Slavery by Any Other Name…..

For all the recent Make Poverty History campaign Fair Trade is not a subject which often makes the news. Most people know of Fair Trade as being something vaguely worthy, like buying organic food and recycling old cans, but few realise just how much their shopping habits can affect people on the other side of the world. I think the first question of ask is what is it that’s unfair about trade in the first place?

The problems began in the 1970’s when banks suddenly found themselves making a packet on the oil market and, being banks, decided to use this sudden flow of money to make even more money. They gave out loans to developing countries to help them kick start their development. Some governments used the money to encourage new industry, or to set up schools and national health services. Some used it to line the pockets of their own officials. Whichever purpose the money had been put to the developing countries soon found they’d made a bad investment as interest rates in the West went shooting up and their debts increased many times over.

The World Bank responded to this dilemma by introducing SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programmes) which were supposed to help developing countries adapt to their burden of debt. They advised governments to cut costs by privatizing water supplies, canceling free education and health services, ceasing imports on tractor parts and medical equipment. They also advised poor farmers to grow ‘cash crops’, such as coffee or chocolate in order to make money, and to increase the amount they grew. Clever, right? Growing crops considered highly desirable in the Western world, and growing a lot of them?

Wrong. Poor farmers all over the world were suddenly giving over all their land to growing cocoa, coffee and bananas. There was a flood of such crops on the market, meaning that the price paid for such crops fell dramatically, and in fact continue to do so (coffee prices have fallen by 70 since 1997). Wonderful, if you happen to be a Western caffeine addict. Great, if you happen to be a multi national company selling to an increasingly growing market. Devastating, if you’ve just poured your life savings into growing fields and fields of coffee which you suddenly find will sell for far less that the cost growing the plants in the first place. You can’t even use these next to worthless products to feed your own family – children can’t eat cocoa beans, coffee or poppies.

So what should a poor farmer do? Too late for them to convert their land back. They will simply have to keep on working and hope for the best. Of course prices for the goods these farmers sell are set by the West, and are constantly fluctuating with the stock market. No matter how hard the farmers work nor how good their harvest they cannot know whether they will get enough money back to pay for the cost of production, never mind whether they will get enough money to feed themselves and send their children to school. Farmers who are lucky enough to scrape enough together to afford privatized education can only pay for the education of the males in the family. Typically, the burden of oppression falls hardest on the women, who also work hard in the land, in fact in may cases running both the farms and the families single handed, while their husbands and fathers seek more profitable work in cities, often never to return.

So aren’t european farmers also affected by this flooding of the market? Well, they are given money by the government to help cover the costs of growing their products which means they can sell their goods abroad at low costs. Unfortunately the farmers in the countries to which these subsidised products are sold cannot match these low prices: their governments cannot afford to give them similar help. When they try to sell their own products in other countries they are made to pay tariffs (extra taxes), meanwhile the Western banks withhold loans to countries that retaliate by creating their own tariffs. Poor countries can only afford to export raw materials – coffee beans, bananas, cocoa beans and leave them to be processed in the West. This means they lose out on the industry which would benefit their economies and bring money into the country.

Basically “free trade” means “open your markets to Western companies while they systematically destroy you economy.”

Meanwhile there are some people who manage to produce goods at a profit in developing countries. That’s right. It’s the multi nations corporations, big enough and ugly enough to be able to waive tariffs and trade barriers. Of course the workers in such factories and plantations aren’t paid a lot. That’s the beauty of setting up shop in a developing country. You can pay your workers a pittance, and it’s easy enough to avoid obeying codes of human rights and health and safety restriction. Young children are widely employed working adult hours and often working in dangerous and stressful conditions, and life isn’t much better for the adult employees. In banana plantations for example it is common practice to spray plantations with pesticides via helicopter. Those working in the fields suffer from lung disease and infertility and sometimes go blind. Still, it’s a job, eh?

Fair Trade aims to combat these problems. They work with farmers all over the world, guaranteeing them that however market prices fluctuate while they sell their goods through Fair Trade they will always be paid a blanket level price: enough to cover the cost of production and a little more and ensure that this is enough for workers children to have a decent education and for the family to afford healthcare if they become sick. They promote gender equality and make sure that the workers on Fair Trade affiliated farms are paid fair wages and given decent working conditions. Vetting agencies exist to make sure Fair Trade industries abide by these standards.

Unequal trading rules have resulted in a system that is merely slavery by another name. Poor farmers are forced into a life of constant and fruitless drudgery: we in the Western world live a life of comparative luxury of the backs of their hard work, and the companies which sell the goods they produce make enormous profits while they struggle to survive. By buying fair trade products and supporting their campaigns you can stand against this system. Strange as it may seem who you choose to buy your coffee from really does make a difference.