Some of you may already be boycotting companies like Honest Tea whose parent companies donated money to defeat Proposition 37, the GMO labeling initiative in California. In the case of Honest Tea, Coca-Cola, which fully owns Honest Tea, donated $1.7 million dollars while Honest Tea stood mutely by.  Critics point to this as evidence that Coke has bought up Honest Tea as a form of “greenwashing” and a way to gain market share among more ethical consumers without facilitating real change in the marketplace.

But what about Honest Tea itself, it supports fair trade right? If a subsidiary company is truly a transparent and ethical player in the marketplace, we might be able to forgive a few sins of the parent company. But in this, the second in a series on unpacking labels, we reveal a few “fairwashing” problems specific to Honest Tea.

The first, raspberry fields tea, shows a prominent Whole Trade label.  Whole trade is the in-house seal Whole Foods uses to denote products that meet their own quality, environmental, and social criteria, one element of which is certification by a third-party social certifier. In the case of Honest Tea raspberry fields, a product exclusively produced for Whole Foods, that third party certifier is Fair Trade USA.

But take a close look at the ingredients. The only ingredient certified as fair trade is the tea leaves. Sugar, the first ingredient excluding water, is listed as organic but not fair trade. This is a similar problem to the chocolate bars we wrote about last month. Unlike the chocolate case, however, the certifier’s own seal is not displayed, presumably because the tea does not meet Fair Trade USA’s guidelines for use of seal, requiring more than 20% of the product to be fair trade certified and all commonly certified ingredients (such as sugar) to be so. Yet, the Whole Trade Guarantee label is displayed prominently on the front, so that if you did not stop to look at the ingredients and review the labeling formula, you might grab that tea and assume you are drinking a purely fair trade product. Whole Foods guaranteed it after all.

So is this just a Whole Foods Whole Trade loophole? It may be that, too, but in the second case, pomegranate red tea with goji berry, the problem is similar, except this example is not from Whole Foods and so not a candidate for the Whole Trade seal, and instead has a Fair Trade USA fair trade seal on the front panel, even though the rooibos is the only fair trade certified ingredient, and others, including again sugar, the first ingredient after water, is not.

What can you do about all this? First, now that you are learning how to critically read labels, you can raise questions or report violations when you see something that does not look right. Fair Trade USA has a form on their website for just this purpose.  Honest Tea, on their website, encourages your “honest feedback.”

Second, you can look for alternatives (and since we couldn’t find any in the iced tea category that use fair trade ingredients and proper labeling, let us know if you do). If all else fails, buy some fair trade tea and fair trade sugar or honey and make your own. You don’t need ingredients like “natural pomegranate flavor” or “vegetable juice for color” to make a delicious iced tea at home.

And know that here at Fair World Project we are looking at labels, too. We’ll keep you posted on the good ones, the bad ones, and the actions we’re taking to ensure integrity and transparency in the marketplace.

The post An Honest Look at Honest Tea Labels appeared first on Fair World Project.

2011 marked a flashpoint for many small farmers and fair trade producers. Fair trade producers from Mexico and Colombia to Ghana and Indonesia experienced a record number of climate change influenced disasters, including landslides, severe floods and crop failure. According to Fairtrade International (FLO), fair trade farmers are experiencing up to 28% reductions in yield due to erratic weather patterns and droughts. Small farmers, already vulnerable from a lack of financing options, limited market access and/or volatile markets, among other factors, are now faced with lower yields, ?natural? disasters and higher costs to adapt to and mitigate climate change impacts.

