Why we need to support Fair trade teas

Fair trade tea has been discussed in this forum more than ten times. The most recent time was last month. One nice thing about tea drinkers, they tend to be polite. Toci

Joe snipped-for-privacy@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu7/14/05

Here here, and thanks, Roland. Fair trade might also mean being willing to pay enough money for the tea so that the workers can earn a decent amount. I'm of course not talking about just paying high prices per se. More to learn.

Michael

snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com7/14/05

Yes, indeed. And so it should again. Question: Can we rely upon the fair trade dealers to truly support fair working conditions, or is "fair trade," at least in some cases, a marketing ploy? I think Ripon has some interesting insights and observations in this area, and I wish he were here to share them.

Michael

It's always good to be on your toes in the commercial world. Toici

You could allow more Indians with green cards to work in the IS industry displacing domestic workers. The infrastructure and labor of the oil producing countries of the Middle East are Indian. Where's there is money there are Indians. India can handle it's own labor problems. This is nothing more than a guilt trip like starving children who want me to give up part of my tea allowance so they can eat some of the white bread which won't sell because of the Atkins diet.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

Space snipped-for-privacy@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com7/15/05

Jim,

Why, you saw right through me. Your astute analysis shows me and the Indians up. So, when did you develop this profound respect for Indian people? I'm sure you meant nothing biased in your pronouncements.

Michael

Historically Indian jobs are always overseas. They work hard and send money back home. They should be willing to buy fair trade teas. Our local news is a story of an Saudi family who kept an Indian woman a virtual slave for domestic and love chores. I blame the IS problem on Bill Gates who cried before Congress about a shortage of IS and now is developing half of the next Windows release in India. I need to switch to Linux.

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

Funny you should mention Linux. I've been toying with that idea myself, but, as was called to my attention, it would require my starting a brand new hobby with lots of steep learning curve, and tea is about as intellectual as I get.

BTW, I spent some time in India some time ago, and I did see a couple people working at local jobs, so they can't all be IS'ers or be working overseas, eh?

Michael

Space snipped-for-privacy@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com7/15/05

I posted this link last month. But here it is again:

Michael's concern is a valid one, indeed. But this is why Transfair (and I am not affiliated with them in any way) is the indepenedent not-for-profit agency that certifies products as fair trade. So the most sure way to ensure that the product you are buying is fair trade is to buy ones that are *certified* fair trade by transfair.

I am not as familiar with Tea trade as with coffee trade, but in the coffee realm WTO has been dispensing "wise" advice to countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa to grow more coffee. This has resulted in overproduction of coffee, with supply greatly exceeding the demand. This has allowed the coffee distributors to pay farmers as little as they wanted, knowing that they had no choice but to settle for any price they would give them. Interestingly, this did not result in savings for consumers. Starbucks (before it started to carry *some* fair trade coffee) used to pay $1.39/lb of coffee, which is above the minimum of $1.26/lb required by transfair. The problem is that they were paying this to the middleman, who paid a tiny fraction of this to the actual growers. So the problem was simply that they did not want to re-shuffle their procurement system. Fair trade simply insures that the growers earn a living wage. This is not about luxury, folks! It's a matter of life and death.

As far as teas, I believe it's a similar situation. And I don't think it's exclusive to India. The In Pursuit of Tea folks report the dire conditions in many areas of China, where farmers simply abandon their farms and move to cities, because they can no longer survive with the kind of income they are getting from the tea business. But there is little fair trade tea from China. Rishi has some Yunnan black and Puergh teas that are certified fair trade. But that's about that. IPOT also claims to pay the farmers a fair price, but their teas are not fair trade certified.

Speaking of which, anybody knows of any other retails that carry fair trade certified Chinese or Taiwanese teas? I'd love to find out of places where I can get such teas, if possible.

Best,

Maxim

Michael Plant wrote:

Ahhh, the joys of capitalism. If the price is low enough to make chinese farmers quit producing tea, than prices will rise as the amount of tea produced drops, then more people will want to grow tea, then prices fall, the price is low enough to make chinese farmers quit producing tea, than prices will rise as the amount of tea produced drops, then more people will want to grow tea, then prices fall, the price is low enough to make chinese farmers quit producing tea, and so on and so forth. (in general) I say good luck if you want the world to be fair for everyone, it's just not going to happen.

Well, I doubt that the world will be fair for everyone -- ever. That's hardly the point of fair trade. As consumers, we vote with our wallets: either for change or for more of the same. If I am offered an option to support the business of a company that sells fair trade certified products and is therefore being a socially responsible capitalist, then I would like to vote for that.

As a professor of business, my sense is that unbridled capitalism is not nearly as rational or "good" as we are often led to believe. It needs to be channelled and guided in order to offer the most benefits to the most people. Otherwise, it just causes destruction for most and benefits for a select few.

In the ideal world things would be as TeaDave describes. But they are not.

There are no tea peasants in Japan. And since I drink mostly Japanese, I don't have to take my tea with lumps of guilt.

--crymad

See if Seven Cups is fair traded. They claim something like that, plus organic, but I didn't see a certification claim. Toci

Any contrived system of price support fails in the long run. I think Karl Marx was correct you do have to account for labor in the end. Our model of Unionism and Management is more successful than Communism. So are you a good boy and only shop at stores with a Union?

Jim

Maxim Vor> Well, I doubt that the world will be fair for everyone -- ever. That's

Jim,

Thanks, Toci! I'll check them out.

Maxim

toci wrote:

Actually . . . .

The pro bakers I know say that from their perspective, Atkins is more or less a thing of the past. Their business has picked back up, as of about 9 months ago. People no longer come into the bakery and whine about how they don't have any good low-carb donuts. They just buy the éclair and walk away happy.

One of them said his distributor started including free 40lb bags of low-carb ingredients with all his orders. Ingredients that have expired already.

Oddly enough, the books are still selling. Perhaps everyone is at stage three?

I agree though. India is not the third world country it's made out to be, and they can handle it. They'd be insulted if you suggested otherwise.