Halifax city councillors may be consuming nothing but fair trade certified products during meetings if a new campaign to have Halifax recognized as a “Fair Trade Town” gets enough support.
In export-oriented economies in the developing world, workers are often exploited and have limited rights; “Fair Trade” seeks to undo that harm by ensuring that goods sold in Canada are made by people paid a living wage and working in reasonable conditions.
The campaign, launched by Emily Stewart, a fourth-year student in environmental science and economics at Dalhousie University, is beginning Halifax’s application with TransFair Canada. TransFair is a certification organization that is responsible for verifying that all Canadian products labelled as “fair trade certified” are up to international standards.
“We want to celebrate things that Halifax is doing well and promote it,” says Stewart.
To receive its certification, one in 10,000 retail outlets [Correction, 25 February]: one retail outlet for every 10,000 people in the city will need to sell at least two fair trade certified products and all Fair Trade Town events need to be promoted in all local media. City council will also need to appoint responsibilities to a member of staff to ensure continued commitment to the movement.
“I think it’s always interesting to see where your food comes from,” says councillor Jennifer Watts. “The question is if it will be more expensive or not and how accessible the product is.”
Wolfville acquired the status in 2007 and was named Canada’s first Fair Trade Town. Last year, Vancouver was the first major Canadian city to be recognized as prominently fair trade. The application process took a little over a year. Though no dates have been set for Halifax’ certification, the group hopes Halifax may be recognized as the world’s 1,000th Fair Trade Town.
“We’re not a protest group,” says Stewart. “It’s not a matter of blacklisting people who don’t provide fair trade products, it’s a matter of making a directory for people to use.”
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.
Emily, call me (Richard MacLellan) at 490-6056. I am the HRM Manager of the Sustainability Office. I am interested in what your group has been doing on this. Thanks!
I remember when most goods sold in Canada were made in Canada by people paid a living wage and working in reasonable conditions. Considering the thousand jobs Halifax has lost to Mexico (Volvo and Moirs) maybe Richard MacLellan at 490-6056 could try a buy local program first.
It’s not about competing with local producers and their jobs; it’s about opting for sustainably and ethically produced goods when they don’t come from local sources. Like bananas, chocolate, coffee, sugar or any goods that come from tropical or developing countries. You won’t see Fair Trade apples or potatoes. But when you’re choosing between, say, chocolates in the grocery aisle, you can be guaranteed that the Fair Trade certified label ensures that ethical standards for production have been met.
Well, I’d still rather see HRM resources and personnel implement a buy-local program first. If HRM employees want to support fair trade on their own time then that’s entirely their own business.
I’ve been hearing in my travels – and now reading – a lot of skeptical, questioning stuff about Transfair.
It makes me question the specifics and the idea in general.
The basic problem as I understand it is non-TransFair growers may get lower prices and worse health and education because TransFair harms non-TransFair farmers. Economists have argued that Fair Trade helps a few rich farmers at the expense of a lot of poor farmers. For example, Fair Trade pays farmers a subsidized price, as well as having a minimum price which increases the average price and reduces the cost of risk. At the same time, TransFair claims to improve the yields farmers get, so they will supply more at any price. The result is an increase in supply hitting the inelastic market demand curve, which means that non-Fair Trade farmers get a reduced price.
The impact is normally thought of as impoverishing the desperately poor farmers of Africa while subsidizing farmers in Mexico, which has a GNP per head 70 times that of Sierra Leone, for instance. However, a similar effect is achieved when subsidizing TransFair growers to produce a specific quality such as specialty or organic coffees, which have a relatively inelastic within-country demand.
Economists also point out that paying rich, skilled, farmers more for their coffee, makes them less likely to move into alternative enterprises which would use their skills more profitably, so they do not move out of coffee and make room for the very poor.
I have heard also that there are hurdles, including fees, that make it too hard for small of poor communities, particularly in Asia, to qualify with TransFair.
Does any of this stuff seem right, or possible, or suggest we should focus on more comprehensively understandable projects here at home?
I am also wondering about the work of the HRM sustainability office… don’t hear much about that.
To John’s comment,
That’s definitely something some economists have flagged – the possibility that increasing the demand for, say, Fair Trade coffee would reduce the demand for non-fair trade coffee, and that this would negatively affect the even more impoverished farmers who work on large, non-fair trade coffee plantations. To date, though, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Today there’s actually more supply of fair trade coffee than demand, and so a lot of fair trade certified coffee is simply sold by fair trade co-ops on the regular coffee market.
The impoverished workers on plantations are negatively affected much more by the instability in non-fair trade coffee prices, than by competition from fair trade farmers. As far as I understand it at least.
It’s definitely true though that Fair Trade isn’t the “be all, end all” solution to increasing the well-being of farmers in developing countries. Things like the cost of certification, like you mention, and what types of farms and associations can be certified are a few of the challenges. It would never be possible to certify “everything” as Fair Trade.
But I think the biggest takeaway of Fair Trade – regardless of that – is that we recognize the impact that our purchases here have on farmers in developing countries. The fact that someone, somewhere, actually grew the cocoa beans that went into that chocolate bar on the shelf. And the increasing popularity of Fair Trade, I think, sends a really cool message to companies: that the well-being of the people growing these products is important to us, as Canadian consumers. I think that can have a huge difference. Even though the economic benefits of Fair Trade may only go so far, the idea it represents is huge.
I would be pretty thrilled to see Halifax become a Fair Trade Town. 🙂
Thanks, That’s a good note.
jw
I know a lot of people know what “Fair Trade” means but many don’t understand the full impact of the situation and I think it not a bad idea to educate people more on the “real” situations that take place that required fair trade products to be implemented in the first place.
I know that once I was told the story behind this I immediately switched the coffee I serve to Fair Trade products only. It’s just another thing we can do to make our world a better place!
I, like most people, like this as a concept. The only downside that I fear is that it might act like a minimum wage, which, generally speaking, is harmful to lower skilled workers (or in this case, farmers), particularly in more competitive markets. The basic idea is that a “fair price” is a subsidy over and above the “market price”. Once the price difference is passed on to the consumer, people shift their demand to other products – local products or products from richer countries where fair trade is of lesser concern. This means demand for the fair trade product falls, and workers in fair trade industries find themselves out of work.
So, the question is what is better: a fair wage for some at the expense of a livelihood for many, or a low wage for everyone?
Not saying it’s a terrible idea but it has its own problems.
If you’d like to discuss any questions you have about the campaign or if you are looking for more in-depth economic background material of what Fair Trade is, you can contact us at fairtradehalifax2011@gmail.com. We have a few documents regarding some myths and misconceptions about fair trade that we would be happy to share.
– Emily Stewart & Andrea Robinson
fairtradehalifax2011@gmail.com