Climate change is impacting specific crops in very specific ways. A recent report by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) detailed how a significant percentage of Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two biggest cocoa producing countries, will be too hot for cocoa by 2030. Compounded by erratic and unpredictable weather patterns, flooding and new pests, cocoa and cocoa producers have a very bleak future. Sadly, this pattern is replicated in other crops like coffee. Coffee producing regions are experiencing a dangerous combination of lower rainfall and higher temperatures, which some speculate will render production unsustainable in lowland countries and regions by 2050. While coffee plants may be able to adapt to higher altitudes in search of cooler temperatures, small farmers are tied to their land, both historically and financially. The United States Agency for International Development?s (USAID) work with the Global Climate Change Initiative recently published a study that analyzed a number of intersections of climate change, poverty and agriculture. Key to the study is an index of ?country vulnerability? with many of the countries with significant fair trade presences ranked as ?extremely? vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change.

Size matters: small farmers are key to combating climate change

Global trends in farming point towards an increasingly large-scale and industrialized approach to farming. The last century has seen a significant transformation of the global food system away from locally-based, family-scaled farms towards large industrial farms. Gone are the days of family-scaled farmers providing food and fiber to their local communities. The global food system is now largely dominated by multinational corporations, exploitative conditions for farmers and farmworkers and chemical dependent agriculture.

Large-scale, industrial agriculture is a primary contributor to climate change. According to author and farmer Will Allen, the ?combination manufacture and use of pesticides and fertilizers, fuel and oil for tractors, equipment, trucking and shipping, electricity for lighting, cooling, and heating, and emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide account for approximately 30% of the United States? carbon footprint.? The US-styled energy intensive approach to agriculture, not only adopted by many industrialized countries but also exported to underdeveloped countries, ironically contributes to food insecurity or the ability of a given country or community to feed itself.

Impoverished countries and communities have long experienced varying degrees of food insecurity. As renowned NGO, Food First, has detailed, the underlying causes of hunger are largely attributable to poverty, inequality and failed institutions, not scarcity, overpopulation or a lack of technological fixes. The last five years– collapsing financial markets, the global push agriculture fuels (biofuels, like ethanol) and the expansion of speculation of the food market?have been the near ?perfect storm? for small farmers. With close to 1 billion victims of malnourishment in 2011, it is clear that the industrial agriculture model is a failure.

However, there is hope. Despite the strong global tide towards industrial agriculture, small farmers, who not only form the backbone of the global food supply, are central players in safeguarding biodiversity, fostering environmental stewardship and innovating sustainable agricultural practices. According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, small farmers hold the key to doubling food production while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty. Similarly, Via Campesina, the global movement of millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, has demonstrated that small farmers can address the global food crisis in a far more equitable and sustainable way than agribusiness and large-scale farming.

Fair Trade: An Antidote?

Fair trade is a social movement and market model that aims to empower small-scale farmers and consumers in underdeveloped countries to create an alternative trading system that supports equitable exchange, sustainable development and long-term trading relationships. Fair trade supports fair prices and wages for producers, safe working conditions, investment in community development projects and the elimination of child labor, workplace discrimination and exploitation.

What is unique about the fair trade system is its ability to channel financial resources and technical support for small producers. A key benefit of the system includes a social premium that farmers use for use in their local communities and farms. Though the fair trade social premiums can be used for virtually any project that benefits the local community, fair trade producers are increasingly using the fair trade premium for environmentally focused projects. For example, Coocafe, a coffee co-operative in Costa Rica, used its fair trade premium to greatly reduce the amount of water wasted on washing the beans allowing for other farmers to plant trees around their crop as shade, which is good for the quality of their crop and for the environment. In India, tea workers have invested some of their fair trade premium to replace traditional wood-burning heating with a solar-panels.

Fair trade standards can also positively contribute to improving energy efficiency on the farm and throughout the supply chain. Fair trade standards encourages fair trade producers and traders to implement measures to improve water conservation, energy efficiency, eco-system management and waste management.

