Looking ahead: church groups seek new models of solidarity

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 26, 2004 by Barbara Fraser, Paul Jeffrey

"Millions and millions of Americans are now learning about fair trade through their places of worship. I don't think the value of that can be overestimated," said Rodney North, who handles public relations for Equal Exchange, a for-profit cooperative in Massachusetts that has marketed fair trade products since 1986.

Equal Exchange claims a 25-percent share of the fair trade market and says that faith-based groups account for about one-quarter of that. The Lutheran church has set a goal of purchasing 90 tons of fair trade coffee this year, he said.

According to Haven Bourque, marketing director for Transfair USA, a fair trade certifying organization in California, over the past five years the fair trade movement has provided small coffee producers with $34 million more than they would have earned by selling their crop through conventional channels. Sales held up even when world coffee prices dropped two years ago because of a glut. She estimates that about 20,000 U.S. retail outlets, from specialty shops to convenience stores, now offer fair trade coffee.

"During the coffee crisis, a lot of farmers used the revenue just to put food on their table or to be able to stay on their land," she said. "It's literally been a difference between life and death."

While coffee and handcrafts are the best-known fair trade items, the U.S. market is expanding into chocolate and fruit, which has been a staple of the European fair trade market for years.

The challenge, both North and Bourque said, is to move fair trade products out of niche markets and into the mainstream. That puts companies like Equal Exchange in the unusual position of encouraging their producers to also sell coffee or cocoa to their competitors.

"We're not big enough to buy all the coffee," North said. "Three hundred other companies now offer at least one fair trade coffee. We don't want it to be a niche for them. We want them to really embrace fair trade. Farmers need that from them."

In order to qualify for fair trade certification, both producers and importers must meet criteria set by the Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO) in Bonn, Germany. Producer organizations, which usually are cooperatives, must be democratically organized, If the producer is not a co-op, its workers must be free to organize a union. They must meet minimum labor standards, including equal pay for equal work by men and women and a prohibition on child labor, and environmental criteria, including not using banned pesticides and taking steps to protect biological diversity.

While fair trade products are not necessarily organic, Bourque said, about 85 percent of fair trade coffee is.

"There's a nice parallel between the big boom in organic products in the U.S. and fair trade," she said. "A product may be good for the earth and good for me, and [growers aren't] suffering from pesticides, but are they paid enough to put food on the table and send their kids to school? More and more people make that connection."

FLO inspects farms around the world every year and audits their sales records. A partner organization in each country--Transfair in the United States--audits importers' books, comparing their figures with FLO's. Only when all criteria are met can a product carry the fair trade label.