-operative.

The initiative, supported by the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) and Cafedirect, a British Fairtrade firm, has helped the co-operatives produce Fairtrade certified beans.

Sao Tome and Principe, a Portuguese colony until 1975, has an ideal climate and rich soils that are ideal for growing cocoa. The crop was introduced in the 19th Century and cultivated by slaves brought from the African mainland, where they worked on plantations, known as rocas.

But by the late 1990s, the crop was in severe decline, partly because of a crash in the price of the commodity.

The results were crippling, since cocoa made up 95% of the island's exports. Farmers lost faith in cocoa as a source of income and one politician even predicted the end of the industry on the islands. A quarter of farmers were left living below the poverty line.

In order to reverse the industry's decline, Ifad commissioned French organic chocolate producer Kaoka to assess the country's cocoa sector. Kaoka found that if the farmers could produce cocoa certified as organic, they could improve the price of their crop.

Now - in a scheme backed by Ifad and Cafedirect - the farmers' fortunes have been transformed. By coming together in co-operatives and by processing their cocoa, they have managed to get a much better return on their crop.

"Before Cafedirect I would work from day-to-day, hand-to-mouth," says Mr Esperansa. "I did not think about the future."

Cafedirect head Anne MacCaig recently travelled to the islands to see how it was done.

"They have the facilities to ferment the product and then from that they are able to work together across the different organisations to dry the cocoa, collect it all in one central warehouse," she said. "Then they are able to export it. They are benefiting from five times the price they had when they sold it as a gloopy white liquid."

Before the programme began in 2004, Sao Tome produced just 50 tonnes of cocoa. By mid-2010 this had risen to 600 tonnes of organic, fair-trade beans.

Many producers have invested in home improvements and can now afford items like bicycles, generators, radios and refrigerators. The co-operatives are investing in primary health-care clinics and better sanitation.

But is the support for the cocoa crop tying the farmers into a single crop, monoculture?

Mrs MacCaig says it will not.

"Sao Tome is an island with incredibly rich volcanic soil, so if you can do this with cocoa, there are so many other products that can be grown as well."

BBC

Fair trade coffee benefits Ugandan farmers

by Wambi Michael

The cultivation of coffee beans for fair trade has turned the fortunes of this historical cash crop around in some poor rural areas on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda.

The east African country’s government liberalised the coffee export market in 1990s, attracting many coffee buyers to the Arabica coffee-growing districts. Increased competition went hand in hand with cash payments to farmers from the sale of coffee, as opposed to the old system where they had to wait for cooperatives to pay them.

Nevertheless, the prices remained low at 0.35 dollars for one kg of coffee and farmers could not break even. Some farmers lost interest in coffee cultivation while others started to cut corners. The coffee was not pulped well; it was mixed with husks and sand to increase weight.

Concerned about the decline in the quality and quantity of the historical cash crop, some former staff and members of the Bugisu Cooperative Union formed Gumutindo Cooperative Trading and adopted fair trade rules. Gumutindo means quality in the native language of the Arabica coffee- growing tribe that lives on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda.

Sam Magona, one of the founders of Gumutindo, said that by joining the fair trade movement they wanted to reclaim the reputation of Ugandan Arabica coffee on the world market and to ensure that farmers got higher prices for their produce.

Gumutindo has since established it own warehouse in Mbale, some 300 km east of Uganda’s capital Kampala. It is affiliated to the British-based Fairtrade Foundation and exports organic coffee to Café Direct Plc and Trade Aid, among others.

Magona said, "fair trade practices sensitise farmers by reminding them of the things they know about coffee. Everyone growing coffee knows how to produce good quality coffee but they had neglected these practices. Fair trade has given the farmers better prices for their coffee. So they are able to solve most of their problems."

Apart from paying higher prices, Gumutindo provides a social premium with each kilogramme of coffee that is produced. This premium comes in the form of a bonus to farmers which they can use to set up support projects in the areas where coffee is cultivated that are also aimed at those people not engaged in coffee production.

"Our rates guarantee farmers a second payment at the end of the season when the coffee has been sold and there is an additional social premium which the societies can use on community projects of their choice," he says.

Gumutindo boasts a membership of over 15 societies, each representing 500- 1,000 coffee farmers. Nimrod Wambete, the newly elected Gumutindo chairperson, explains that more village societies across Mount Elgon’s slopes were joining them because of the social premium payment that has enabled societies to construct better storage facilities.

Farmers are also helped to access free coffee seedlings and extension services for organic coffee cultivation.

"Our farmers never got benefits from their coffee like they are getting from Gumutindo now," Wambete insists. "Fair trade price means a good life to farmers. They get better prices so they can invest in their farms, they pay school fees for their children, they build better houses and they have improved living standards."

A kilogramme of coffee was going for about two dollars at the end of 2010 while coffee buyers not operating under fair trade principles were paying 1.60 dollars for the same quantity. In some rural areas the price offered by middlemen to unsuspecting farmers was far less than 1.60 dollars.

During a visit to Gumutindo’s busy warehouse, the workers – all women– were sorting coffee under tree shades. For grading purposes, they remove defective coffee beans. Each worker is paid per kilo of defective coffee beans sorted during the eight hours of work and receives a dividend at the end of the year.

Mary Namwano, one of the workers at the cooperative, told IPS that the earnings help her family, which would otherwise be totally dependent on her husband’s meagre salary. "The children would not be going to school if I was not working here," she said. Namwano’s husband is employed as a municipal law enforcement officer earning about 30 dollars a month -- not enough to run a five-member family.

Lydia Nabulumbi, Gumutindo’s quality assurance officer, told IPS that the sorting process is done both by machines and humans to ensure quality. "The criteria for determining whether to buy the coffee are strict.

