Fair Trade Article (fwd)

[Sid Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>]

> The Vancouver Sun	January 15, 1997
>
> CAN TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS MIX?
>
> by Bob Thomson and Kathleen Ruff
>
>
> While Team Canada tours Mexico and Latin America, promoting the benefits of
> global trade, human rights concerns are being given a cold shoulder.
> For the men, women and children of Chiapas province in Mexico who were
> slaughtered Dec. 22, and for their communities, however, human rights are a
> matter of life or death - and are inextricably linked to global trade.
> The indigenous communities in Chiapas are part of the global trading
> system, although they do not experience its promised benefits. These small
> coffee-farmers live in desperate poverty because, for most of the past
> decade, world coffee prices, controlled by a handful of multinational
> corporations and commodity speculators, have provided farmers with returns
> far below their costs.
> Coffee is a major commodity of international trade and is the most important
> agricultural export for countries in the South. It involves 25 million
> producers in more than 70 countries, about 15 million of whom are small farmers.
> Facing those millions of peasant producers in the South are four Northern
> multinationals which control 70 per cent of the world coffee market: Kraft,
> Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee. Three of them, Kraft, Nestle and
> P&Gamble, control 90 per cent of the coffee sold in Canada.
> The so-called "level playing field" of global free trade doesn't exist in
> these circumstances. For example, just one company, Kraft, has annual
> revenues that dwarf the combined gross domestic product of coffee-producing
> countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
> While the multinationals have done very well out of the global coffee
> trade, coffee farmers and workers have reaped little reward. Farmers and
> workers face exploitation and abusive working conditions. Poverty and
> malnutrition are rampant and violence is frequently used against those who
> call for improved conditions.
> Of the price consumers pay for a package of coffee, less than 10 per cent
> goes to the farmer. Intermediaries take most of the price;  they are aptly
> called "coyotes  and control finance, transportation and equipment - and
> the coffee corporations, .
> In 1994, Nestle, the world's largest coffee company, recorded a profit of
> $1.3 billion US on total sales of $6.4 billion. At the same time, the
> farmers and workers producing the beans were enduring severe poverty,
> unable even to provide sufficient food for their children.
> The impact of the global coffee trade on the environment is as destructive
> as its impact on the lives of millions of peasants. The growing demand for
> specialty coffees in North America has meant intensified farming on
> plantations in Latin America and Africa. Millions of hectares of trees have
> been felled as plantations move from "shade coffee farming" to "sun coffee
> farming."
> Plantation coffee means faster production, lower costs and bigger profits
> for the coffee corporations. It also means extensive use of chemical
> pesticides and fertilizers to replace the minerals "mined" from the soil by
> agro-industrial farming. Coffee is one of the most sprayed crops in the
> world, harming millions of farm workers and thousands of species of
> wildlife.
> Small farmers grow their coffee under shade, where insects support diverse
> bird populations and nature provides compost for fertilizer.
> The Smithsonian Institution has discovered that half the U.S. population of
> Baltimore orioles has disappeared and that millions of migratory songbirds
> that rely on Latin American forests for food and shelter may be dying off.
> Ornithologists believe the expansion of coffee plantations in Latin America
> is one cause. The Smithsonian Institution and the Audubon Society are
> asking consumers to buy coffee produced in shaded areas.
> Small farmers in the South have organized, against the odds and with
> considerable courage, to set up a different way of doing global trade. Half
> a million farmers around the world have organized into cooperatives and
> sell their coffee direct to northern consumers through a Fair Trade system
> which guarantees a fair, minimum price. Profits are reinvested by the
> co-ops in health care, schools and other projects that benefit their
> communities.
> Fair Trade is centred on the belief that trade and human rights must mix;
> that global trade does not have to exploit people and devastate the
> environment.
> While Fair Trade coffee is in its infancy in Canada, in Europe it is part
> of the mainstream and can be bought at most supermarkets. In 1996, for
> example, 24 million pounds of Fair Trade coffee was sold under 130 brand
> names in 35,000 supermarkets. Fair Trade coffee is served in the European
> Parliament and four national legislatures.
> The Fair Trade system operates by licensing companies who sell Fair Trade
> coffee and allowing them to carry the special TRANSFAIR consumer label. The
> guarantees this label signals include these:
> [1] The coffee was bought directly from farmer co-ops.
> [2] The co-ops were paid a guaranteed minimum price.
> [3] The co-ops have received long-term commitments from the buyers of their
> production, which provides the farmers with some security.
> [4] farmers were provided credit at reasonable rates of interest, helping
> them avoid extortionate rates (up to 200% charged by coyotes)
> [5] An independent agency rigorously monitors the implementation of the
> criteria.
> Church and development groups on shoe-string budgets worked with small and
> medium coffee companies to win the support of Europeans for Fair Trade
> coffee. In Canada, church and development groups will shortly undertake a
> "buycott, not boycott" campaign in support of Fair Trade coffee.
> Meanwhile, half a million coffee farmers, who sell their coffee through Fair
> Trade, have a message for Team Canada: if trade is to benefit people, it
> MUST include human rights.
>
> Bob Thomson is managing director of Fair TradeMark Canada in Ottawa and
> Kathleen Ruff is a Vancouver human rights activist.