March 2012 C&CI • US • 21
experience with other certifications and are excited about participating in Fair Trade. The workers at Fazenda Nossa Senhora de Fatima have also elected six representatives for a Fair Trade Committee. This committee will help implementing the social projects selected by the workers at Fazenda Nossa Senhora de Fatima.
Smallholders
Paul Rice (right), seen here with a coffee farmer, says he believes the break with FLO will promote competition in the market
Rice spent time with Fair Trade certified farmers who grow flowers and bananas and became convinced that the model would work equally well with coffee.
Embracing estates
"I visited growers in Colombia and in Ecuador and I saw the way that they bene- fitted. It didn’t make sense to ignore coffee farmers if they weren’t members of a co-op when growers in other markets were being helped. I wanted to expand the Fair Trade model to a lot more coffee farmers whilst remaining part of FLO, but FLO didn’t see it that way and they didn’t accept the notion of market differences between the US mar- ket and Europe." In Mr Rice’s view, there was a fear at
FLO that, if estates were to be Fair Trade certified, co-ops would lose sales as a result. "That only holds true if the Fair Trade coffee market is a fixed pie," Mr Rice told C&CI. "At Fair Trade USA we work with around 800 coffee customers, and we knew that just wasn’t the case. They all told us that they would buy Fair Trade coffee from farmers whatever their size. Certifying estates will unlock the benefits of Fair Trade for thousands more farmers.”
Pilot projects under way
With this in mind, Fair Trade USA has embarked on a series of pilot projects. "We plan to implement this change slowly, with 10-20 pilots over the next two years," Mr Rice said. "We will assess results at the farm and sector levels, and report on sales, take a look at what has happened to purchasing behaviour, and ensure that the inclusion of
Fair Trade USA’s new logo was unveiled early in 2012
new groups does not adversely affect co- operatives."
The first pilot was in Brazil, but others have been implemented since in Colombia. Farmers who are participating have received training on Fair Trade principles, rights and standards, and farms have been assessed against the first Draft Farm Workers stan- dard developed by Fair Trade USA. The first farm is Fazenda Nossa Senhora
de Fatima (FNSF), a family-owned and operated farm in the Cerrado Region in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Ricardo Aguiar Resende and his wife Gisele direct the pro- duction, commercialisation and social proj- ects at the farm. Mr Aguiar Resende is a third-generation coffee farmer with 230 hectares under coffee, and the farm pro- duces 100 per cent organic-certified coffee. The workers at the farm travel every day from three towns: Perdizes, Patrocinio and Igrejinha da Macega. The farm arranges the transportation for the workers. A few work- ers live at the farm too; 75-110 workers go to the farm every day, depending on the time of the year. The farm already has sever- al social initiatives benefiting the workers’ communities, such as supporting organic community gardens at the local school and offering medical attention at the farm level. Workers at Fazenda Nossa Senhora de
Fatima are due to create a workers organi- sation that will help them with decision-mak- ing about the use of the Fair Trade premi- um. Fair Trade USA says the workers have
harder to help Mr Rice admits that implementing Fair Trade certification at an estate will be much easier than helping smallholder farmers. "It will be trickier with small farmers," Mr Rice told C&CI, but we are working on mechanisms to help us do that." One approach that is already being tested is working with a coffee mill and exporting company. "The mill will open up the supply chain," claimed Mr Rice, "but the farmers will be in the driving seat. The mill will operate as a hub of commercial activity, and we will engage with that hub and have them embrace the principles of Fair Trade." As to how Fair Trade USA’s standard compares with FLO’s, Mr Rice says that "right now, ours overlaps 90 per cent with FLO. The real difference is in the application, and who the standard will be applied to." "We already have a sizeable list of pilots. There has been a real ripple effect, and peo- ple want to get involved," he explained. "I like to use an expression from Nicaragua that says that there are many ways to the top of the mountain. Ours is one way, FLO’s is another, but we all have a common goal which is improving the lives of coffee farmers. "Consumers want high quality Fair Trade coffee. The technical details of how a farm or farmer got accredited need not concern them. In future, consumers will have more choice, and so will farmers. Choice is a good thing, it creates competition. It means farmers will have a choice of service provider, and certifying bodies will have to work harder for farmers’ business." Asked if this implied criticism of FLO and the way it operated, Mr Rice said he thought it was inevitable that FLO Cert had "rested on its laurels" because it had had a monop- oly on Fair Trade certification.
"I don’t think that it will lead to confusion in the market and I don’t think that it will lead to a fall in sales. You only need to look at the organic movement, where there are a multitude of certifications and sales of organic coffee have been growing rapidly over the last several years." ■ C&CI
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52