The fair trade business
The ethics business, which claims to reconcile wallets and morals, brews billions of euros. From Mexico to Kenya, Donatien Lemaître has dissected the entire industry. It shows how the generous idea of fair trade is increasingly picked up by marketing aces or multinationals in search of virginity.
Why just consume when we can consume just? This is the question - in the form of a slogan - posed by those involved in ethics trade. By slipping a product with the "fair trade" label into their shopping cart, consumers are making a choice that makes perfect sense on the other side of the world. In Africa or Latin America, small producers will have been paid decently to produce the raw material. And they will not have been forced to bow down to importers and distributors, as is the rule of the globalized economy. What is it really? Like Max Havelaar, labels are multiplying and consumers are in favor of them. But what is the reality behind the labels?
The ransom of success
From Mexico to Kenya via the Dominican Republic, Donatien Lemaître has dissected the entire sector. It shows how the generous idea of fair trade is more and more taken up by marketing aces or multinationals in search of virginity, far from the objective of its creators. The first to take hold of it were the large distribution networks: are the "consumer-actors" ready to pay more for their coffee if the producers are properly remunerated? Supermarkets have given more and more space to the "fair" label. But at the same time they have increased their margins on these products ... Result: while the labeled producers earn barely more than the average producers (and never enough to get out of poverty), the big brands are getting richer. On the producers' side, the system is not necessarily more virtuous: Donatien Lemaître observes that, in the banana plantations of the Dominican Republic, small owners who have obtained the Max Havelaar label exploit undocumented Haitian workers. Thus, fair trade has its cooperatives, its development programs, but also its invisible convicts ... Another surprise: to meet the growing demand for fair trade bananas, Max Havelaar has granted its label to large producers: at Savid, we produce 150 tons of bananas per week with Haitian workers poorly paid and poorly housed, but whose papers are in order ... Welcome to the era of industrial fairness! Finally, Donatien Lemaître is interested in multinational agribusiness. And notes that in Kenya, the partnership between Rainforest Alliance and Lipton (Unilever group) has benefited the brand, but absolutely not the casual workers of the tea plantations. Where it appears that if fair trade was a good idea, today it essentially strengthens the dominant system.
http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/047127-000/ ... -equitable