How fair is fairly traded food ?

[Astrocat]

My girlfriend used to work for 40p an hour in Moscow. It sounds pretty poor, doesn't it?

For a zero-cost-to-maintain job in Moscow, that sounds about right I would say.

I had a penpal who earned about 10p an hour in a Cantonese sweatshop.

But 10p is probably loads in Canton, right ?
It wasn't.

He was constantly stressed out by being unable to afford basic clothing or simple food. I eventually had to stop writing to him because it became painfully obvious that he wasn't really interested in me at all, and was so desperate that he was mainly just trying to get money from me through various methods.

China's financial growth is astonishing at the moment.

China's economy is in the same state as Japan's economy a couple of decades ago .... on a superficial level it looks great, but I'm not sure whether it will be long before the bubble bursts.
I don't know how much you know about bubble-economies, but I don't view the 'screw the long term, let's focus on the sort-term' approach to be a good thing.

OK, I think that we are in fact saying the same thing, just in different ways. I am saying you can't change capitalism, you are saying change people's buying habits instead... they aren't mutually exclusive and I completely agree with you.

I don't have to believe that the fair trade movement can abolish capitalism (or imperialism, for that matter) , in order to campaign in favour of free trade and make that a worthwhile endeavour.

I am saying that I think UK law ought to be altered in order to make UK companies more responsible for their behaviour in foreign countries.

I advocate that governments have a duty to those who they claim to protect and ought to instate their own responsibly-assessed minimum wages.

I am saying that the typical excuses thrown out by supermarkets to excuse their behaviour are ill-founded..... they will not go bust if they sell more fair-trade produce, their hands are not tied, it is not all the middlemens' responsibility rather than their own.

I feel that the supermarket approach of choosing to put down roots in a country which has no minimum wage, or where the minimum wage is clearly not high enough - then declaring "we are an ethical corporation who take great care to comply with all local minimum wage requirements" ... is morally and ethically meaningless, other than in a negative way.

They are not vulnerably controlled by consumerist demands..... rather more, they dictate to consumers what they are allowed to buy from the stores.

They know that they are destroying economies in many countries, and their claims that they are doing the opposite are so far entirely unfounded, from what I can tell. Whenever i ask any of them to provide evidence, mysteriously i never hear back from them..... which i certainly would if they were able to back up their claims !

I have asked supermarkets many questions about this sort of thing, giving them ample opportunity to defend themselves backed up with factual evidence. Please feign surprise when i express that so far, they have been nearly completely unable to do so.

Perhaps if they held themselves accountable for their actions, rather than taking the 'run away and pretend you don't hear the question if you don't like it' approach, they would seem a lot less dodgy, even if they still were unable to give any weight to their claims to be ethically motivated corporations.

If the people aren't happy with it, then they have their own governments to look after their interests, the same as we do

this is begging the question again - this is exactly the point of dispute, right now.

The point about Fair Trade is that it is intended to protect people whose governments have no problem with them being exploited , manipulated, controlled, killed and driven into poverty by dominant organisations.
For example, companies such as ASDA know how desperately in debt the African government is, and make good use of it by utilising bribery in order to gain extra power in that country.

As a comparison, imagine the mafia man who lends a tenner to a desperate woman. The woman is in dire poverty and will be evicted, along with her child, if she can not pay her rent by that afternoon - so in desparation, she takes him up on the offer. To that extent, her consequent predicament is her own doing. But.... the mafia man is fully aware of her situation. He knows that she can't pay him back quickly : indeed, that is precisely why he made the offer in the first place because he had his eyes on the profit he could get out of the deal. Now that the woman is in debt and can't pay him back, her world is his plaything and he can demand all sorts of stuff.

Now, let's examine the kid there..... because the kid is a metaphor for workers, while the mother is a metaphor for a country's government.

It may well be that the mafia man progresses on to saying stuff like "I need a drug-runner. Your kid is 13, which old enough for that. If your kid delivers this kilo of cocaine to ten addresses, then I won't break your legs. I'll also give him a fiver for his trouble." .... then, that kid is in a situation where they are pretty much compelled to do the work. They are being paid, but only a tiny amount compared to the going rate for drug-runners.

If the mafia man keeps , say, 20 families in that situation and that is how they do business....

Then who is most to blame, there ?

The kids, the mothers, or the mafia men ?

I would say the mafia men, but going by what you have said already you would say it was the mother's and kids' faults.

