Edited by: Kenneth Cotto
You could spot their table from across Kirkhof Center. It was draped in pinks and reds with glitter sprinkled over pyramids of fair-trade chocolate, dusting the petals of fair-trade roses, and blending in with the red-wrapped fair trade condoms. Yes, fair trade condoms.
“It’s the rubber in them that is fairly traded,” said Sarah Sheber, a member of the group that was manning the table. Sheber pointed to a slip of paper that summed up the gist of the fair trade movement.
It read: “Thank you for purchasing a socially responsible Valentine’s Day present for your valentine. Through this purchase, you have helped farmers in developing communities to have sustainable farming practices, provide for their families and communities, and make a higher wage.”
She also explained what sparked her support for the cause.
“I wasn’t involved in the fair trade club last year, but after I went to Nicaragua this summer I knew I had to be involved,” Sheber said. Nicaragua? Yes, Sheber had spent three weeks in Central America with six other students for a class called “Psychology of Social Inequality”.
“Here is this gorgeous country with amazing people that we have treated so badly and yet they are still nice to us,” Sheber said. “If I were a Nicaraguan I’d have a bone to pick,”speaking of the social injustices they have endured.
Sheber goes on to describe that the people living in Nicaragua don’t have the infrastructure to market their own goods, so when coyotes, or middle men, offer to sell it for them for a fraction of the cost they should be receiving, they have no choice but to accept.
This is where fair trade comes in to play. During her time in Nicaragua, Sheber spent a week in the mountains with a family of coffee growers that use a fair trade co-op to sell their beans.
“They didn’t have a lot, but they were still better off than the farmers who don’t work through fair trade,” Sheber said as a slide show from her trip flashes across her laptop screen. “They own their own land, and I can’t stress what a big deal that is for them because no one can take that away.”
Through her pictures and memories from the trip, Sheber leads the curious down the path of a fair trade coffee bean.
This is its story:
High in the mountains of Nicaragua, sits a tiny coffee bean. To the common eye, it does not look like much. It hangs, plump and red, from its branches. It knows it is ripe, and waits for that moment when the family that looks after it comes along and...Pluck! Two sun-tanned fists drop the coffee bean into a wicker basket.
(Photo courtesy of econsciousmarket.com)A fair trade farmer holds a bowl of freshly picked coffee beans.
This roasted, sorted, and taste-tested bean is assigned an adjective-laden flavor (“medium bodied, full roasted, light acidic vanilla bean”) and is packaged with other beans from the same area. This gives the coffee a richer, more cohesive flavor. This little coffee bean is then shipped to buyers directly from the co-op plant, and placed on store shelves all over the world.
When someone purchases that coffee bean, takes it home and brews it into a steaming mug of coffee, it gives the sun-tanned hands back in Nicaragua a fair portion of its profits. The family high in the mountains is able to maintain a living because of that little bean's journey.
From the branches of banana-shaded bushes to the coffee mug in your hand, that little coffee bean is now a part of something bigger—the fair trade movement. Being certified as “fair trade” seems like the latest trend in an economy that is already using “organic” and “green” labels on a nation of products. This is because fair trade is the epitome of sustainable—a quality highly prized in all three of these labels, says Brian Cesarotti of the Grand Valley State University Students for Fair Trade organization
“Fair trade is organic. It is sustainable. Sometimes you don’t equate social justice with environmental issues, even though they are interconnected,” Cesarotti said.
With a table full of students passionate about fair trade, many of them were eager to jump in with their thoughts on the increase of attention the fair trade movement is getting.
“It’s becoming trendy almost to support causes like fair trade,” said Amy Page, who was lingering near the table piled high with fair trade items. "The green movement is helping; it's introducing people to this concept."
Cesarotti describes as a new level of consciousness that the consumer is gaining. However, he worries that the support for the movement may just be a phase.
"If the market does trend towards the norm in these directions, then that's a good thing. But if it's just a niche that can be exploited, than that's a bad thing that could jeopardize all that we are-- organic, fair and just," he said.
"When you buy fair trade products, you are supporting a deeper cause," Page said. "Sometimes you're buying on a whim; you don't know where it comes from. Buying fair trade products makes you think a lot more."
The fair trade label can be applied to a lot of products besides coffee. Sheber and Page, both participants in the Nicaragua trip, described pottery and clothing co-ops they visited that use the same principles. Cesarotti jokes that even alcohol can be labeled as a fair trade product.
A product or a company must meet specific requirements before it can earn a fair trade certification. Generally, five percent of the product must be fairly traded to earn the label. However, Cesarotti said that this is subject to the volume of product traded to begin with. Starbucks, he explained, gets the fair trade label with only two or three percent of their product fairly traded, simply due to their size. Coffee co-ops like the ones Sheber and Page visitied have 100 percent fairly traded coffee, guaranteeing that the journey of the little coffee beans is a fair one indeed.
"Really, the fair trade certification is becoming a marketing label," Cesarotti said. "It requires minimum standards that don't always embody the ideals and principles of the movement. They claim to act in solidarity, but in actuality there are very few people speaking on their behalf, which goes against the existing principles."
He explained that because of this a lot of companies don't bother striving for the official certification but live up to their own ideals of fair trade that don't conflict with the overarching goals of the movement. Fair-trade products aim for the consciense, not the wallet, as evidenced by the products that were on sale at the Kirkhof Center.
Cesarotti explained that some fair trade products cost more than their non-fairly traded counterparts, due to the base price that is higher for fair trade producers. This ensures that they get a price for their products that can support them, and gives them an opportunity to invest money in their community to pay for things like education and youth programs. Part of what you pay for in a fair trade product is the sustainable and organic farming practices that went into it, Cesarotti said. In addition, farmers involved in fair trade co-ops earn a steady wage all year round, rather than being dependent on when they sell their product.
Despite the $7 per box cost of the chocolates, students were grabbing them up, sometimes two at a time. Whether this was because their taste was "so worth it" as Sheber said, or due to the students' socially conscious shopping habits is hard to say. But Cesarotti said the benefit to the consumer does not have a number attached to it.
"Your benefiting because you have a better idea of what you are consuming comes from," he said. "You're helping build a relationship between the producer and the consumer, in solidarity."
This idea of solidarity is important to the fair trade movement. Sheber explained it clearly.
"We get involved not because we want to give them clarity, or because we feel sorry for them, but because we feel solidarity with them. We want to struggle with them," she said.
While the coffee bean's journey didn't end at the Valentine's Day sale that day, it will very well end up in the hands of the Students for Fair Trade organization on any given Monday, when they sell fair-traded coffee and chocolate in Au Sable Hall. Or maybe it ended in the palms of either Sheber or Page, who both saved coffee beans from their trip to the coffee co-ops in Nicaragua.
You could have left the Kirkhof Center that day with a handful of pamphlets on fair trade businesses and a bag bulging with socially conscious products. Or maybe it was Sheber's words ringing in your ear:
"It was fair trade that did this for them, that made their lives so much better. Going to Nicaragua, learning these things, I knew I had to get involved. How can you not?"
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