Orinally posted on March 28. 2012.
Last time I spoke about the hard realities I have seen involved in the Fair Trade certification process in China. I spoke about how the Fair Trade certification process seemed almost like a farce, and definitely useless. See that article here:http://wildteaqi.com/index.php/blog/?p=129
I have since posted this on Linkedin and got some interesting responses which, I posted below this article for those of you who do not have Linkedin for you to get more perspectives on the situation.
Today I made quite an important and interesting discovery in the world of Fair Trade and a possible answer to the Fair Trade dilemma. I met quite an extraordinary woman in the tea business in China. We will call her Shelly Wang for privacy sake. This woman has her own tea plantations since 1999. Her tea plantations are no ordinary tea plantations and her customers are no ordinary customers such as Twinnings and Lipton being among the few. Her tea plantations are what I call BiodiversiTEA style tea plantations where there are serious amounts of effort to not only protect the local ecology of the environment, but also to integrate the tea trees into the local ecology creating a semi-wild tea, and also certifiable organic and non-invasive tea tree. In an article I wrote a long time ago on Wild Tea for Sustainability about the damage done by mass tea plantations I suggested that the BiodiversiTEA style tea plantations would be the ones of the future as people would wake up and want to know where their tea is coming from, supporting the tea plantations that are protecting the environment and not just massive deforestation and mass planting just to maximize profits. There are already a few tea plantation owners that have caught onto this trend. She is one of them, but not for the love of money, but love of the environment.
How does this relate to Fair Trade? Well, the answer lies in The Rainforest Alliance. I have no affiliation with this company, nor do I get any type of commission for the promotion of this company. What I do suggest here is that they are not only an alternative to Fair Trade, but even better!
One of the big gripes I have with Fair Trade is that from a US office they sent a representative from India to China to do the certification process. Not only does he not understand Chinese business culture, but he does not even speak the language. Why does this chain need to be so long? For the Rainforest Alliance certification process, Shelly told me their auditors are independent. For this particular case an American auditor was sent to her planation. Not only that, every single year the auditor is different. The supplier cannot connect with the same person every year making it harder for corruption to seep into the relationship. They not only certify you in your level of environmental protection but also protection of the local wildlife. They require a balance in the way the tea trees grow with other plants and species in the local environment. If this is not enough they require that the farmers are well trained in organic farming methods, how to ensure no damage to the local ecology, etc. Both Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade require social equity as the main criteria for the certification process. They look at the how the farmers are living to ensure they are living in clean, stable conditions. Unlike Fair Trade Rainforest Alliance sees the whole picture as the condition of the tea plantation also in relation to how the farmers are living. For example, Rainforest Alliance require the plantation owner to make the farmers houses close to the tea plantation as they consider this important offering the farmers convenient, quick access to the plantation and their living conditions do not cause any environmental damage. Fair Trade doesn’t even consider this a factor. I would say this is above and beyond Fair Trade.
Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade both require proper training for the farmers in proper farming techniques, but Fair Trade only has a few ambiguous sentences in their rules about which kind of chemicals the farmers can use, but they don’t enforce this. Rainforest Alliance focuses on training the farmers how to grow a healthy tea plantation, which can take up to 1-3 years of supervision. Rainforest Alliance will send their auditors to ensure these guidelines are being met. Rainforest Alliance will send their staff to the plantation beforehand to train the farmers and plantation owners in growing techniques and requirements of the certification process. Fair Trade says they do, but my close friend who worked directly with Fair Trade doing the certification for their plantation revealed to me Fair Trade did not actually do this.
Fair Trade requires the farmers to form a group and apply directly for Fair Trade. This is obviously impossible for most farmers in China simply because they don’t speak English, don’t have a standard education and have no idea what Fair Trade even is. That left me asking, “How were the tea plantations getting certified?” What happens is the tea companies will go and organize a group themselves of tea farmers. In reality, the tea companies organize their own inside staff members to represent the farmers unbeknownst to Fair Trade. They tell the Fair Trade auditor that all of them are the actual farmers. Even the translator really works for the company, even though this is against Fair Trade’s rules.
“The harshest reality of it all is that the tea companies can up their price on their products, which is supposed to go back to the farmers, but in the end it only increases the tea export company’s profits who more often than not gives nothing back to the farmers.”
Fair Trade is supposed to give the certification to the actual tea farmers, but the tea farmers do not have the right to export, only the tea export company does. Then the tea export company is required to apply for Fair Trade certification. After this, the tea company importing into the US or whatever other country it is going to must also have this certification. This seems like it makes sense. When the product is finally sold on the shelves of retail stores nationwide, the importing tea company’s profits go up, the export tea companies profits go up, but how can we verify the tea farmers’ profits have gone up? Every year the Fair Trade auditor will visit the tea export company to review their accounting books, which shows the quantity and price purchased by the export company from the tea farmer group. They also audit the tea farmers accounting books to ensure that the two books’ records match. The books as anyone can easily guess are easily fudged. Not only that, how would these farmers know accounting? Those profits are supposed to be used to build schools, hospitals, etc., but this is never verified by Fair Trade. The harshest reality of it all is that the tea companies can up their price on their products, which is supposed to go back to the farmers, but in the end it only increases the tea export company’s profits who more often than not gives nothing back to the farmers.
JT HUNTER
The Wild Tea Qi http://wildteaqi.com/index.php/
This article wasd posted in Sustainability, Tea Business and was tagged with Wild tea, sustainablity, BiodiversiTea, Fair Trade
A friend called and said they wanted to make chai cookies without the tea leaves being added in to the mixture, could I help? At best, I’m an average home baker, but I told them I would give it a go. On a rainy afternoon and with time on my hands I started to experiment.