And that, is simply a difference of interpretation of morality.

This is a very abstract conversation and it doesn't really make sense to talk unless we have a very specific situation

I didn;t think that mentioning specific examples was necessary, since you have read the reports i posted already and they contain many individual examples of the kid which i mentioned. I don;t see why you view that as abstract, since the information I was talking about is all there already.

[Astrocat]

***** apparently, i talk too much ! (O.O) the forum has made me post this response in two parts ! *****

Poverty is relative.
[...]
Apparently large numbers of people in Britain live in poverty, but it is a gross lie. They measure poverty simply by looking at the 'wealth gap' and saying anyone who earns under a certain percentage of the average wage is in poverty. It is the politics of envy used for propaganda.

Yes, that is correct. But, I am not the UK government, and unlike them i stick to a much more meaningful definition of 'poverty' when talking about it, rather than some inappropriate political pseudo-meaning.
This is also the case for organisations such as Christian Aid or Action-Aid.

That definition would be "A state in which a family’s income is too low to be able to buy the quantities of food, shelter and clothing that are deemed necessary."

or

"A situation in which a person or household lacks the resources necessary to be able to consume a certain minimum basket of goods. The basket consists either of food, clothing, housing and other essentials (moderate poverty) or of food alone (extreme poverty)"

If people can't afford housing and live in mud huts, and can't afford enough food to stay alive.... then surely only a very dishonest, callous, or very misguided person (or simply someone using the political version of the term), would then try to claim that this situation can be viewed as 'not being in poverty' according to their own personal interpretation of the term.

Who sets the minimum wage? And would it vary from country to country, region to region? 50p an hour is going to mean a very different thing in different countries. It could massively destabilise whol economies. Imagine for example if a supermarket supplier suddenly started offering jobs at three times the local average wage. Those people would suddenly have a lot more money to spend, which would cause high localised inflation. That in turn would mean that everyone else would then be unable to afford the local goods and their standard of living would drop. Would you then hold the supermarket responsible for that too?

Hence my point - you can't just muck about with other people's economies.

I'm not sure why you were making that point, though.

Fair trade organisations are campaigning for governments to be allowed enough political power to be able to have a real say in the control of their own economies. And are also campaigning for those governments to then, when they are powerful enough to be able to, establish and enforce a fair minimum wage requirement.

Your point in no way contradicts the aims and goals of the fair trade movement, nor what i was saying.

Because if employees have only limited rights it means that employers aren't afraid to hire them because it isn't hard to fire them when they aren't needed (unlike in Germany and France). It is bad for individuals, but good for economies.

When growers and suppliers are cut off by supermarkets, almost without exception they are left with thousands of acres of then worthless crops, masses of debt, and a business which wasn;t really sustainable even when it had a client then has to somehow be sustainable with no client.

People in that situation are in no way going to find it easier to get another source of employment, than people in a similar situation who have not been asked to give the supermarket chain bribes (so who are less heavily in debt), who have not been asked to grow and supply thousands of acres of crops then been screwed over at the last minute by the supermarkets, and whose business was sustainable when they had a client and might continue to be if they find another client fairly rapidly.

I am not saying that it is OK, I am saying that it is just how it is and there is nothing that we can do about it.

People say the same to me about animal rights activism.
Fortunately for me, they're wrong as well.

I am taking your points on board, but generally believe that it is not my place to tell people in other countries how to live their lives, what jobs they should have or not, what wages they should recieve, what political systems they should have and so on. The days of the British Empire telling other countries how to run their affairs are long over and they won't thank us for it.

As i mentioned before, this isn't an issue for me because i don't define things in terms of "us" and "them" . Ultimately, my nationality is a complete irrelevance.

If it would be okay for me to criticise the UK government as a british citizen wherever appropriate and relevant, then why would it be any less valid for me to recognise the same things and hold the same views about the behaviour, if i were an American person ?

And if it would be appropriate for African citizens to lobby their government for fairer trade..... then why should it be different for me, purely based on my race ?

[Anthony Butcher]

You have argued well enough to convince me to take a long hard look at this.

Originally Posted by Astrocat

And if it would be appropriate for African citizens to lobby their government for fairer trade..... then why should it be different for me, purely based on my race ?

Nationality has nothing to do with race; that is very dangerous territory and can lead to gross misunderstandings.

