the Bitter Taste of Fairtrade Tea
The Bitter Taste of Tea is a Danish documentary film. It aims to visit fairtrade tea plantations to uncover the truth about the difference that the fairtrade system makes in Kenya, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
It lasts about an hour and can be seen online here.
The Asia Institute of UCLA recently hosted a showing of this film followed by a debate including David Funkhouser from Transfair USA and Rodney North from Equal Exchange. The podcast of the exchange is long but well worth listening to. It is the frankest and best discussion by those at the centre of Fairtrade certification that I have ever heard.
To start with, I think there are a number of problems with the film, many of which were brought up in the discussion.
For example, whilst in a Danish context it makes sense to talk about the 'Max Havalaar' foundation as if it is a worldwide organisation, it isn't. The global umbrella body is called the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation. Max Havalaar is the name of the country organisation in several European countries - the equivalent of the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK and Transfair in the USA.
Second, the film is not explicit enough to explain when we are seeing fairtrade plantations and when we are not. Lipton, for example, is a massive tea multinational and is not exclusively a fairtrade brand. Indeed, it appears that they have decided to become certified by the Rainforest Alliance rather than Fairtrade. The sections of the film that discuss Lipton are muddying the issue.
That said, what we clearly did see was worker dissatisfaction with the fairtrade process. We saw workers living in unsuitable conditions, working long hours for little money. There was the suggestion that 'guarantee' has been removed from the fairtrade discourse as fairtrade cannot be guaranteed.
I think what was remarkable about the panel discussion was that Transfair were not attempting to distance themselves from the majority of claims in the report. Indeed, David Funkhouser said that fairtrade should not be considered to be a panacea for all the problems. And others reported that there certainly have been improvements in the conditions in those tea plantations as a direct result of fairtrade.
Whilst I welcome Transfair's refreshingly honest response to this, I think this is still extremely problematic for a number of reasons.
- I am not sure whether it is accurate to state that the word 'guarantee' has been removed from the discourse used by the members of the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation, but a casual look at the Fairtrade Foundation website certainly seems to suggest that this is less obvious tha it used to be. The thing is that this cast iron 'guarantee' is what has been sold to consumers all these years.
- Multinationals are using the Fairtrade system to publicise their 'good ethical behaviour'. Not only have we spent more on their products, but this has generated large amounts of goodwill for them.
- Transfair's solution to this problem is an increase in the purchases of fairtrade products, on the basis that many tea gardens only sell a fraction of their production under fairtrade terms, hence the benefits are limited.
- We have a minimum expectation of what fairtrade is 'supposed to do'. The situations shown in the film fall well below those minimum expectations.
- Equal Exchange also said that if we were to charge for products what they would cost to drastically improve the life standards of those affected, nobody would pay because it would be far too expensive. Maybe the truth is that it is impossible to provide a system which supports a sensible livelihood for thosands of poor women tea-pickers based on tea. If Equal Exchange cannot do it, heaven help those who are working for a tea multinational.
I am not arguing that fairtrade is no better. But I think this film adds to the evidence that the benefits of fairtrade are sometimes very small. And I'm not sure I want to reward multinationals for that size of benefit.
image below taken from the film.
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