"When the coffee comes through the gates, our quality assurance people check the beans. Quality is about the physical appearance of the coffee beans and how clean they are. Then they check the moisture content and the number of defects. When they decide that it is good quality, they give permission for the coffee to be bought and stored in the warehouse for export," she adds.

Over the years, the coffee beans that Gumutindo receives has been cleaner, which has meant less sorting than before.

"Usually when selling at a low price, the traders’ priority is quantity rather than quality but at Gumutindo we have demonstrated that quality pays and it has worked," enthuses Nabulumbi. (END)

IPS

Fair trade cocoa supply may be affected by Ivory Coast political troubles

by Simon Watkins and Jo Thornhill

Political unrest in the Ivory Coast, where 40 per cent of the world’s cocoa beans are grown, has ‘significantly’ depleted the number of certified fair trade cocoa farmers.

Many have fled the West African country, while fair trade training programmes have also come to a halt.

The situation is already affecting chocolate manufacturers, who are facing the highest cocoa prices for over 30 years. Prices jumped by 10 per cent in January alone. Analysts are predicting they could soon hit $3,720 per metric tonne - a level last seen in January 1979.

It follows a curb on international cocoa exports initiated last this week by the country's new president, Alassane Ouattara.

Angus Kennedy, the editor of Kennedy's Confection and a leading British chocolatier, said chocolate producers are facing 'one of the biggest challenges to hit the industry in recent history. Supplies of sustainable cocoa are set to run out, it's that simple,' he said.

'The Ivory Coast is a complete no-go area for cocoa traders as it's too dangerous, so training new farmers and trying to cut problems in the region is now, mostly impossible. So in effect, its sustainability is not sustainable. Prices can't go up as it's reported because there basically isn't enough certified cocoa left to sell.'

Of the world's 5.5 million cocoa farmers, only 10 per cent have been trained and certified as sustainable fair-trade producers. The certification is granted by specially-trained teachers, and the course runs for up to three years.

But the political turmoil in Ivory Coast means both the farmers and trainers are fleeing the country, leaving a severe shortage of certified cocoa beans.

Even if the political situation improves, it could take three years or more for the number of certified fair-trade farmers to reach its former level.

According to Mr Kennedy, manufacturers are now fighting for the rest of the world's sustainable cocoa bean stock.

'Things could get nasty now as producers start to fight over the last stocks,' he added.

Daily Mail

Cocoa initiative to boost farmer incomes and supply, claims leading buyer

by Jane Byrne

Kraft said work conducted by the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership initiative in Ghana will see more cocoa farmer organisations becoming Fairtrade certified by the end of 2010, to ensure sustainability of supply and a guaranteed income for growers.

The UK confectioner, now owned by Kraft, launched the programme back in 2008, saying its overarching objective was to support sustainable cocoa communities and improve the lives of over 500,000 cocoa farmers and their families by 2018.

And the initiative pledged investment of around £45m over a-10-year period in key cocoa regions in Ghana, South East Asia, India and the Caribbean.

Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fair Trade Foundation, in praising the Cadbury programme, noted the benefits the partnership has generated for the Fairtrade cooperative, Kuapa Kokoo, and she said that she expects the 10 new Ghanaian farmer groups to achieve similar returns when certified.

In March 2009, Cadbury announced that its Dairy Milk bar was going Fairtrade, making it the first mass-market chocolate in the world to use Fairtrade cocoa; previously, the ethical certification make had been confined to niche products and premium brands.

The takeover of the UK chocolate maker by Kraft in February this year sparked concerns that the US group would renege on the Cadbury commitment to use only Fairtrade cocoa in the Dairy Milk range, which is sold in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

However, Kraft stressed in the months following the takeover that it already worked "extensively" with sustainably sourced cocoa and coffee suppliers and that it planned to maintain Cadbury's contracts with the Fairtrade Foundation.

Sales of Fairtrade certified products increased 15 per cent in 2009, according to the global Fairtrade body, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO).

FLO said that sales of Fairtrade-certified sugar and cocoa saw the biggest sales increases last year, as several major confectionery manufacturers, as well as Cadbury, made commitments to source fairly traded ingredients, including Nestlé’s Kit Kat.

Fairtrade sales grew ‘exponentially’ in Eastern Europe, South Africa and many countries in the global south during 2009, FLO said, and shoppers in the most established Fairtrade markets also increased their spending on Fairtrade products.

An estimated 1.2 million farmers and workers sell through the Fairtrade scheme, with benefits including higher-than-market income and funds for development projects.

Confectionary News

Fair Trade: What price for good coffee?

by Ezra Fieser

Ever since Jesuit monks brought coffee to Guatemala three centuries ago, raising the beans has been a losing business for small farmers. Conditions are miserable — try lugging 100 lb. of fertilizer up a mountain — and even though coffee is the world's second most valuable traded commodity, after oil, the money it brings in is measly.

"It's not enough to live on," says Luis Antonio, who has grown coffee near Quetzaltenango, in Guatemala's western highlands, for three decades but gets deeper in debt each year. "What we earn isn't enough to buy food for our children."

Antonio and the world's 25 million other small coffee growers don't have a lot of career alternatives. So you'd think they would be enthusiastic about Fair Trade — a global campaign that for 25 years has sought to bring struggling Third World farmers, including Antonio, out of poverty by paying them higher-than-market prices for everything from coffee to quinoa. Along the way, it has recruited retail giants like Starbucks, which is the globe's largest purchaser of Fair Trade — certified coffee.

But the future of the Fair Trade — coffee movement is in question, as some backers raise concerns about whether it has reached the limit of how much it can help. In a private-industry survey last year of 179 Fair Trade coffee farmers in Central America and Mexico, more than half said their families have still been going hungry for several months a year.

"When I got the results, I was shocked," says Rick Peyser, director of social advocacy for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Vermont, the Fair Trade company that commissioned the survey. "I was ready to quit."