As for your point, you are obviously free to lobby whomever you wish, but I always try to think of it in terms of how I would feel if roles are reversed. If I thought that French citizens were lobbying the British government to change our labour laws to match theirs I would be less than impressed.

[Astrocat]

Nationality has nothing to do with race; that is very dangerous territory and can lead to gross misunderstandings.

How would you define 'race' ?

The Oxford English Dictionary broadly defines the word as "a group of persons connected by common descent".

Also -
Wikipedia - Race

There is also considerable debate among the media, regarding whether or not the british populace can be considered to be 'a race', considering what a nationality melting-pot it is.

So, it seems to me that you are not necessarily right in your assumptions about race.

I think that it's inappropriate to have opinions and state them as fact while declaring that those who opine otherwise are incorrect, and criticising or chastising them without any back-up, if you wish to have a constructive debate in the process.


If you feel that social perception of race should be based on how people look and the country of origin of their ancient ancestors (scientists have discovered that there is no apparent deviation of genetics which would distinguish between different nationalities of people) , then please consider -

If there is a person whose great-great-great-great-grandparents lived in Africa, whose family has lived in the UK for a century, interbreeding with other similarly African-descent families resulting in African-looking kids being produced by each generation, then why would that person necessarily have any more ability (or right) to comment on a situation in Africa, than i would be ?

As for your point, you are obviously free to lobby whomever you wish, but I always try to think of it in terms of how I would feel if roles are reversed. If I thought that French citizens were lobbying the British government to change our labour laws to match theirs I would be less than impressed.

This is clearly an inaccurate comparison, as shown by what i have been saying. I am confused by why you made it, considering all that I have said so far. Do you not believe me, about the motives of the fair trade movement ?

How about if you were an African worker whose vulnerable government was being manipulated by UK corporations, and allowing UK supermarkets to dominate and exploit the local populace ?

Would you feel better knowing that UK citizens don't care, and view this as a good thing ?

Or would you feel better knowing that UK citizens are concerned about the predicament, are urging their governments to stop nurturing policies which simply increase the desperation of the African government while bringing them deeper into debt, if you knew that UK citizens were encouraging change in UK law to prevent supermarkets from mindfully decimating local economies in poverty-wracked locations, and if they were encouraging the African government to instate a minimum wage which allows full-time employees to at least be able to afford minimum basic food for survival ?

As i have already made clear, i would prefer the latter to the former.

[Astrocat]

Also for comparison :

In the UK there is bias in favour of gluttony and against women inherent in the structure of taxation

If citizens of a country where taxation were less biased were to lobby the UK government to change the law so that tampons and sanitary towels are not VAT taxed ..... then I wouldn't descend into any resentment based on an 'us' and 'them' mentality. frankly, i would appreciate the support and unity.

[Anthony Butcher]

Originally Posted by Astrocat

How would you define 'race' ?

Black, white, asian etc.

Not at all to be confused with nationality such as British, French etc.

I actually think that race should be removed from the English language. It should never feature as part of anything. The CRE should be scrapped, all mention of race in employment forms, government databases etc should be deleted. It is the most divisive concept in our country today.

Originally Posted by Astrocat

I think that it's inappropriate to have opinions and state them as fact while declaring that those who opine otherwise are incorrect, and criticising or chastising them without any back-up, if you wish to have a constructive debate in the process.

I am sorry if I caused you some distress. That wasn't my intention. Everything I write is my opinion, and not meant to be regarded as 'fact'.

However, you have already seen how dangerous it is to confuse nationality and race. You thought that I was accusing you of 'racism', when I talked about imperialism.

I have been in politics for a few years now, and discussion about race never achieves anything and only gets peoples' backs up.

Originally Posted by Astrocat

If you feel that social perception of race should be based on how people look and the country of origin of their ancient ancestors (scientists have discovered that there is no apparent deviation of genetics which would distinguish between different nationalities of people) , then please consider -

It doesn't matter how I think race should be regarded; it is absolutely irrelevant. If you say 'race' to someone, 99.9% of people will assume it to mean white, black, asian, etc. That is the accepted use of the term. If we vary from that and then use alternative meanings in discussions like this it is bound to cause confusion.

I would suggest never bringing up the issue of race again, since it has absolutely no use whatsoever. Race has nothing to do with Fair Trade, international finances, supermarkets or anything else in this thread and for the life of me I can't work out why you keep discussing it!

