Isn’t that title just thrillingly trillable? So is the notion that consumers can use information to purchase products supporting their tastes in environmentalism and social justice. “October is Free Trade Month,” a billboard reminded me at the Berkeley BART station–also reminding me that dhaavak owes me a tip on a Rajasthani fair trade NGO. Taking up where the beloved Cicatrix left off, let us examine the possibilities for a mutiny of the wallet.
Cotton is crucial: ever since Megasthenes told Seleucus of “there being trees on which wool grows” in Indika, it’s been one of the subcontinent’s great exports. For many diasporic desi dads, soft cotton wifebeaters are a must-not-forget purchase on trips back to the homeland. From Gandhi’s spinning days, the ties between social justice and khadi are apparently enshrined in a requirement that the Indian Flag be made only from khadi. Socially conscientious clothing is a constant work in progress, at home and abroad: ETC India.org and Dutch development group Solidaridad have announced that they will collaborate to create a Fair Trade Organic Cotton Supply Chain, connecting individual farmers, mills, clothing factories, and markets:
So far, 405 farmers have been enrolled in the programme, who are producing organic cotton in an extent of 1,352 acres of land spread over five rainfed districts in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh and two rainfed districts in the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra. . .He said that Rajalakshmi Mills of Kolkata was currently supporting farmers by purchasing cotton and marketing it in the US and Europe. Last fiscal, over 100 tonnes of lint cotton was sold at a premium of Rs 200 to Rs 250 per tonne over the prevailing market rates. (Link)
It’s the kind of support that’s vitally necessary to small famers whose plight has been highlighted by a plague of suicides.
Raise your hands if your parents usually have a giant bag of rice sitting in the kitchen. Basmati is a key ingredient in making our home away from home, and TransFairUSA now certifies fair traded rice from India, Thailand, and Egypt,:
Traditionally, these farmers have sold their rice to local middlemen rather than developing relationships with exporters. The low prices they receive often do not cover their costs of production, leaving them unable to repay the loans they need to buy seeds and fertilizer and further impoverishing their families. Fair Trade certification ensures that rice farmers receive a fair price for their harvest, creates direct trade links between farmers and buyers, and provides access to affordable credit. Through Fair Trade, farmers and their families are earning a better income for their hard work – allowing them to hold on to their land, keep their kids in school, and invest in the quality of their harvest.
There are three licensed west coast distributors of this fair trade rice, including this supplier of organic basmati rice. Consider taking contact information to your local grocer next time you go shopping.
parents! what do you think is in my kitchen? a burlap sack o’ basmati from costco. mmm, yummy indian food.
bonus question: when the rice has been eaten, how many of your mothers (or you) use the burlap bag as a tote?
Anybody tried the Organic Basmati? My experience with Organic foods(milk/apples etc) has been that it is bland and goes bad quickly.
M. Nam
i agree with the ‘go bad’ bit – the food is not coated with preservatives, so i usually get my stuff from the farmers’ market – but disagree with the ‘bland’ bit. the fruit can be smaller – but not necessarily less juicy – but it’s a subjective matter, and no point splitting hair – that being said, i’ve found it really makes a difference if you let the fruit ripen on the plant instead of plucking it when green and have it ripen using hormones
to me, the decision is not about taste – which is unquestionably better for the organics – but about price – an organic avocado costs $1.39, and a regular one costs $.99. That’s a 40% hike in price – this is an extreme example, but the total grocery bill for organics is a non-trivial hit to the pocket.