With a strong majority of fair trade producers also either certified organic or practicing organic and agroecological methods, fair trade producers can both significantly improve yields and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change. A landmark study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found that organic and agroecological farming practices increased productivity on 12.6 millions farms, with an average crop increase of 79%, while at the same time improving the supply of critical environmental services. According to Food First Executive Eric Holt-Gim?nez, following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, a large-scale study on 180 communities of smallholder farms in Nicaragua demonstrated ?that farming plots cropped with simple agroecological methods (including rock bunds or dikes, green manure, crop rotation and the incorporation of stubble, ditches, terraces, barriers, mulch, legumes, trees, plowing parallel to the slope, noburn, live fences, and zero-tillage) had, on average, 40 per cent more topsoil, higher field moisture, less erosion and lower economic losses than control plots on conventional farms. On average, agroecological plots lost 18% less arable land to landslides than conventional farms and had 69% less erosion compared to conventional farms.?

When it comes to reversing climate change, organic agriculture can, in fact, play an important role. According to the Rodale Institute, organic farming practices can not only sequester 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre per year, , but organic agriculture can also can boost yields significantly. According to the 2008 edition of Waste Management & Research, simple composting not only increases crop yield and replaces dangerous and greenhouse gas emitting synthetic fertilizers, but also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. Many fair trade organizations have also invested in regional and local composting operations as an effective method to increase soil fertility, boost yield and sequester carbon.

Fair trade alone cannot address climate change, nor the daunting challenges confronting farmers on a daily basis. The planet will need a concerted effort to address the root causes of climate change with a comprehensive approach to energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Small farmers in the fair trade system can, however, improve farmers? likelihood of mitigating climate change?s negative impacts, showcase local innovations for reversing climate change, and provide one opportunity for Northern consumers to support farmers in a concrete way.

The post Fair Trade in a World of Climate Change appeared first on Fair World Project.

Fair Trade USA (formerly TransFair USA) and its new initiative, Fair Trade For All, aims to expand fair trade certification to include coffee plantations. Fair Trade for All has been a major point of contention in Fair Trade USA’s split from Fairtrade International (FLO). For more on the Fair Trade USA/FLO split, see Fair World Project’s (FWP) statement. Putting aside the secretive and unilateral nature of the initiative, certifying coffee plantations has a number of critical problems.

Small producers and democratic cooperatives are core to the founding principles of the fair trade movement and market. By definition, small producers are vulnerable, excluded and under resourced in the global market. In the coffee sector, small farmers produce approximately 70% of the global coffee supply. Despite the current high prices in the coffee market, fair trade coops are still unable to sell the majority of their coffee under fair trade terms. Expanding fair trade certification and market access to large-scale plantations will assure that fair trade cooperatives continue to remain vulnerable to volatile international markets and undermine 25 years of fair trade development.

Fair Trade vs Fair Labor

Fair Trade for All unfortunately is becoming a divisive issue, pitting small producers against farmworkers. Prominent farmworker leaders have endorsed the initiative, despite the overwhelming rejection of Fair Trade for All from fair trade producer networks, the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and United Students for Fair Trade. No one in the fair trade movement denies that farmworkers at home and abroad need support and market solidarity. There are infinite examples of deplorable working conditions for agricultural workers in every sector. The question is whether fair trade is the appropriate model for addressing hired labor in agricultural contexts. FLO has certified fair trade plantations in a number of specific product categories, like tea and bananas, despite resistance from small producer groups and Aternative Trade Organizations. Fair trade has a mixed record on plantations and hired labor operations, including the tea and banana sector. Complicating matters further, coffee plantation workers are largely seasonal workers, with many workers not returning to the same plantation where they‘ve worked the season prior. Assuring that the social premium in fact benefits these workers and that the workplace is operated democratically in the absence of a workers association or union is challenging at best. Perhaps Fair Labor certification is a more appropriate approach to supporting farm workers, while keeping fair trade standards, impacts and expectations intact.

