Beyond a Fair Price The Cooperative Movement and Fair Trade

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Beyond a Fair Price The Co-operative Movement
and Fair Trade

• Dr Samantha Lacey

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Aim and Overview

• Aim - How the Fair Trade and co-operative
  movements can challenge inequalities in current
  value chains, by empowering and informing
  consumers and producers.
• Fair Trade Movement
• Niche to mainstream
• Innovators
• Co-operative Value Chains
• Co-ops and Fair Trade
• Legacy of state control
• Views of co-operatives
• Producer Perspective
• Conclusions and Recommendations

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Current Context

• Financial Crisis
• Environmental Crisis
• Two movements provide alternative models
• Co-operative revival
• Expansion of Fair Trade into the mainstream

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The Fair Trade System

• A market approach to development
• A response to the needs of poor farmers
• Stability
• Premium
• Democracy
• Huge success!

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The Origins of Fair Trade
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Challenges and hard choices

• Supplying the new demand
• Plantation workers
• Big corporations
• Support for development
• Environmental concerns

Tea plantation workers
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Innovative work currently being developed

• Access to the value chain
• Kuapa Kokoo
• More products
• Kenyan tea and indigenous products project
• Inter-community trade
• Just Change
• Campaigning
• Cafe Rebelde Zapatista
• Empowerment
• Zaytoun Olive Oil
• Full Supply Chain Transparency
• Fair Trade Proof
• Overall ethical shopping
• Co-operative Group Ethical Policy

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Co-operatives and Fair Trade

• Early reliance on pre-existing producer
  co-operatives
• Support of newly independent producer
  co-operatives
• Wholesalers e.g. Suma
• Investment e.g. Shared Interest
• Role of Retail Co-operatives

Delegates celebrating at Kuapa Kokoos 2008 AGM
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Co-operatives and Development The Legacy of
State Control

• Missionaries, immigrants and Latin America
• Colonial Co-operative Paternalism in Africa,
  Asia and the Caribbean
• Government control of co-operatives post
  independence
• Structural Adjustment Programmes of 1980s
• Renewed Interest
• 1995 Co-operative Values and Principles
• Millennium Development Goals
• 2001 UN Guidelines
• 2002 ILO Recommendation 193

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Views of Co-operatives

• Advantages
• Strength in numbers
• Autonomy and control
• Balance between economic and social goals
• Empowerment through ownership
• Profits stay local
• Community cohesion
• Challenges
• Historical prejudices
• Inefficiencies
• Corruption
• Lack of entrepreneurship
• Low global profile

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The Producer Perspective

• Flexibility and commitment
• Consultation
• Level playing field
• Responsive support that builds capacity not
  dependence
• Good governance
• More!

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How could co-ops take Fair Trade forward?

• Co-op to co-op trade and on-going support
• Training and support for communities
• Co-op microfinance
• Connecting the customer and the producer

Young Co-operatives event in Southampton with
coffee producer
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