World Fair Trade Day talk

Yes­ter­day was World Fair Trade Day. The mul­ti­plic­ity of orga­ni­za­tions and groups involved in the fair trade move­ment glob­ally throw events and cam­paigns to increase aware­ness of fair trade ini­tia­tives. The Mercy Corps Action Cen­ter in down­town Man­hat­tan hosted a full day of events and numer­ous ven­dors with the help of The Fair Trade Resource Net­work and The New York City Fair Trade Coali­tion. I was invited to speak about the two fair trade cer­ti­fied farm­ing coop­er­a­tives I’ve worked with.

I opened my talk with a def­i­n­i­tion of fair trade, as approved by F.I.N.E.:

Fair Trade is a trad­ing part­ner­ship, based on dia­logue, trans­parency and respect, that seeks greater equity in inter­na­tional trade. It con­tributes to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment by offer­ing bet­ter trad­ing con­di­tions to, and secur­ing the rights of, mar­gin­al­ized pro­duc­ers and work­ers – espe­cially in the South. Fair Trade orga­ni­za­tions (backed by con­sumers) are engaged actively in sup­port­ing pro­duc­ers, aware­ness rais­ing and in cam­paign­ing for changes in the rules and prac­tice of con­ven­tional inter­na­tional trade.

I went on to explain, with the help of my pho­tographs, the his­to­ries of Santa Anita La Union in Guatemala and San­jukta Vikas Coop­er­a­tive in Dar­jeel­ing, India.

The ques­tion & answer por­tion of the pre­sen­ta­tion ran almost as long as the pre­sen­ta­tion itself.  I took many ques­tions about how fair trade works as a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, which can be extremely com­pli­cated, as one might expect with any inter­na­tional trade sys­tem. Because my expe­ri­ence involves deep knowl­edge of a few com­mu­ni­ties, I can speak about fair trade on a gran­u­lar level that is often glossed over when pro­mot­ing fair trade to new audi­ences in the global North. I use this inti­mate knowl­edge to impress that while fair trade is pri­mar­ily an eco­nomic jus­tice sys­tem, the orga­ni­za­tion and engage­ment that fair trade cer­ti­fi­ca­tion requires of the com­mu­ni­ties enables them to imple­ment that orga­niz­ing toward social jus­tice mea­sures, from secur­ing gov­ern­ment aid for war time injuries to estab­lish­ing schools in their com­mu­ni­ties.  A num­ber of peo­ple said that they appre­ci­ated hav­ing such spe­cific exam­ples of how fair trade fac­tors into the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions of the communities.

It was great to get so many engag­ing and crit­i­cal ques­tions. By the end of the pre­sen­ta­tion and lively ques­tion & answer ses­sion, the audi­ence grasped the social jus­tice impli­ca­tion of fair trade as out­lined in F.I.N.E.‘s def­i­n­i­tion and as expe­ri­enced by Santa Anita La Union and San­jukta Vikas Cooperative.

Thanks Kate Amanna for invit­ing me to speak and Mercy Corps for host­ing the event.