When purchasing coffee and chocolate, the ever-increasing array of ethical branding can leave one bemused. The original Fairtrade scheme has been joined by the Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, and Kraft's in-house Make Coffee Happy. Still, are the latter three efforts merely imitative "greenwashing", or do they have limited merits in their own right?
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Fairtrade miscellany
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Fairtrade miscellany
People in Britain drinking froffy coffee can salve their consciences all they like by buying it fairtrade or whatever, but fundamentally they're part of a consumer chain that (like tea growing in India) leads to third-world countries growing luxury crops instead of food, and container tankers travelling half way round the world to deliver it to them.
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Fairtrade miscellany
I get irritated by the frequent assumption that "Fair Trade", "Organic", "High Quality" and "Healthy" are synonyms, or at the very least strongly linked.
But that's probably a different thread altogether.
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Fairtrade miscellany
Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: People in Britain drinking froffy coffee can salve their consciences all they like by buying it fairtrade or whatever, but fundamentally they're part of a consumer chain that (like tea growing in India) leads to third-world countries growing luxury crops instead of food, and container tankers travelling half way round the world to deliver it to them.
Look at those Apple programmers in Palo Alto. Why are they making a stupid luxury product that's shipped halfway around the world when they could be growing corn and millet and living off that?
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- Oct 2011
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- Cambridgeshire
- Ipswich (convert)
- Those chocolate-coated ring-shaped ones you get at Christmas
Fairtrade miscellany
La Lanterne Rouge wrote:Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair FanPeople in Britain drinking froffy coffee can salve their consciences all they like by buying it fairtrade or whatever, but fundamentally they're part of a consumer chain that (like tea growing in India) leads to third-world countries growing luxury crops instead of food, and container tankers travelling half way round the world to deliver it to them.
Look at those Apple programmers in Palo Alto. Why are they making a stupid luxury product that's shipped halfway around the world when they could be growing corn and millet and living off that?
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Fairtrade miscellany
Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: People in Britain drinking froffy coffee can salve their consciences all they like by buying it fairtrade or whatever, but fundamentally they're part of a consumer chain that (like tea growing in India) leads to third-world countries growing luxury crops instead of food, and container tankers travelling half way round the world to deliver it to them.
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Fairtrade miscellany
UTZ?
The UTZ Certified program provides the assurance of responsible coffee production and sourcing that modern consumers expect. It answers two crucial questions: where does the coffee come from and how was it produced? UTZ Certified coffee is traceable from producer to roaster to consumer. This guarantees that the products you buy have actually been grown and harvested in a responsible manner.
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Fairtrade miscellany
UTZ Certified coffee is traceable from producer to roaster to consumer. This guarantees that the products you buy have actually been grown and harvested in a responsible manner.
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Fairtrade miscellany
Sustainable development would mean countries growing a mix of cash crops (sold for a decent price) and sufficient food to nourish themselves, and it would require richer countries to pay more for their imported goods.
On the linked but separate question of climate change, I try to buy local/seasonal food rather than clock up "air miles", but as I've just flown a few thousand miles I am not one to preach about it. If you read about food (in)security and water shortages in Africa it's as depressing as hell.
People in the rich world need to change their habits, really. We've seen on the California thread, they aren't eager to do so.
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Fairtrade miscellany
Jongudmund wrote:
Oh I agree. We should grow our own coffee and tea and bananas rather than paying good money to anyone in the colonies other countries.
And if, one year, "fairtrade" or not, some futures broker in New York decides to buy coffee from El Salvador not Costa Rica, or their cash crop fails because of weather, they're stuffed.
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Fairtrade miscellany
But that part of the world is where it's grown, so making the choice to buy fairly traded tea is surely a good thing if you are going to buy tea.
Or should we all be drinking nettle-water and turnip smoothies?
(You know Yorkshire Tea is just a brand, not the state of origin, right.)
EDIT: This is irrelevant: "And if, one year, "fairtrade" or not, some futures broker in New York decides to buy coffee from El Salvador not Costa Rica, or their cash crop fails because of weather, they're stuffed." Because a) coffee traded like that wouldn't be fair trade, and b) if the weather is that bad it would destroy their subsistence crop and they would be equally stuffed.
Is it the tory in you that would prefer poor people in other countries relying on Western aid hand-outs rather than trading as equal partners with the rest of the world?
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Fairtrade miscellany
Why would people need aid handouts to buy food, if their farms were growing it (not coffee)? That's hardly a "Tory" argument, in fact completely the opposite. It is, if anything, the worst kind of economic imperialism to dictate that all we want to buy off you is your coffee, or tea, or blood diamonds, so don't bother producing anything else.
Don't get me wrong, economic specialism of production on a global scale could work, indeed work very well, as a model. But we don't have a great track record of implementing and sustaining it even within the UK, when you look at coal mining, slate mining, shipbuilding etc and the legacies that have been left on those areas when the demand for their products shifted elsewhere.
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Fairtrade miscellany
beak wrote: I was going to write a fulsome response to your question providing a solid grounding in what the UTZ program does, but can't be bothered.
edit - ah, scrolls down a bit, gets answer.
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Fairtrade miscellany
Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Why would people need aid handouts to buy food, if their farms were growing it (not coffee)? That's hardly a "Tory" argument, in fact completely the opposite. It is, if anything, the worst kind of economic imperialism to dictate that all we want to buy off you is your coffee, or tea, or blood diamonds, so don't bother producing anything else.
Don't get me wrong, economic specialism of production on a global scale could work, indeed work very well, as a model. But we don't have a great track record of implementing and sustaining it even within the UK, when you look at coal mining, slate mining, shipbuilding etc and the legacies that have been left on those areas when the demand for their products shifted elsewhere.
Yes, cash crops often don't work out as well as people hope, but that's where things like the fair trade premium and paying the price you agreed at the start of the contract come in. Fair trade is not futures speculating and cash crops.
I'm not sure what your enlightened post-Imperial position is. I read it as instead of encouraging people to trade in a way that benefits everybody you'd prefer people in extreme poverty to scratch a living farming enough to feed themselves and their families and thus stay in that poverty state. Which is what would happen.
That seems to me to be Imperialist. We won't trade with you as equals or let you make business decisions in the hope of changing your life prospects or allow you to maximise your economic benefits. You stay over there brown fella and grow rice.
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Fairtrade miscellany
Well, I think my view is somewhat to the middle of what you've depicted, and the one I've painted.
I also just hate fucking "coffee houses" taking over every High Street in Britain, I must admit, so I am prejudiced in that respect.
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