Originally Posted by Astrocat

If there is a person whose great-great-great-great-grandparents lived in Africa, whose family has lived in the UK for a century, interbreeding with other similarly African-descent families resulting in African-looking kids being produced by each generation, then why would that person necessarily have any more ability (or right) to comment on a situation in Africa, than i would be ?

I have no idea. You have constructed that situation entirely on your own. I haven't brought up ancestry or race at all. Unless you are a citizen of a country, then your opinions are, without meaning to be rude, just interference in other people's affairs. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and intervention is required sometimes, but it is something to bear in mind.

As I have said, I support the idea of 'Fair Trade', I just don't think that it is fair to blame the supermarkets for everything when there are so many other groups involved, including consumers, governments, local workers and so on.

Originally Posted by Astrocat

Or would you feel better knowing that UK citizens are concerned about the predicament, are urging their governments to stop nurturing policies which simply increase the desperation of the African government while bringing them deeper into debt, if you knew that UK citizens were encouraging change in UK law to prevent supermarkets from mindfully decimating local economies in poverty-wracked locations, and if they were encouraging the African government to instate a minimum wage which allows full-time employees to at least be able to afford minimum basic food for survival ?

You see I just don't believe that this is happening. You use incredibly emotive words like "decimating", yet I have seen no evidence of this. It is a very bold claim to make. There may be local issues, but providing high emplyment (albeit on low wages) in an area is hardly decimating the local economy. I am not justifying it, merely suggesting that using such emotive words actually makes your argument less believable to me.

I would need to see evidence of a particular region of a particular African country that can demonstrate that the local economy has been significantly damaged by direct interference from a supermarket chain. I find it highly unlikely that such evidence exists. That doesn't prove that your theory is wrong, merely that it is very hard to prove beyond circumstantial evidence.

You also understand that there are dozens of African governments (not just one as your posting appears to suggest), and forcing them to impose minimum wages would be impossible at this stage? And what's more it doesn't necessarily follow that minimum wage improves the quality of life. In areas where the margins are extremely tight, the minimum wage may make people unemployable and the business will fold. Then everyone is unemployed instead of having low paid work. A national minimum wage only makes sense when all the businesses can actually afford to pay that level of salary.

Imagine for instance that one African country introduced a minimum wage. This would almost certainly push up the costs for farming businesses, thus increasing the prices they have to charge the supermarkets. The supermarkets would then just move elsewhere, where the products are cheaper.The only reason that the farms in the thrid world have the supermarket business is because they are dirt cheap. If they weren't cheap, we would just import the food from Europe or America instead.

The minimum wage was only introduced into Britain a few years ago. I hardly think that we are in a position to dictate to other nations how they should be governing their economies. We are right back to the patronising imperialism of us assuming that our governmental system is better than theirs and they should be forced to copy ours.

[Astrocat]

Black, white, asian etc.

I asked how you would define race, not for some examples of what you think are races.
Those are examples of what you would consider to be races, but you have not said how you would define 'race'

For comparison, emotion could be described like this -
In psychology and common use, emotion is the language of a person's mental state of being, normally based in or tied to the person's internal (physical) and external (social) sensory feeling. Love, hate, courage, fear, joy, sadness, pleasure and disgust can all be described in both psychological and physiological terms (Wikipedia)

.... and from there, examples of emotion would be love, anger and hatred.

But saying "emotion is love, anger, hatred etc" does not describe what a person feels emotion is.

Of course, the term 'black' is an imperialist one, intended to emphasise the difference between pink and brown people by referring to them instead, as being 'black and white' .... it is like the term 'third world country' in that respect...

Saying that 'asian' is a race, is like saying that 'western' is a race.
Needless to say, many 'asians' are really offended by that.

Most people are of mixed descent..... so how brown does a person need to be before they are 'black' ? What shade of pink is considered to be 'white' ?

Most people are not 'purebreeds' , so what race do all of the mongrels have ?

The minimum wage was only introduced into Britain a few years ago. I hardly think that we are in a position to dictate to other nations how they should be governing their economies. We are right back to the patronising imperialism of us assuming that our governmental system is better than theirs and they should be forced to copy ours.

You are still pushing the 'us' and 'them' approach.... which i still don't have any truck with.

I did not take any part in organising the abysmal state of the UK economy, and have never voted for the political parties who have - so why should the state of the UK economy in any way relate to my ability to weigh up a situation in another country ?