-Saheli, good of you to call me on that. i’ll have it for you this weekend. marked it on my calendar. –
Once you go organic, you don’t go back… though it is a little more expensive.
i haven’t tried the organic basmati but i look forward to doing so — thanks, saheli, for the tip.
i’m surprised that organic food in your experience has been bland. not surprising, on the other hand, that you find it goes bad quickly. that’s often simply because it hasn’t been exposed to the same preservatives that conventional commercial products have. if you buy natural foods, you need to buy smaller amounts more frequently. that can be inconvenient, but it’s part and parcel of a lifestyle in which you live closer to the earth — for instance, eating what’s in season.
later toay i’m going to pick up my weekly allotment of natural-grown vegetables from a CSA (community supported agriculture) urban farm we belong to. i don’t know what’ll be in the bag, but it’ll all be seasonal. another week of eating what the earth around my home will produce. soon the season will end and it’ll be back to the supermarket for the winter.
back to rice: the most nutritious rice also goes bad fastest. if you strip out the germ, you get product that is “shelf-stable” i.e. can hang out on the shelf for a long time. but the germ is where much of the goodness resides. it’s all about trade-offs…
peace and good food
Hate to be a bit of a wet blanket here but, at the end of the day price-support schemes like TransFair introduce almost as many market perturbations as old school subsidy schemes.
TransFair is better than most price support outfits because it isn’t ultimately predicated on government intervention (they instead go for a branding-type effect to get the higher price voluntarily from consumers. For some far lefties, I suppose there’s an element of perverse justice in using the tools of the capitalist oppressor – brands & advertising – to further their cause.)
BUT, you still run into the same distortions
if the market price is “too low” then the last thing “authorities” should be doing is encouraging more farming acreage / farmers. Structural reform / pursuit of new ways to apply their labor is the real long term solution.
it sets up perverse incentives for those outside of the TransFair “sphere”. For ex., if I’m a rice farmer in let’s say, Brazil, should I try to get competitive w/ the global price or should I “go limp” and hope that I can get TransFair activists to come to my aid?
etc. etc. etc.
If you support really want to help these farmers, there are actually far more significant ways to do it while more “transparently” embracing market mechanisms. Orgs like OxFam are targetting the real culprit – tariffs, quotas, & subsidies implemented by 1st world governments –
$350B is more “revenue” than TransFair will EVER be able to create. For comparison, that’s more than WalMart’s annual gross. One problem in going down this path, of course, is that for some (clearly not all) in the TransFair org, it’s the Market that lies at the root of thier suspicions whilst the OxFam approach entails more thoroughly embracing it.
TransFair is better than most price support outfits because it isn’t ultimately predicated on government intervention (they instead go for a branding-type effect to get the higher price voluntarily from consumers. For some far lefties, I suppose there’s an element of perverse justice in using the tools of the capitalist oppressor – brands & advertising – to further their cause.)
In my interpretation of Libertarianism, any market-related activity that does not involve government control – is free-market economics. If it makes economic sense – it will catch on. If not, it will fail.
Other examples of this: Private Islamic banking(no interest), Socially Responsible Mutual funds (they don’t invest in Cigarette/Gambling stocks).
M. Nam
vinod,
there’s no inherent contradiction between the fair trade approach and the oxfam-supported free trade approach. the latter is clearly something that deserves to be a global policy priority. the former is simply a form of market segmentation. it isn’t that simple for a farmer in a developing country to “go limp” and wait for the activists to show up. first, it would be a crapshoot because there aren’t enough activists to go round! and second, it’s not a windfall for the farmer — typically fair trade operations are quite demanding of the farmers they work with; the transition requires considerable investment and/or changes in farming, labor, etc practices.
i’m all with you on eradicating the subsidies and barriers by which the rich countries shelter their ag markets from developing country products — and which also result in dumping that undermines developing country production and self-sufficiency. i’ll raise a toast with you to this outcome… with a cup of Equal Exchange fair-trade coffee (tastes great, too, and cheaper than Starbucks!)
peace
I think Oxfams campaigns tageting tariffs, quotas etc is good. But I don’t see it necessarily solving all the problems. The Fair trade movement takes a step further and ensures that a “fair share” of this $350B increase (if at all it happens) will reach the farmers who grow the products instead of the middlemen in the supply chain.
I see the two campaigns as working at different ends of the supply chain.
