Fair Trade vs. Eat Local?

by Jen Maiser

In an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday paper, William G. Moseley takes a swipe at the eat local movement in an article titled "Farmers in developing world hurt by 'eat local' philosophy in U.S."

While I respect Mr. Moseley's attempt to bring any attention to the admirable fair trade movement, his finger is pointed in the wrong direction.

Eat Local advocates are often painted as coffee-shunning, chocolate-declining masochists who eschew absolutely everything that is not local.  The truth is much less compelling in print, so the moderates among us are not often in the spotlight. 

"What do you do about coffee," I am often asked during interviews. Sometimes the question is conspiratorial or indignant.  "I buy from local roasters who choose their beans carefully and I am drinking non-local coffee right now," is my standard answer.

As has been discussed on this site, the locavore way is not strictly about food miles.  It's also about how something is grown, how it got to me, and how the employees getting it to me were treated.  Above all, it's about having a sense of exactly where my food comes from.

That's where fair trade certification comes into play.  In describing the eat local way on this site a couple of weeks ago, Gary Paul Nabhan addressed fair-trade by declaring

"Fair-trade with other cultures, localities and regions is fair game. Circumvent the globalized economy for the items you truly need from other regions by establishing fair-trade exchanges."

Fair trade and eating locally grown food are not mutually exclusive propositions.  Around here, we recommend considering locally grown food first, and then using other criteria (organic, fair trade, family farm, etc.) to make your decisions. 

And for the moment, the choice will not be "local peach" vs. "fair trade peach".  The top Fair Trade Certified product categories for 2006 based on revenue dollars are as follows:

1.  Coffee
2.  Cocoa
3.  Sugar
4.  Tea
5.  Vanilla
6.  Bananas
7.  Rice

(via TransFair USA)

Of those products, the only one available locally to me is rice.  And most of these products are not widely available anywhere in the United States.  Pitting these movements, which are small relative to the general population of food buyers, against each other is not the solution.  Michael Pollan often paraphrases a Mao Zedong quote which says "let a thousand flowers bloom."  When talking about this, Pollan refers to the fact that there is no one food movement that is going to solve all the issues.

It never occurs to me to be critical of a person because they are choosing fair trade over local.  At least it shows a decision making process that is beyond that of the typical American.  The important part of all of this is having the general populace make conscious decisions about where their food is coming from.  Eating local is just one avenue of many.

Read more reaction to this article:
Chews Wise, First it was organic v. local
Ethicurean, Are locavores hurting African Farmers?
Meals by Marlene, Eating local and fair trade

Jennifer Maiser is the editor of the Eat Local Challenge website.  She is often found behind a camera or writing for her site, Life Begins at 30.  Photo from her Flickr site.

Comments

[Jack]

Eating Local to 99% of Americans is dining at McDonalds or Olive Garden.

Developing countries suffer the big hurt from the crazy crop subsidies given to big Ag by the US Government, not by the miniscule number of people eating local.

How did Mr. Moseley miss the reality of the situation?

[cookiecrumb]

Good one, Jen.
I had problems with that piece, too. Like he was blaming me for the economic hardships of African farmers.
We do what we can.
Let a thousand flowers bloom.

[Jennifer Jeffrey]

When I read that piece, I thought: what an cop-out for people who don't want to put any thought into where their food comes from, and never want to suffer any supposed "hardships" from not having everything available all year around.

It was poorly reported and short-sighted, and I'm so glad you responded to it!

[Greg]

Two years ago, we started marketing our own rice through farmers markets. Part of the reason for doing so was the lack of control that farmers have over export prices. We were tired of our rice being exported at prices that were below our cost of production, and below cost of farmers in the importing country. We are not in competition with farmers in Korea or Thailand, and don't believe that sales of our rice should put someone else out of business. Taking this a step further, we also do not grow specialty varieties indiginous to other parts of the world that rely on exporting those varieties--mainly jasmine rice from Thailand, or basmati from India (though these varieties are grown by other marketers in California). Partly this is a quality issue. We grow the highest quality medium grain Calrose around, but if we grew jasmine, it would be inferior to what you could get from Thailand, because it is not adapted to our climate, soils or production methods. But mainly, I have had conversations with small organic rice farmers in Thailand who are reliant on jasmine rice as their cash crop, and they have convinced me that the genetics of the Thai hom mali rice were developed by small farmers in Thailand, and are therefore their genetic property.

Our rice will stand up to anyone's in taste or quality--but we tell shoppers at our farmers markets that if they truly need jasmine or basmati, to buy it fair trade certified from the country of origin.

Regards,
Greg Massa
Massa Organics

[Janewilk]

Great essay! Yeah, William Moseley is just another of the "if you can't do anything 100%, why make any changes at all" folks. Sigh.
A nitpicky note: two lines from the end of the essay, "populace" is misspelled. Just letting you know because I imagine your rebuttal will be posted/linked to elsewhere!

Thanks for your insightful comments.

[naught101]

Nice. It's great that the locavore way isn't rigid, and has wider ethic.

I started an article on Locovore on the environment wiki

[Jane]

This is why I tend to prefer the term "eating sustainably" rather than "eating locally". Unfortunately, we have a tendency (not just reporters looking for sound bites) to want the silver bullet--the single act or pill that will cure everything. An ecosystem is just that--a system--and we humans are a part of it, which means our cultures are a part of both the solution and the problem. Sustaining the soil is important for future generations, but so is sustaining cultures.