It doesn't matter how I think race should be regarded; it is absolutely irrelevant. If you say 'race' to someone, 99.9% of people will assume it to mean white, black, asian, etc. That is the accepted use of the term. If we vary from that and then use alternative meanings in discussions like this it is bound to cause confusion.

To that i would say, that probably 99.9% of people think that vegans eat honey - but that doesn;t mean that vegans actually do eat honey.

Most people would probably do what you did and simply give examples of what they believe are races, rather than giving a clear definition of what they believe is defined by 'race' .... which to me implies that they don't actually know how they would define 'race', and so can't be assumed to necessarily be correct about it.

I would need to see evidence of a particular region of a particular African country that can demonstrate that the local economy has been significantly damaged by direct interference from a supermarket chain. I find it highly unlikely that such evidence exists. That doesn't prove that your theory is wrong, merely that it is very hard to prove beyond circumstantial evidence.

If the information in the reports is easy to disbelieve or seems inconclusive, then i reccommend to you a book called "Shopped : The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets"

I haven't brought up ancestry or race at all. Unless you are a citizen of a country, then your opinions are, without meaning to be rude, just interference in other people's affairs.

If a person were born in Africa then raised in the UK from birth , they are an African citizen. Why would that person be any more in a place to comment about this sort of thing, than I am ?

If by 'citizen' you mean 'person who lives there' , then what if i move to Africa briefly (say, for a month or two) then decide to move back ?
Then, should my right to be a fair trade activist (commenting about Africa, in this case) shoot through the roof while I am there, then drop rock bottom again once i move out of the country ?

If i moved there permanently, nothing would change as far as I am concerned, regarding my 'right' to comment on the situation there...... I can't see how the location of my house should affect my right or ability to make moral and ethical judgements about others' conduct.

As I have said, I support the idea of 'Fair Trade', I just don't think that it is fair to blame the supermarkets for everything when there are so many other groups involved, including consumers, governments, local workers and so on.

This is a moot point.

To go back to my example :

I would blame the people who buy the drugs from the kid, for a lot of the problem.
I would blame the mother slightly, for getting into the one-way situation.
I would put most blame on the mafia man.
I would put no blame on the kid, and would not blame them for the predicament by casually expecting them to appeal to the mafia man for better treatment, because i know that is likely to get them nowhere other than maybe 6 feet under, and so it's not reasonable to expect the kids to do that.

That is different from blaming the mafia guy for everything.
As a metaphor, I hope that you can see what I'm saying.

Africa has an AU. Instating fair trade legislation would be their juristiction i reckon, and it would seem to make far more sense to approach them than farting about writing to each individual government.

The minimum wage was only introduced into Britain a few years ago. I hardly think that we are in a position to dictate to other nations how they should be governing their economies. We are right back to the patronising imperialism of us assuming that our governmental system is better than theirs and they should be forced to copy ours.

I'm not sure why you're so adamant in putting forth points from a divisive 'us' and 'them' mindset, knowing that I don't have that mindset and find it to be an irrelevance.

At what point did I say that I think that any other country ought to be apeing the abysmal state of the UK governmental system ?
You have implied that I've said this numerous times now, but I never said any such thing.
I think that you might have assumed this because of being unable to get out of the 'us' and 'them' mindset.

If I thought that the UK governmental system is so incredibly amazing that I were trying to advocate imposing it on other nations, then why have i never voted for anyone who has been in government during my lifetime ?

If you consider yourself , UK society and the UK government to be 'we' and other nationalities and governments to be 'they' then okay, that is your call and i have no comment to make about it.... but please don't include me in that 'we'.... I want no part of this divisiveness.

[Anthony Butcher]

I think that we will have to agree to disagree on this one. I do see it as an us and them scenario, and you don't, and that is probably the crux of it.

[Astrocat]

Fair enough, although likesay to me your approach seems rather illogical, and you haven;t answered many of the questions which were asked because I was trying to find the logic and consistency in what you were saying.

For example, as I asked before :

If a person were born in Africa then raised in the UK from birth , they are an African citizen. Why would that person be any more in a place to comment about this sort of thing, than I am ?

I don't think that they would be, but you seem to think that would be the case, and have not explained why - so understandably i will continue to disagree with you because of that.

Most people are not 'purebreeds' , so what race do all of the mongrels have ?

It's a good question, no ?

Whether people choose to primarily define race in terms of 'nation