Massachusetts Fair Trade firm Equal Exchange spokesman Rodney North admits, "There is a potential disconnect between what the buyer thinks Fair Trade is accomplishing and the situation on the ground," from Latin America to Asia.

Fair Trade pays $1.55 per lb. for Antonio's organic coffee, almost 10% more than the market price. But Antonio is left with only 50¢ per lb. after paying Fair Trade cooperative fees, government taxes and farming expenses. By year's end, he says, from the few thousand pounds he grows, he'll pocket about $1,000 — around half the meager minimum wage in Guatemala — or $2.75 a day, not enough for Starbucks' cheapest latte.

The same holds true for other Guatemalan growers, like Mateo Reynoso, also from Quetzaltenango. Without Fair Trade, he says, "we wouldn't be growing coffee anymore." But even Fair Trade prices "haven't kept up" with the costs small farmers face, he adds.

For most coffee growers, Fair Trade is still slightly more lucrative than the open market. Two years ago, the Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), which sets worldwide prices and standards, raised the minimum per-pound price of nonorganic coffee 9¢, to $1.35 (a dime of which goes to social programs like scholarships for growers' children). That's 15¢ higher than the current market rate.

And yet, according to Fair Trade researcher Christopher Bacon of the University of California, Berkeley, the per-pound price that's needed for farmers to rise above subsistence is really more than $2. Farmer advocates are urging the FLO to consider raising the price that much.But because such a big jump would probably mean Fair Trade could help fewer farmers — even Starbucks is likely to buy less java at that cost — the FLO is balking.

"What good is it to have $2-per-lb. coffee if you can only serve tens of thousands of farmers" instead of millions? asks Paul Rice, president and CEO of TransFair USA, the California-based nonprofit that oversees Fair Trade in the U.S. "You risk killing the goose." Instead, the FLO's main growth strategy is to keep recruiting retailers like Starbucks. "We are going more and more mainstream," says FLO chief operating officer Tuulia Syvanen. "We're doing it to increase the market for our farmers."

Time

Traditional farming could propel millions out of poverty

by Harriet Lamb*

One-third of the world's population depends on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. Smallholders are the catalyst to a prosperous future.

Times are tough for people in the UK right now. But across the developing world, times are desperate for smallholders, caught between rising food and fuel prices and a credit crunch that sees orders falling and access to loans becoming harder than ever. Yet these smallholders, too often overlooked by companies and policymakers alike, could hold the key to helping solve the food crisis and tackle poverty.

Just 15 years ago, Rwanda was utterly devastated. They are now rebuilding their economy, with organised smallholders at its heart. Just 15 years ago, Maraba village was one of the country's poorest, their low-quality coffee was sold straight off the bushes for passing prices to passing middlemen.

Today, the Maraba farmers have organised themselves into a Fairtrade-certified cooperative, have four washing stations – the first stage in processing coffee – have trained the first generation of cuppers, or tasters, who are constantly improving quality, and are commanding record premiums for their prize-winning beans. They are roasting and selling their coffee all over Rwanda as well as exporting it through Union Handroasted to UK shop shelves.

These are the most innovative farmers I have ever met – constantly researching new ways how to improve productivity, such as making organic compost, or to add value, such as roasting at a village level using traditional techniques. And they have sparked an economic revival that sees Maraba now as among the more prosperous villages in Rwanda, as evidenced by the bustling bank and choice of hairdressing salons, while the farmers are now building and running a nursery school.

It is an economic revival that, with the right support, smallholders could lead worldwide. Some 450 million smallholder farming households cultivate two hectares or less, and with their families they make up a third of all humanity. Increasing their incomes will therefore be vital to improving the incomes of the poor. Indeed, because smallholders tend to spend more income on local goods and services, they could be the impetus that stimulates virtuous economic circles in local economies.

Organised groups of smallholders can also play a catalytic role in stimulating wider progress – on the environment and on social issues.

And smallholders hold the key to increasing food production. Small farms produce the bulk of many developing countries' food: up to 80% of Zambia's, for example. Much evidence points to their productivity – if given the right support.

That support is needed now more than ever. In Uganda, some tea-growers today spend more than 50% of income on food, up from 30% in the past. Some estimate the price of maize will rise by 27% over the next 10 years.

A member of Mabale Growers Tea Factory in western Uganda, Beatrice Kunihira, usually produces 300kg of tea a month, but she's been unable to afford fertiliser recently and is only producing roughly half as much. On top of this, price rises mean the family is spending double what it did last year on food. She says: "We can only afford eggs twice a year, at Easter or Christmas. We are in poverty. Sometimes we want to put on shoes but we can't afford them. Sometimes, we want to eat meat, but we can't afford it."

For too long, smallholder agriculture has been sidelined, with international aid to agriculture collapsing (from $7.6bn in 1980 to $3.9bn in 2006) and African governments typically spending only 4-5% of their national budgets on agriculture. That is why the Fairtrade Foundation is calling for smallholders to be put first in the strategies of governments, North and South, and in company's sourcing plans.

Fairtrade is helping smallholders through the current crisis, and it is building an architecture of hope – making an immediate difference to some seven million farmers, workers and their families while proving that trade can be run differently.

*Harriet Lamb is Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation

The Guardian

UK Fairtrade cotton sales increase

The Fairtrade Foundation says that UK sales of Fairtrade cotton products in the first nine months of 2008 were over 18 million units worth an estimated £67.1 million, up from 5.5 million units (£27.5 milion) in the same period last year.

The Fairtrade Foundation has also reveals it has ambitious plans to increase the volume of Fairtrade Cotton products to "10% of cotton clothing in the UK by 2012." It also plans to expand the range of product areas to areas such as cosmetics as part of a five-year strategy 'Tipping the Balance', which aims to achieve increase sales four-fold by 2012 to �2.5 billion a year.

