Is buying fair trade a waste of money?

With the recession threatening the UK's fair trade market, Lucy Siegle asks whether it is really doing anybody any good
Lucy Siegle
The Observer, Sunday 22 February 2009

I've come to respect cauliflowers. They are under threat - production has fallen by 35% - because we can't get the smell and taste of school-cooked caulis out of our minds, and buy imported veg instead. Shame, because they're full of nutrients, and since they can be grown all year round in the UK, extremely sustainable. Even so, I would not want to eat them all the time and exclusively. In common with almost all UK consumers, I want to have my cake - or rather my pineapple - and eat it.
This is where Fairtrade often kicks in, forming an ethical transaction whereby you unofficially offset food miles of said pineapple because you're adding the ingredient of social change to your shopping basket. Fairtrade (certified by the Fairtrade Foundation's standards) and fair trade (uncertified) relate mostly to small producers in the developing world, organised into co-operatives which receive a premium for crops and invest it back into that community.
As Fairtrade Fortnight begins tomorrow, it might feel that the whole world's embraced this feel-good arrangement. It hasn't. Though fair-trade sales have grown to £2.4bn over the five years to last year, growth of 47% per year, this is still less than 1% of global trade.
Why is conventional trade still so unfair? In truth, fair trade is also far from perfect. It was developed as an emergency response to poverty, coming into its own when world coffee prices crashed. Now, as critics point out, the fate of producers is inextricably linked to our consumption, which will fall during the recession.
But should we dump fair trade now? Absolutely not. Stalwart of the fair-trade movement Jeremy Piercy thinks the key to protecting fairer trade is to certify more products, other than food and craft-based items; the clue is in the title of his new book, Coffins, Cats and Fair Trade Sex Toys (£8.99, www.quickbrownfox publications.co.uk). Major tour operators have been urged by industry bodies to look at certification for mainstream Fairtrade holidays. Elsewhere, the Lorna Young Foundation (www.lyf.org.uk) is pioneering a coffee project between an Oromo Ethiopian community now settled in Manchester, and small coffee producers in Ethiopia, cutting out the middleman. Piercy also wants fair trade to become more environmentally focused, given the link between hazards such as drought and flooding and poverty: all signs that fair trade can grow.
As long as consumers engage more fully. For instance, if you know who produced your pineapple, you'll notice if the label of country of origin changes, suggesting the retailer has cut and run to a cheaper supplier. There is no avoiding the fact that a great fair-trade project is a long-term one between producer and supplier. See as evidence Co-op's sourcing of fair-trade bananas through Ghana, which has survived hurricanes and crop destruction. The community now has a union, clean water and free medical centre; the consumer gets bananas that ethically outshine a cauliflower.
lucy.siegle@observer.co.uk