Fair Labor certification assures a safe workplace, equitable wages and adherence to labor laws. A far labor certification is far more appropriate for hired labor scenarios, as it and does not dilute fair trade as a standard, nor a concept. In fact, there are several existing fair labor 3^rd party certifiers and standards, including Scientific Certification Services Fair Labor program and IMO’s For Life program. Or might certifiers look to an effective model adopted by anti-sweatshop advocates that include a code of conduct and monitored by an organization like the Workers Rights Consortium.

Voting with our dollars

FTUSA has stated that coffee from fair trade cooperatives and fair trade plantations will be virtually identical to consumers, bearing the same Fair Trade Certified mark. Indeed, FTUSA does not currently distinguish between small farmer coops and plantations for tea and bananas. Small coffee producers will have no way of distinguishing their product in a meaningful way when compared to plantation coffee, which will be presumably sold at a lower price, given that large-scale plantation operations can take advantage of economies of scale, market access and existing capacity. Plantations and estates already have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Similarly, consumers wishing to continue supporting small farmers and coops will be unable to simply look for the label.

Small is Indeed Beautiful

Paul Rice recently stated in an interview, In our view, small is not beautiful. FTUSA’s “Fair Trade for All” claims to be innovating the fair trade model, but appears to be responding primarily to the demands of large coffee roasters and importers, like Green Mountain and Starbucks, not the needs and realities of coffee producers on the ground. According to FTUSA’s most recent audited financials, Green Mountain and Starbucks account for approximately one-third of FTUSA’s lincensee revenues, not to mention are major donors to FTUSA. Taking a step back, history, not to mention existing data, demonstrate that real sustainability is small, but with a big impact. Small farmers form the backbone of not only the global food supply, but are central players in safeguarding biodiversity, fostering environmental stewardship and innovating sustainable agricultural practices. According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, small farmers hold the key to doubling food production while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty. Similarly, Via Campesina, the global movement of millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, has demonstrated that small farmers can address the global food crisis, in a far more equitable and sustainable way than agribusiness and large-scale farming.

Fair trade veteran advocates, including the Organic Consumers Association, and its recently launched Fair World Project (FWP), have long agitated and encouraged large roasters like Starbucks to source more fair trade coffee. Deepening and expanding the positive impact of fair trade to more small producers is central to our mission. Assuring however, that impact is equitable, sustainable and democratic remains the lynchpin in FWP’s approach to fair trade. We are encouraged by the interest of large, conventional manufacturers, roasters and importers in fair trade. However, strengthening, not diluting, the model at this crossroads in the movement to incorporate these powerful players is the challenge.

Stepping back even further, FTUSA’s recent actions largely reflect a crisis in governance and dysfunctional operating infrastructure. Had FTUSA’s board of directors truly reflected the constellation of voices and perspectives in the fair trade movement (including producers, advocates, ATOs, students, etc.), we doubt that Fair Trade For All would have provoked such widespread condemnation. FTUSA would have been a better steward of fair trade had it surveyed the fair trade community as a whole prior to moving forward with its plans to certify for large-scale plantations in an inclusive and transparent process, rather than request comments on the initiative after the fact. If FTUSA choses to enter the global system as an independent and reputable certifier, it must establish transparent and effective mechanisms for stakeholder engagement, and be accountable to that process. Abandoning its plans to certify coffee plantations would be a positive first step in righting the course.

FTUSA is moving forward with “fair trade” certification of coffee plantations in 2012. IMO’s Fair for Life standards are scale neutral and allows for certification of hired labor operations in any sector, though IMO has yet to certify coffee plantations. Fairtrade International (FLO) does not currently certify coffee plantations, though is under pressure to expand plantation certification to coffee and other sectors.

Take Action! Send a letter to Fair Trade USA, Fairtrade International and IMO and urge them to continue supporting small coffee farmers by not certifying plantation coffee.

Fair Trade Organizations, Stores, Companies: Sign-on by sending an email to ryan@fairworldproject.org

The post Fair World Project Action Alert & Backgrounder: Support Small Coffee Farmers! Stop fair trade coffee plantations appeared first on Fair World Project.