Ecotextile

Irish Fair Trade Network to provide €15 million for African farmers

Funding of €15 million has been announced for the Irish Fair Trade Network to support more than 435,000 east African farmers. The funding will support fair and ethical trading systems in east Africa between 2008 and 2012, with a particular focus on Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

Announcing the funding, Minister of State for Overseas Development Peter Power said: "Poor farmers in east Africa need support to sell their agricultural produce and access markets in countries like Ireland."This assistance is about helping people to help themselves, he added.

The executive director of Fairtrade Mark Ireland, Peter Gaynor, said the funding would not go to companies, but would be distributed among the small farmers and workers of eastern African countries.

The money will go toward coffee co-ops, tea estates and the provision of agronomy training and marketing support, he said.

"Agronomy training is important in helping farmers to produce products that companies in Ireland and Europe would buy, while marketing support is vital for farmers to understand the market needs of Europe," he explained.

Irish Times

Jamaica to focus on local market for bananas over EU market competitiveness fears

Jamaica has virtually written off bananas as an export crop, and will be using the next five years to develop niche markets for the fruit and grow local consumption.

"The future of banana, for me, is primarily in local consumption, including local value-added," said Agriculture Minister Dr Christopher Tufton.

The fruit is popular in desserts and baked goods, and processed into snacks. Jamaicans consumed 100,000 tonnes or more than three times the 32,000 tonnes of bananas sold to foreign markets in 2006.

Given those numbers, Jamaican policymakers and private farm operators were not overly concerned about the eroding competitiveness of Caribbean bananas in Europe, which a week ago, worsened with the planning of a new EU banana tariff regime that will allow Latin American bananas to enter that market even more cheaply.

Instead of €176 per tonne, the tariff will fall to €148 on January 1, 2009 and to €114 by 2016.

"Worst case scenario is that we have about four to five years at which point the gradual decline of the tariff will make us uncompetitive as a local sector because it is going to be difficult for us to compete with cheaper bananas from other countries," the agriculture minister said.

Dr Marshall Hall, shareholder and former managing director of the Jamaica Producers Group, the largest banana producer in Jamaica, believes the EU might not follow through on the proposed reduction of the tariff. "The European Union, the Latins and the USA had reached an agreement that was subject to there being an agreement to what's called the Doha Round," he said. "The Doha Round broke down and that agreement is no longer discussed," he said. "There is nothing that has been agreed recently that is on the table."

Tufton says the next five years allows Jamaica a window to reorganise the sector - looking at niche markets and value-added products.

Tufton and Hall said there were opportunities from Fair Trade certification that allows its recipients to trade bananas at a premium price.

"We have concluded an arrangement which will allow us to do that," Hall said. "Fair Trade is a label, which says to the buyer 'you have produced the material, in this case bananas, with no herbicides, you have employed workers fairly, you have no child labour, you are concerned about the environment'," he said.

About 60-70 per cent of the local industry has already received Fair Trade certification, which will be on the labels of bananas scheduled for export starting this month, Hall said.

The EU has long bought bananas from the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group at preferential rates under a tariff structure that made it more expensive to import the fruit from outside the ACP group. A sustained lobby by Latin American producers has seen a gradual erosion of preferences and adjustment of the tariffs.

Prior to 2006, exports to the EU, from Latam producers, were limited by quota, with the first 2.7 million tonnes attracting a tariff of €75, and €680 on any amount exported thereafter.

Latin America accounts for 60 per cent of bananas imported by the EU. The ACP accounts for 20 per cent.

Jamaica's banana growers had anticipated the new adjustments and so were prepared for bad news.

"We have been expecting some sort of negative reports, for some time, and it is not as bad as we expected. It could have been an entire preference gone but we get a gradual reprieve until the year 2016 to get it right," said Bobby Pottinger, president of the Banana Growers Association.

Pottinger anticipates that there will eventually be a fallout in the industry, as a result of this new development, but says the sector would likely retain most of its farmers. His reason: "From the simple fact that we use 150,000 tonnes locally, each year, and the price is good."

"We believe that the possibilities for local consumption are tremendous," said Tufton.

Jamaica Gleaner

Oxfam warns of dangers of 'food mile' fantasy

Oxfam has appealed to shoppers not to fall for the food miles fantasy that promises to save the planet but threatens to make life worse for thousands of poor farmers around the world.

Duncan Green, Head of Research at Oxfam said: "Buying green is rightly at the forefront of consumers' minds but rejecting foods on the grounds of how far they have travelled oversimplifies the issue, unfairly punishes farmers from poor countries, and may even lead to higher emissions."

For example, growing roses in artificial conditions in Holland and transporting to the UK produces almost six times more carbon than growing them in the warmer climate of Kenya and flying them in.

The concept of 'food miles' does not take into account the amount of carbon that is generated during the production and retail process, and is therefore a misleading indicator for consumers of total carbon emissions.

Green said: "There are many more effective ways to tackle climate change by literally putting our own houses in order. For example, if everyone in the UK switched one 100W light bulb for a low-energy one, UK emissions could be cut by almost five times as much as would be saved by not purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables from Africa."

Poor farmers in developing countries - who are already facing the brunt of climate change - face losing their livelihoods. There are an estimated 1.5m people in Africa who depend on agricultural exports to the UK for a living.

Green said: "Oversimplified concepts about how to tackle climate change are not only failing to give consumers the whole picture, but jeopardising the livelihoods of people who are already facing terrific challenges due to climate change. They are the least responsible for climate change and should not have to pay the highest price.

"The food miles debate needs to be looked at again to ensure consumers have the information they need to buy green without undermining the, often fragile, livelihoods of poor farmers around the world."

