Years of growing vegetables for supermarkets taught me that the free market can be a harsh place for small producers. Distant producers are even more vulnerable – so is Fairtrade certification the answer? Can ethics be measured, certified and delivered to customers 3,000 miles away who want to use their buying power to make the world a better place?
These are the questions I found myself asking last December in a small field of organic pineapples in Togo, West Africa. The first of the fruit was ready for harvest, the culmination of 15 months of planting and weeding, and of 10 years of planning by French company Pronatura. The field is the size of half a football pitch and the orderly rows are interspersed with termite mounds, papaya trees, palms, bananas and towering kapoc trees. The scene is well managed, harmonious and productive; organic farming at its best and in stark contrast to the intensive, large-scale, foreign-owned monocultures typical of export-oriented production in Africa. The goal has been reached: an organic, Fairtrade pineapple from small producers that can reliably meet the demands of a UK supermarket buyer. Until recently, Tesco has been taking at least half the crop.
If all goes well, each pineapple will be cut and loaded into bowls to be carried two kilometres to a thatched shelter beside a rutted dirt track. From there they will be transported by lorry to a packhouse before loading into containers for export. The farmers will receive about 16p plus the Fairtrade premium of 3p or 4p for a large pineapple, for which we would typically pay £2.50. The rest of the price is typically made up of the box, packhouse costs, local trucking and overheads (67p), shipping (26p), importer’s margin, certification and distribution (46p) and supermarket margin (95p).
So, in this Fairtrade supply chain, on a good day, the farmer gets 8% of what the end customer pays. That may not sound fair, but it is four times the average local price.
In a good year a farmer will earn £1,000 to £1,500; enough to send three children to secondary school, pay for medicines and make life a little easier. The grower co-operative will also receive a Fairtrade premium that last year paid for boots (farmers previously worked among the spiky leaves barefoot) and the construction of a meeting house.
There have, however, not been many good days since last autumn and this will not be a good year. The reason is not the price but the market and the global economic forces that steer free trade. Togo is a euro economy; its main competitor for Fairtrade pineapple in Europe is Costa Rica, a dollar economy. Exchange rate changes have made Costa Rica cheaper, so exports from West Africa have collapsed.
A free market will never be fair when there is such mismatch between the scale and knowledge of buyers and growers. Fairtrade certification goes a way to redress the imbalance, but the short-term nature of trading relationships in a free market continues to blight even Fairtrade sellers of fresh produce. The security farmers crave and need for sustained development – and that the public expect when they buy Fairtrade – can only be delivered when supermarkets are willing to commit to long-term trading relationships. The Fairtrade label alone is not enough.
Guy Watson is the founder of Riverford Organic Vegetables.
These are the questions I found myself asking last December in a small field of organic pineapples in Togo, West Africa. The first of the fruit was ready for harvest, the culmination of 15 months of planting and weeding, and of 10 years of planning by French company Pronatura. The field is the size of half a football pitch and the orderly rows are interspersed with termite mounds, papaya trees, palms, bananas and towering kapoc trees. The scene is well managed, harmonious and productive; organic farming at its best and in stark contrast to the intensive, large-scale, foreign-owned monocultures typical of export-oriented production in Africa. The goal has been reached: an organic, Fairtrade pineapple from small producers that can reliably meet the demands of a UK supermarket buyer. Until recently, Tesco has been taking at least half the crop.
If all goes well, each pineapple will be cut and loaded into bowls to be carried two kilometres to a thatched shelter beside a rutted dirt track. From there they will be transported by lorry to a packhouse before loading into containers for export. The farmers will receive about 16p plus the Fairtrade premium of 3p or 4p for a large pineapple, for which we would typically pay £2.50. The rest of the price is typically made up of the box, packhouse costs, local trucking and overheads (67p), shipping (26p), importer’s margin, certification and distribution (46p) and supermarket margin (95p).
So, in this Fairtrade supply chain, on a good day, the farmer gets 8% of what the end customer pays. That may not sound fair, but it is four times the average local price.
In a good year a farmer will earn £1,000 to £1,500; enough to send three children to secondary school, pay for medicines and make life a little easier. The grower co-operative will also receive a Fairtrade premium that last year paid for boots (farmers previously worked among the spiky leaves barefoot) and the construction of a meeting house.
There have, however, not been many good days since last autumn and this will not be a good year. The reason is not the price but the market and the global economic forces that steer free trade. Togo is a euro economy; its main competitor for Fairtrade pineapple in Europe is Costa Rica, a dollar economy. Exchange rate changes have made Costa Rica cheaper, so exports from West Africa have collapsed.
A free market will never be fair when there is such mismatch between the scale and knowledge of buyers and growers. Fairtrade certification goes a way to redress the imbalance, but the short-term nature of trading relationships in a free market continues to blight even Fairtrade sellers of fresh produce. The security farmers crave and need for sustained development – and that the public expect when they buy Fairtrade – can only be delivered when supermarkets are willing to commit to long-term trading relationships. The Fairtrade label alone is not enough.
Guy Watson is the founder of Riverford Organic Vegetables.
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