It's interesting–I've heard some of the same criticisms brought up in this film from companies that sell fair trade products. For example, Equal Exchange (which sells fair trade tea, among other products) has actually made a deliberate attempt to downplay TransFair certification and emphasize their own branding and logo because they believe that they've gone above and beyond the minimum required for TransFair certification, for example, by promoting democratic worker-owned cooperative models and working with smaller farming operations.

I've incorporated some of these criticisms into RateTea.net's page on fair trade tea. I'm really curious to see where people will go with it…the movie ends on a hopeful note, talking about how fair trade organizations are starting to take these criticisms seriously. I'm hoping by publicizing these and other criticisms, and also by highlighting companies that are undertaking other efforts to alleviate or solve some of the same problems, or going beyond what is required of the fair trade certification, that I can encourage everyone involved to keep working to come up with better solutions!

=)

Alex Zorach

Thank you for the follow up information. It covers even more topics!

The value added to blending is worth studying. I don't much drink blended tea. But I've seen good blending work done by smaller business (like 52teas) and medium size (like Adagio). But I put big question mark on blends from international big companies, and suspect the value they add to it vs. the price they charge is comparable to adding coke powder to water.

Costs of tea packaging and shipping, that's another question. I recently help a buyer buy some top notch Long Jing from China, wrapped in a simple brown paper wrap (well wrapped though). The shipping is very expensive, but at the end, I bet it's still much less expensive than buying from US. I am sure many buyers would still prefer to buy from US sellers, for better packaging and less waiting time. But at this information era, it's very easy for consumers to find out how much the tea costs in its local market, and they can easily find out how much more they pay for the packaging, shipping, service… So I believe a tea seller should strive to make all these worth it, instead of hoping the consumers don't know much about tea.

How often the sites should be inspected by FTO and costs involved, that's a question to ponder too. There are also many good farms who won't bother to apply for fair trade certification, just to avoid costs.

I am glad your research still supports fair trade at least as a valid idea. It definitely needs improvement. But I don't hope good work that has been done is overlooked just because of the flaws. Some of my town fellows made this movie Chocolate Country (chocolatecountryfilm.org). It tells a good story about fair trade and that's what convinced me to buy fair trade chocolate

Anyhow, after the screening and the forum, I got in touch with Beatrice Hohenegger and invited her to write an article based on her impressions of the video and of the forum since she was there. Unfortunately, she is busy promoting her book right now and was unable. She did, graciously, provide me with the podcast link and the link to the English subtitled version of the film, which I had previously been unable to find.

In the end, we focused this article on the film alone; we put our hands on so much research (both on the public web and the more secure academic web) that the project was beginning to take on a life of its own. Due to the amount of information we found, the article itself met with delays as we debated how to report on it. Turns out simplification is the best idea. Some screen captures, a better summary of it than any other website has done and I think we are better off for it.

You make a good point about no value-added. Tea is ready to drink the moment it leaves the farm, but even from that point it is a long way to consumer. Major money is made once the tea hits the repackers, blenders and retailers in the consuming countries (much of this is talked about in the SOMO article). That said, shortening the supply is the best fair trade. Since the profits are all really made on the retail end, the retail closer to source is good business practice. Unfortunately, that is something that hard for most retailers to do. A small, well-connected retailer can. But what happens when that vendor moves up a notch and doesn’t want to be small anymore? He or she is going to have to add layers of middlemen, its the nature of business. Otherwise, too much time and energy is spent sourcing, packing, transporting and repacking the tea and not enough time is spent selling to customers–the vendor risks hurting the business itself. Middlemen are a much needed part of the industry. Small businesses can get by without them sometimes; but as growth happens, they have a larger role.

I find that the idea of Fair Trade is the right one, the research we did validated this for us. Where Fair Trade seems to suffer is that so much is expected and the organizations are stretched too thin to be effective. Only once-a-year inspections??? Give me a break, that level is pretty much useless. Fair Trade quality inspectors need to be ingrained at the local and regional levels. Inspections need to be at least quarterly, if not monthly.

People who buy Fair Trade tea and products and expect great things are to be sorely disappointed. Fair Trade needs more money, more people and more legal support to be effective. The trouble is that it is currently a bureaucracy in the middle of developing business processes and traditions; it will have a hard time adapting and changing to become effective. Simply raising the prices on what amounts to ordinary tea isn’t going to do it. Fair Trade needs to spend more time wheeling, dealing and lobbying the old-fashioned way, at the international government level in order to leverage better labor laws and conditions. As it is, it seems that the Fair Trade model is broken and doesn’t work. It seems like Fair Trade is a waste of money since, according to the film makers, it gets diverted from the people it is meant to protect.

As for tea industry, I don't care much about fair trade, because I know a lot of Chinese tea farmers who are perfectly happy and probably richer than I am. What's unique about tea industry is, there isn't much value-added work involved once the tea product is made by the farmers. Consumers can't consume cocoa beans or unroasted coffee beans. But consumers can just buy tea from farmers if they can reach the farmers. If not directly from farmers, they can buy tea from dealers who source directly from farmers and by pass the many layers of middlemen. To me, shortening the trade chain is the Fair Trade in tea industry.