Buying Fairtrade goods means people can help poor farmers around the world while also being mindful of the environmental impact of their purchase. Fairtrade schemes promote sustainable agricultural practices and help farmers get better prices for their crops. With Fairtrade premiums, farmers' organisations have the opportunity to invest in their own environmental programmes, such as recycling, tree planting, installing solar lighting, providing fuel-efficient stoves.

Oxfam

Report says Fairtrade products do not aid long term development

The multi-million pound Fairtrade industry has been accused of failing to help the world's most impoverished farmers as Britain's second biggest sugar firm announced plans to convert its entire range to the scheme.

A report by the Adam Smith Institute claims Fairtrade products do not aid long-term economic development and often fail to help the poorest farm workers.

Consumers spent more than £290 million a year on Fairtrade goods in 2006 and sales of products bearing the distinctive black, green and blue logo have continued to soar.

They are likely to rise further after the sugar company Tate & Lyle said it would convert its entire operation to Fairtrade-certified farmers. Under the scheme, 40 per cent of the cost of each bag of sugar will now go back to Belize, where it will be shared by farmers, cane mills and community projects.

But the report, named Unfair Trade, has sparked a row over the scheme's effectiveness in tackling poverty. It claims that paying farmers for their produce sustains uncompetitive farming methods rather than encouraging modern techniques. The institute also says the payment structures put in place by the Fairtrade Foundation, which operates the Fairtrade label, unintentionally encourage farms in developing countries to take on labourers only during harvest time rather than employing them full-time.

In addition, it claims that just a fraction of the Fairtrade premium paid by consumers actually reaches the producer, while retailers pocket the rest.

The Fairtrade Foundation, however, insists it ensures farmers are paid a better wage than they would normally receive and this helps them to improve the lives of their families and the local community.

Tom Clougherty, policy director at the Adam Smith Institute, said: "At best, Fairtrade is a marketing device that does the poor little good. At worst, it may inadvertently be harming some of the planet's most vulnerable people. There is nothing wrong with being concerned about the working conditions, wages and environment of workers, but we don't believe Fairtrade is the most effective model. They make assumptions about agriculture in the developing world - that they must be small farming cooperatives, but this is just not sustainable if countries are to develop."

He said free trade was a more effective strategy for reducing poverty, as it encouraged countries to industrialise and develop more efficient farming practices.

The report also claims Fairtrade is actually failing to operate in countries that suffer from the lowest wages. Mexico, for instance, is the largest Fairtrade coffee producer in the world, with 51 certified organisations, while Ethiopia has just four and Rwanda 10.

The institute also says the Fairtrade Foundation has tried to monopolise the so-called ethically branded produce market by persuading organisations, schools and towns to declare themselves Fairtrade at the expense of other ethical brands such as Cafe Britt.

There are more than 300 Fairtrade towns and cities across the UK, where councils are required to pass a resolution to support Fairtrade and ensure such products are readily available in shops.

Fairtrade is one of the ­fastest-growing retail sectors in Britain, with sales soaring by 46 per cent between 2005 and 2006. More than 3,000 products are Fairtrade-certified including coffee, tea, chocolate, fruit, vegetables and cotton.

The Fairtrade Foundation, which will launch its Fairtrade Fortnight promotion this week, claims more than seven million people in 58 countries benefit from the system.

The organisation said: "This is a cynical attempt to undermine our pragmatic approach to trade. Fairtrade products cost the consumer no more than ordinary products in many cases, yet we ensure farmers receive a higher price. We also work with other ethical brands such as those in the organic movement."

Other charities remain divided over Fairtrade. While Oxfam said it supported the brand, others criticised it.

Ceri Dingle, director of educational charity WorldWrite, said: "Fairtrade is much more about satisfying the Western consumer's guilt. No country has ever become a successful economy by being a farm - they need to industrialise."

Daily Telegraph

Fashion industry promotes organic, fair trade cotton

Top fashion designers and models are championing "clean cotton" on behalf of the Environmental Justice Foundation, a nongovernmental group that hopes to call attention to the cotton industry's alleged connection to pesticide poisoning, child labour, environmental depletion and thousands of deaths a year.

The campaign, called "Pick Your Cotton Carefully," sells organic and fair-trade cotton T-shirts. The foundation hopes to ban cotton produced through forced child labour and to expose the use of pesticides in central Asia and West Africa that it calls deadly.

"Without a doubt it kills people and it kills wildlife," said Juliette Williams, the foundation's co-founder.

In the United States, organic cotton is probably the most common "green" fabric. Wal-Mart is now the biggest seller of organic cotton products worldwide.

The British campaign follows the foundation's three-year investigation into trade and agricultural practices of cotton worldwide.

But Terry Townsend, the executive director of the International Cotton Advisory Committee - which promotes the cotton industry - says these companies are misinformed. He said that many of the problems identified by activists do not reflect the industry as a whole.

The cotton industry employs 350 million people worldwide and produces about 24 million tonnes of cotton a year. Only 48,000 tonnes of cotton are produced by organic and fair-trade sources each year - not enough to meet demand, Townsend said.

The cotton industry was valued at US$32 billion in 2006, but activists claim sharecroppers in developing countries rarely see profits from their work and some wages are so low that parents often send children to work for supplemental income.

The foundation's booth at fashion week is among environmentally conscious designers who already buy organic and fair-trade materials.

Among them is 26-year-old Sarah Lucy Smith whose quirky underwear line, "GreenKnickers," was among the first brands to be awarded a fair-trade certification.

"It's really simple - people die to make our clothes when we make things that are not fair trade," Smith said. "I think if people really understood the reality they'd probably say, 'I'd rather be naked' than wear something that someone had to die to produce."

