the curse of Better Than Nothing
I would like to briefly riff something I want to call the 'Curse of Better-Than-Nothing-ness.
Fairtrade is better than nothing.
The fact that the average individual Fairtrade producer gets only 30 Euros from the Fairtrade Premium is better than nothing.
The fact that producers cannot sell all their potential produce as certified fairtrade is.. you've guessed it... better than nothing.
How exactly are we measuring 'nothing' in this context? How much better does it have to get to be awarded the honorific 'better than nothing'?
Wouldn't any improvement be better than nothing to a producer living on a couple of dollars a day and totally without any mod-cons we consumers take for granted?
Just think for a second about the massive publicity Nestle is generating by moving a fairly small part of their chocolate range to Fairtrade. Is the 'cost' of giving the certificate to one of the world's worst multinationals worth it? Is it actually better than nothing?
And who said that we wanted better than nothing anyhow? Is the lot of a tea worker suddenly miraculously improved by fairtrade? Do cotton farmers no longer struggle? Does it remove the long hours? Does it suddenly supply healthcare where there was none?
Are these not legitimate aspirations for those directly affected by Fairtrade? Can Fairtrade ever supply it? Honestly?
There is also a closely related parallel question. The FLO plans are to rapidly expand the production of fairtrade certified goods and producers. But if you look, they're assuming that the benefit to each individual producer will be about the same. So we're talking slight improvements spread across more people.
When does a slight improvement spread across a large number of people become barely worth having? Clearly it is a difficult thing to call, but at some point doesn't it make more sense to focus on a smaller group of people and struggle to see a much bigger improvement in their lives?
If there is an oversupply of tea, wouldn't it make sense to find some other crop to diversify into rather than signing up more potential producers?
Of course, this is more of the partnership model of the fairtrade handicrafts and the WFTO. But even here there is a problem. I know of about half a dozen excellent projects around the world. What they do is excellent, but their products are not good enough, or too similar to others or would just be very difficult to sell. The truth is that the market is saturated with very similar handicrafts.
The struggle for any small fairtrade producer group is to find something to sell which stands out from the crowd - because you cannot survive long on the goodwill of your friends. And there isn't a lot of point in even trying to. It breaks my heart because a lot of these people are really trying hard and working against the odds. The returns they're looking for are very small.
Somehow - if you are so committed to a development model that depends on overseas exports - you need a team of enthusiastic entrepreneurs who can look at bulk basic products and find things which turn them into more valuable commodities. That might mean growing a particularly valuable form of coffee. Or tearing up your tea garden and planting something else. Or finding new exciting designers to generate great new ideas for your handicrafts.
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