Dude (please dont correct me, it flows better this way), those are some amazing shirts. I might buy a couple as soon as I get paid. Wish there was a system where I could haggle prices online. 😉
Sameer,
I agree with you that eliminating tariffs and quotas is a necessary but insufficient step. Unfortunately, something like this, while warm-hearted and friendly around the margins, doesn’t really solve the second problem. Economic development in poor countries will ultimately be the result of erducing the immense market inefficiencies that allow the middleman to prosper.
Hari
Ah! how sweet it is! To see these dusky cherubs flitting thru the paddy fields coveting the basmati for its sepiate association. Do they know the this rice line is a Texan invention? Ah.. but they look so CUte.
I just watched the documentary “Stolen Childhoods” about child-labor around the world (including India, one of the worse offenders by numbers, and the US[!] ).
I understand the concerns expressed about setting up “perverse incentives”, Vinod, but what do good libertarians say about labels like “Rug-Mark” and “Fair-Trade” that ensure that no child-labor is used ? With a problem like this, it seems to me that you can’t escape either govt intervention (i.e. enforcement of child-labor laws) or “market-distorting” systems like Fair-Trade. Actually this documentary had a bunch of different working systems that might make a libertarian tear her hair out — for eg. the govt of Brazil gives out money to mothers if their children have perfect monthly attendance at school, and the govt of Kenya abolished school fees (that had existed as a result of structural-adjustment mandates by the WB/IMF) dramatically increasing school enrollment.
I’m no economist, but it seems to me that if child labor is a situation unacceptable enough to warrant govt interventions and market distorting programs, then the desperate plight of cotton/rice/coffee farmers might be one too.
I highly recommend the film: you’ll hear about children in India that are indentured for years for sums of money as small as $5, children chained to their looms for hours a day, and the amazing Kailash Satyarthi who works to free them.
re: fair trade in rajasthan…
if in delhi, or other metros you could check out the clothing line “bindaas unlimited” they sell veg-dyed fabrics made in rajasthan, shirts, pants, etc. and it’s all self-supported by the villages themselves, the owners of the company bring the technology and invest in villages to create the cloth, then buy it themselves, create clothing and sell it. they also have helped the villages get their own contracts to make the fabric at excellent rates. and the products are cool, different and durable.
of course they have zero web-presence. but they are out there… as are many other homegrown companies that support indigenous goods at fair prices.
another great development, that is happening in the area i work (chitrakut, mp) as well, is the employment of the women’s self-help groups (e.g. micro-credit) to handle the marketing and distribution of the organic goods being created.
in uttaranchal a women’s self help group is helping local farmers market an indigenous crop to be the new prasad for the temples. the women take the crop (forgetting the name), create the sweets, sell them and split the profits. completely revamping a depressed area.
i know that the macro level is important but these micro-enterprises are doing wonders..
ANNA, I didn’t want to make bad Indian girls feel bad for only stocking their kitchen with tea. 🙂
M. Nam–wherabouts do you live? It’s possible the local organic markets are just not well developed enough yet. Organic farming requires a lot of skill, labor, experience, and knowledge. It might just take time.
dhaavak, waiting! 🙂 Wacky link to the Texan thing. Asvin, thanks for the documentary links. Thanks for the tip Theresa!
Vinod–I think everyone else has pretty much said what I was going to say. But basically, yes, I’m a big fan of Oxfam’s campaign against excessive subsidies, tarrifs, and quotas, and yes, that will make a big difference. I see this as a completely different kind of creature. Demand curves are not static–they can be shifted and even created. That’s what marketing is all about. This is a kind of marketting, albeit one that’s more contentful than most.
I was in Costco, Seattle this weekend, and noticed that they had introduced Organic Indian Brown Basmati. Luckily, they also had a cook demo. I had never tried Brown Basmati before, but the cooked brown rice tasted really good. I also heard that brown rice is good for your health due to high fiber and vitamins. The price was $0.99/lb, compared to $1.29-$1.69 at other specialty organic supermarkets, like Whole Foods. I also heard that Whole Foods sells Organic California Basmati from a company called Lundberg, which is not the same as Indian Basmati! Thanks Costco for a better product at a better price.