Canadian Press

As commodities demand and prices rise, poor farmers' incomes decline

by Ali Mchumo, John R. Kaputin, Supachai Panitchpakdi and Kemal Dervis*

It’s the kind of unfair situation that makes poorer nations wonder where the payoff is with free trade: Demand for coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton, and sugar — which is what many such countries have to offer the world — has risen. Prices paid in the supermarket have risen. Yet the share paid to the farmers who grow these basic agricultural commodities has fallen.

Robusta coffee producers in Cote d’Ivoire, for example, received 17.5 per cent of each consumer dollar spent on their product in 1980-88, but only 7.2 per cent in 1999-2003. For coffee growers in Indonesia, the decline was from 19.2 per cent to 7 per cent.

Where is the profit accumulating and why isn’t globalisation “working” in this case to reduce poverty in poor or developing nations?

Such countries are often lectured on the importance of open markets, but the process isn’t delivering as advertised. For small rural farmers in developing nations, globalisation isn’t raising all boats.

Commodities — and not just the black, sticky, liquid variety — are extremely important for economies in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. More than two billion people make their living from agricultural commodities. That dependence is especially pronounced in the world’s 50 least developed countries, or LDCs. Global economic growth has largely left these nations behind, and it is clear that they need to expand the range of products they can offer the world.

But they also have to start somewhere. Recently, as China has grown into an economic juggernaut and other emerging economies such as India, Brazil and Russia have made impressive progress, demand has jumped for what farmers in developing countries are able to export, and their production has climbed to match: trade volume of rice was up 67.5 per cent between 1993-95 and 2003-05, cotton jumped 48.8 per cent, fresh and chilled vegetables by 69.7 per cent, and cut flowers by 72.9 per cent.

Profits from these exports might help LDCs and other developing nations lift their citizens out of poverty and diversify their economies, but most of the profits seem to end up elsewhere. The complexities of the “value chain” between crop and supermarket shelf do not work to the advantage of low-income, smallholder farmers.

The process may be global, but it’s not fair. The higher end, where food and natural textiles are “differentiated” — processed in ways that appeal, packaged attractively, branded, and advertised — is where most of the money accumulates. That division of rewards goes on behind the scenes.

Now is the time to act, because commodity booms don’t last for ever. The business is notoriously cyclical, and the best time to jump-start poverty reduction is before the next crash comes. This grace period may continue for another five to 10 years. No one knows. But economic diversification — even if it is only within the agricultural sector — should be accomplished while it is underway for the same reason that a table that stands on four legs is less vulnerable to shocks than a table that stands on two or three. Some 85 developing countries now depend on commodities for more than half their export earnings. For 70 of them, more than half of their exports consist of three or fewer commodities.

Part of the current problem is that developing countries are still learning the globalisation game. During the 1990s, when the international financial mantra was that governments should keep their hands off and let the free market work, many developing-country governments were told to stop negotiating prices and organising transport and marketing for thousands of small farmers.

They did stop, but private substitutes for these services did not appear and thousands of little guys with limited access to market information, transport, and credit were left to fend for themselves against large, sophisticated international buyers. These farmers continue to compete with colleagues in developed countries who receive generous subsidies and whose home markets are protected by high tariffs.

The original industrial revolution was fuelled by surplus income from farming. The poorer regions of today’s world deserve the same chance Western Europe and the United States had a century and a half ago. Something is “off” about the prevailing situation. It must be fixed. Otherwise, the looming scenario offered by a Zambian farmer-trade unionist may become a reality: “If you will not pay us reasonable prices for our exports, we will export ourselves.”

*Ali Mchumo is managing director of the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC); John R. Kaputin is secretary general of the ACP Group of States,; Supachai Panitchpakdi is secretary general of UNCTAD; and Kemal Dervis is an administrator at the UNDP.

The East African

Sainsbury to help African farmers get fair trade certification

UK retailer Sainsbury’s will set aside £1 million over the next four years to help developing world farmers get a Fairtrade label for their produce. The country’s third biggest supermarket said it would target African producers who have not yet gained Fairtrade certification as well as those from other poor countries.

The Fairtrade movement guarantees that growers earn a fair price for their produce and also gives them a premium to re-invest in their community schools, health care or other areas. But before growers can sell their produce under such a label, they must be certified by international bodies such as the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation, which checks for both quality and production methods.

Sainsbury’s said its new fund will pay for assistance to un-certified farmers unsure of how to go about gaining the accreditation. Among the first farmers to get funding from the retailer are Ugandan producers of dried fruit and small-scale peanut farmers in Malawi, who will have access to a credit fund allowing them to buy seeds or machinery to improve production and raise their income.

“Many smallholder groups want to support themselves by selling their products as Fairtrade but they need assistance to get started. This fund will help fill that gap,” said Harriet Lamb, chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation.

Consumers in the UK are buying increasing quantities of Fairtrade goods, attracted to the market by a growing consciousness about the way food is produced as well as a desire to buy better quality, premium products. Sales of Fairtrade-certified products in the UK, Europe’s biggest market, grew by 46 per cent last year to £290 million, while volumes were up 60 per cent, according to the Fairtrade Foundation.

Such rapid growth in demand is encouraging British retailers to switch entire lines to only Fairtrade- approved products.

Since July, Sainsbury’s has only supplied Fairtrade bananas and it claims that the fruit has risen in popularity by five per cent since it first announced plans for the move. The retailer has made other commitments to Fairtrade, sending a Fairtrade ambassador to Kenya earlier this year to scout for areas requiring further development. It needs to expand its Fairtrade sales, after pledging to grow sales of products under the label by 145 per cent this year to £130 million.

Business Daily Africa

South African fertiliser saga costs mount, pineapple industry sues supplier

Pineapple Association chairman Allan Duncan has announced that advocate Ben Ford and a team of lawyers had been engaged to sue Protea Chemicals and Omnia Holdings for at least R70-million ($10 million).

