The Producers

The Producers

Published by sbrown on October 27, 2010

	By Shannon Brown

Many Fair Trade actors work primarily for one mission: to better the trading conditions of southern producers.  Since joining TransFair Canada, first as a volunteer in 2006, this goal has certainly guided my own actions and motivated me in my daily tasks.  When I was mailing out packages of promotional materials to Fair Trade activists across Canada, I reminded myself that I was helping the producers by getting information out to Canadians, one package at a time. 

Decisions in Fair Trade certification tend to be made with the earnest desire on the part of decision makers to do what the producers would want us to do.  The tendency in Fair Trade discourse is to frequently and somewhat automatically refer to the people who grow and work to make Fair Trade Certified products as a group.  A group called “the producers”. 

So who are the Fair Trade producers?  And how do we know what they want us to do? 

At the recent Fair Trade Futures conference in Quincy, Massachusetts, I was delighted by the presentation made by Jonathan Rosenthal, a longtime Fair Trade activist and co-founder of Equal Exchange.  Rosenthal made very provoking observations that the Fair Trade movement was started by transformers, and is now in the hands of reformers.  His remarks rang true: many of the debates in Fair Trade stem from different conceptions of what change should look like.  Should change be immediate and radical or moderate and incremental?  Rosenthal concluded his presentation with a call for better dialogue between the reformers and transformers in the North, and the producers in the South. 

But let us go further.  Surely if we acknowledge disunity among Fair Trade activists in the North, we can also acknowledge that the producers are not a homogenous group with one unified opinion about how change should occur.  Perhaps we can start by acknowledging that there are transformers and reformers among Fair Trade producers. 

There are now 827 producer organizations in 60 countries: 476 organizations in Latin America & Caribbean with 280,000 members and workers; 120 organizations in Asia with 189,000 members and workers; and 231 organizations in Africa and the Middle East with 760,000 members and workers.  Each of these individuals has a unique perspective.  For example, some producers who I have spoken with call on the Fair Trade certification system to do whatever it can to open the markets for their products; others put limits on the types of businesses that Fair Trade certifiers ought to work with. 

There are three networks of Fair Trade producers that became members of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) in 2006.  19 national Labelling Initiatives, including TransFair Canada, also have membership in FLO, and there are two Associate Members.  Within FLO’s Global Strategy is a commitment to significantly increase the Producer Networks’ role in Fairtrade.  FLO has recognized that, “Membership [in Producer Networks] is voluntary and many small producers are not part of a network.” FLO’s Global Strategy states, “We will also increase the effectiveness of producer-facing elements of the Fairtrade system through decentralisation and also its accountability to producers by devolution of decision making. The regional producer networks representing Fairtrade-Certified producers in Africa, Asia and Latin America/Caribbean will be supported in building their capacity to represent all the certified producers in their regions and to take on more responsibilities within the system so that over time they are on a more equal footing with the Labelling Initiatives as members of Fairtrade.”

More equal footing with the Labelling Initiatives…it will be very interesting to see how and when this objective will be achieved.  We can see evidence that FLO is moving in the right direction, endeavoring to become increasingly welcoming and responsive to producers’ input.  Producer groups were consulted in the recent New Standards Framework (NSF) development process through a series of workshops in Nairobi, Kenya; Lima, Peru; and Ayothaya, Thailand, “where representatives from 128 producer organizations spanning 42 countries voiced their opinions and concerns” (source:  Consulting the World on Changing Standards).

The results of the NSF consultation have yet to be released, but it will be interesting to see the variety of responses to the same questions from Fair Trade actors in both the North and South.  I venture to guess that themes will emerge, but that there will not be consensus.  And this is at the organizational level.  I recall at least one conversation with a producer from El Salvador who did not feel that he had enough of a voice in his own co-operative; all co-operatives, of course, are not equal in their representativeness to their producer members.

We all want to see change, but don’t all agree on how to make change happen.  Some of us are happy with incremental changes; others of us want to see radical and immediate transformation. As we navigate these decisions together, it is crucial that we do continue to remind ourselves that the interests of farmers and workers in the South should be paramount in Fair Trade.  At the same time, we must recognize that these interests and ideas about how to promote them are not uniform.  We can always ask more questions, engage in more dialogue, resist the urge to over-simplify, and remember that interests are best expressed by the people who have them.