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What is equitrade and how does it differ from fair trade?
Ruchira Shah | Wednesday 28th January 2009
 If you've been shopping the chocolate aisle lately, you might have noticed Malagasy's equitrade-designated chocolate bars. But what is equitrade and how does it differ from fair trade? Fair trade provides a fair wage to farmers for cash crops. Meanwhile, equitrade attempts to take this one crucial step forward, and empower local people to turn their crops into finished goods. Why is this crucial? Because as Paul Roberts explains in The End of Food, cash crops earn a relatively low amount of money. The "value adding" comes when the food is processed. Consequently, a breakfast cereal has a much higher value than oats, and chocolate has a much higher value than cacao beans. Furthermore, while cacao beans garner a standard, across the board market rate, chocolate bars can vary in price depending on a number of factors.Generally speaking, even with fair trade products, the cash crop comes from the developing world, but the all important "value adding" happens in the developed world. So your cacao beans might be picked in Madagascar, but imported to Switzerland for processing. The problem is, as long as the "value adding" process continues to be done in the developed world, the developing world will never see much of the immense profits garnered from chocolate. Simply put, fair trade, while important, is just not enough. So far, Malagasy seems to be the only company using the equitrade symbol. (And in fact, the founders of Malagasy also founded equitrade.) And equitrade isn't likely to become widespread in the future. Because fair trade involves cash crops, it can fit nicely into our current agricultural economy. Nestle can buy fair trade coffee beans, and still be Nestle. But since equitrade demands processing to happen in the countries where the crops are harvested, Nestle can't just "become" equitrade. As a result, equitrade is likely to remain a very, very tiny, niche market. Still, if equitrade is able to make any advances in the niche, "foodie" market, this might have a very real impact on the economies of the developing world. Let's hope they're successful. |
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Rodney North 3 June 2009 For non-food items there are at least four options in this direction.
1 - you could look for organizations that belong to the World Fair Trade Organization http://jm.ly/MxwiJm . These could be either farmer co-ops or artisan producer associations in places like Peru or Sri Lanka. Or they could be importers and marketing enterprises that are dedicated to Fair Trade like Ten Thousand Villages or our own co-op, Equal Exchange. 2 - Here in North America you could look for members of the Fair Trade Federation http://jm.ly/LeyMgj . These are mostly importers, wholesalers and retailers who are dedicated to Fair Trade. 3 - For soccer balls made withOUT exploitative child labor (which is sadly the norm for soccer balls, and so many other goods) go to http://jm.ly/nxnynP 4 - For hand-woven persian style carpets (yet another industry with a horrible record of depending upon exploited even enslaved child labor) insist on carpets with the RugMark seal http://jm.ly/vmXHaQ ) |
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Neil Kelsall 25 February 2009 Equitable trade or equitrade is the vision, getting there requires a considerable amount of effort, vision, resources, team building, stategy, communication across very different cultures and perceptions.
Raising the trade, first required overcoming the developed world perceptions. It meant raising the profile of Madagascar positively, raising skills, investments, in creating products that are wanted on their own merit, against the very strong competition. All this amounts to raising value, and subsequently raising wealth through raising trade. http://jm.ly/CAyZpS |
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Emilie Coyle 11 February 2009 I just discovered the equitrade term myself while researching for my blog. I was wondering of perhaps equitrade could apply to none food items? For example, in Canada and the U.S, there is a company called 10 000 villages. They and others like myself at http://jm.ly/ds79tf are buying items directly from artsans and cooperatives in developing nations and providing larger markets for them here. Wouldn't this type of activity be construed as equitrading? Just curious about your thoughts.
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Ruchira Shah 31 January 2009 Honestly, Jaime, I find out about stuff like this the same way you do. Word of mouth. I agree though, it would be awesome if there were clear standards laid out and listed so it would be easier to see what is 'green' and what's not.
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