Last week it emerged that many South African pineapples supplied to the European market, and many still in the ground in the Eastern Cape, had 3,500 times the accepted level of the carcinogenic trace element and heavy metal cadmium. The Eastern Cape pineapples had a cadmium level of 0,5 parts per million, which exceeded the EU limit of 0,05 particles per million (ppm).

The fertiliser was supplied by Protea Chemicals, which is owned by Omnia Holdings.

However, the cases could take up to 10 years to finalise as 3,000 hectares out of 4,000ha of pineapple fields in the Eastern Cape would have to be laboriously tested for contamination.

Meanwhile, 500 temporary workers, who have come to rely on seasonal work at the Summerpride canning factory, are without work as not enough pineapples are being brought to the factory as a result of the toxic Chinese fertiliser problem.

"We are just into the canning season and already we are 3,000 to 5,000 tons behind, according to our budget," Duncan said. This translates to a loss of 12 per cent or R3-million ($430,000) down. The annual crop is 100,000 tons and losses could be as high as 15%.

Duncan said by September or October about 80% of pineapples in the ground would comply with the EU standard. While tests were showing that toxicity levels in fields were coming down, some farmers would still be producing pines over the acceptable level by April next year.

Pineapples that did not meet the EU standard, but did meet the rest of the world's standard of 0,1ppm, were being sold quickly to Australia, America and South America because there was a world shortage, he said. With careful blending, many of the pines could be juiced in a way which brought the levels down.

Nonetheless, he said: "If we survive cadmium we will be lucky.Morale is very low."

Rehabilitation of contaminated fields would mean all pineapple plants would have to be ripped out as the roots stored most of the heavy metal.

Meanwhile, one of the hardest hit farms is Pineco, a failed project which was revived by local farmers who worked for no pay in 2003. With support from the East Cape agriculture department, the Swiss government and the Pineapple Association, Pineco managed to get into the European market.

Pineco pineapples are part of the fair trade system in Switzerland where one in five consumers happily pay 29% more for the fruit, in the knowledge that a portion of the money will be reinvested in social improvements to the area surrounding the farm. By 2006, the Pineco fruit had become a firm favourite with Swiss consumers, who bought up six months' worth in two months.

Last year, amid celebration, R70,000 ($10,000) was handed over and this year Pineco was in line to earn R700 000, which is now lost. "Pineco is devastated and Swiss customers are upset. Those farmers started out in 1998 with no money and worked on faith only,"Duncan said.

The Herald-SA

'Black Gold' film asks : Is there really such a thing as "ethical coffee?"

Two billion cups are sold daily in a £40bn global industry, but now a controversial documentary showing the plight of growers asks whether there is such a thing as ethical coffee.

Black Gold is galvanising audiences wherever it plays. The Francis brothers, Nick and Marc, receive hundreds of emails a day from people in the coffee industry who, appalled by images of women in factories handpicking coffee beans for wages of half a dollar a day, want to change the way they do business. Employees of the multinationals which dominate the coffee industry, the world's second most valuable after crude oil, have told the brothers they had no idea they were perpetuating such a system.

Marc said, "At the end of the day, every cup of coffee we drink relies on exploitation." It is not a message the coffee giants wish to gain currency. Starbucks reportedly sent an email to its employees in Britain describing Black Gold as '"inaccurate and incomplete" before it was screened at the London Film Festival. Nick said, "'We want to make people think about what's at the bottom of the coffee cup, and that has set alarm bells ringing in the big companies. Questions are being asked about how they can talk a lot about corporate responsibility yet not pay coffee farmers a decent price."

The Francis brothers were prompted a few years ago to ask : how could there be famine in Ethiopia and yet there is a booming coffee trade on its doorstep?"

Black Gold tells the story of Tadesse Meskela, manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union in Ethiopia, the birthplace of the plant now cultivated in more than 50 countries. Meskela goes on a mission to save the 74,000 struggling coffee farmers in the co-operative from bankruptcy, attempting to beat the system by finding buyers willing to pay a fair price for high quality.

There are few products more economically complex than coffee. The final price of a cup in the West will have absorbed the costs of insurance, taxes, transport, processing, packaging, marketing, storage and much more. But of the £2 charged for a cappuccino in a British coffee shop, an average farmer gets less than 2p. "Coffee is one of the least transparent industries in the world,"said Nick. "The coffee industry is not slavery, but when people are being paid half a dollar a day it is not far off. The companies argue that it's better than nothing, and that's a problem. By which standard is an equitable wage being judged? The companies who supply us with coffee wouldn't treat their own employees the same way."

"The whole debate about sustainability has been hijacked by Starbucks. When they talk about their programmes for employees - for example, health care - they don't talk about farmers as part of their workforce. You go to a shop and see pictures of happy, smiley coffee farmers, but we need to go back to the value chain and ask how much of the $3 cappuccino or latte goes to the farmer?'

Amid the praise for the film, there are voices of dissent. Some experts say the film's thesis is too simplistic, not least in its juxtaposition of emotive images of struggling Africans with clips of overweight latte drinkers. Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds : The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, said, "Black Gold is very good in terms of raising issues, but it's a very unfair film because the implication is that Starbucks is starving people in Ethiopia. That's a very black-and-white way of looking at an issue with many shades of grey. Starbucks have one of the best sustainable practices in the world, although they do a bad job of communicating it. Yes, they could do more, but if you want to pick a bad guy in coffee, Starbucks is not it.'

The Francis brothers deny they set out to demonise the high street chain. Nick said, "We don't see our film as running around trying to bash Starbucks. It's a shame the attention got drawn to them when it should be on Kraft, Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee, but their logos are not everywhere, whereas Starbucks draw attention to themselves. Essentially the market is dominated by these four companies, who set the price, then it gets chipped away and penalises people at the end of the chain. Yes, it's a problem of the system, but it's not helped by the big corporations - they have a massive responsibility." Marc said, "'These coffee companies have more revenue than a lot of African nations. They make billions from coffee, while the very people who prop up their billion-dollar empires are struggling to survive.'

But Pendergrast argues that the chain of supply and demand is complicated and that it is facile to portray the big companies as caricatures of greed. "If you follow where the money goes, it's very difficult to say this is the bad guy, he's making all the money," he said. "Ultimately the marketplace determines the price of coffee : nobody can manipulate it because it is produced by too many people in too many countries."

In Brazil, the Dutra brothers sell their coffee to Illycaffe, an Italian firm which features heavily in Black Gold and specialises in the luxury end of the market.In Brazil, Illy pays growers around 30 per cent above the market average. Walter Dutra praised the company : "We have been coffee-growers since we were kids, but we didn't know the quality of the coffee we produced."

Illy's target is consumers who are willing to pay more for a combination of quality and sustainability. The firm is praised by Oxfam and experts such as Pendergrast. Illy admits employing women in Indian factories to handpick the few bad beans from thousands of good ones for wages of £1.50 a day; according to the Francis brothers, it does the same in Ethiopia for 25p a day.

Illy's claim to the moral high ground has also been questioned because it is not certified by the Fairtrade Foundation, whose criteria guarantee better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers. Illy says this is because Fairtrade works with small growers who are already part of a farmers' co-operative and does not take quality into account, whereas it trades directly with the best growers of various sizes. The company says "We want to make sure the money goes directly to growers, not the co-operative."

The ambiguity illustrates the growing confusion over certification schemes, which include Fairtrade, the Rainforest Alliance, which has an environmental emphasis, and Starbucks' own CAFE (Coffee and Farmer Equity) Practices scheme. Nick Francis said, "You can't expect the consumer to do a cross-benefit analysis of every different brand. Companies have played with the language. We've seen an absolute hijack of well-intentioned systems because companies want to be associated with them.

Fairtrade aims to pay coffee-growers enough to cover the cost of production and allow a margin for further investment. But it, too, has recently been challenged by a series of media exposés, and lost its partnership with one American coffee seller who argued that the collectivisation of small farmers, which Fairtrade encourages, "disincentivises the hardest workers. In the end, what you get is coffee that is solidly mediocre."

Marc Francis said that Fairtrade itself does not go far enough. "We see the Fairtrade system as a good start, but it is not the ultimate solution. If everyone went out tomorrow and bought Fairtrade coffee, we'd still be in a situation where the lives of farmers need to be seriously improved."

His view was echoed by Bryant Simon, an American academic whose next book will be entitled Consuming Starbucks. "There's a sense that if you pay for Fairtrade you don't have to worry, like seeking absolution in the church. But there is no such thing as an ethical cup of coffee, because the commodity brand economy has never been ethical. People need to be aware that when they're buying a coffee they're buying a long and complicated network of labour and it does involve women and children. If you want economic justice, you've got to do a lot more than pay £2 for a cup.'

But Simon, who spent a year visiting more than 400 Starbucks branches in several countries, detects a change in the air. "All the companies are getting involved in sustainability schemes because people are not content to be part of an empire that exploits any more."

Black Gold appears to be speaking directly to that desire, forcing the companies - which all refused the Francis brothers' interview requests - to meet them and prepare their responses.

Jonathan Horrell, corporate affairs director of Kraft, the owner of Kenco, said, "'There's an awful lot in Black Gold that we welcome and agree with in terms of the hardship of producers. We pay a premium on an increasing range of products that are certified by the Rainforest Alliance, including our Sustainable Development brand, which is a niche one." But he admitted, "It's still small compared with our overall business. We buy to the market price, we don't set the market price."

Companies such as Kraft claim they are beholden to the market, their shareholders and the consumer. The Francis brothers believe that consumers, however politicised they have become, should not have to bear the full burden, and call on business, governments and trade organisations to take a moral lead.

Meanwhile, a highly complex industry, bound up with the inequalities of global capitalism, continues to keep the Ethiopian coffee-grower and the Starbucks coffee-consumer planets apart. Some believe the only answer is an African-owned Nestlé, an 'Ethiobucks.'

Until then, can we buy ethical coffee anywhere? When asked, the makers of Black Gold, for once, hesitated. Nick's eventual reply was not wholly optimistic : "The question for consumers is whether we can find a coffee that is less exploitative than the others. Maybe that is all we can say for now."

The Guardian

3700 Senegalese farmers join FAO organic/fair trade export project

by Chido Makunike

3700 Senegalese mango farmers are the latest members of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-organized project to encourage the export of organic and/or fair trade produce from Central and West Africa to Europe. Funded by the government of Germany, the FAO's Senegalese implementing partner is Agrecol-Afrique, an organization with many years of experience in training farmers in various aspects of sustainable agriculture.

Mango is an important dietary and export crop in Senegal. Many of the farmers have already been producing conventional mango for export as out-growers. With the signing on of Senegal early this year to the multi-country project, Agrecol-Afrique is now preparing them for organic production and fair trade. An Internal Control System (ICS) of organic standards is being employed and the plan is to export the first in-transition-to-organic crop towards the end of 2007.

The 3700 farmers are members of two farmer organizations in the Saint Louis area of northern Senegal, a fertile, growing export-horticulture area in the largely arid country. The current project areas cover a total of 50,000 mango trees, each of which is expected to produce 25 kilogrammes of produce per harvest.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana and Sierra Leone are the other countries involved in the project, with an emphasis on products with high demand in the European market, as well as with a good potential for high added value. Project partners are farmer groups, processors, exporters and importers, local NGOs, representatives from governments and the organic and fair trade movements. A participatory approach is being used and the project seeks to develop and strengthen long-term relationships between the African partners and importers in Europe.


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