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Top from Clockwise: Coffee cherries harvested in Ecuador for Fapecafe. FLO The Cooprative Agricole Kavokiva de Daloa in the Ivory Coast, a cocoa producer. FLO A worker at the Fairtrade Volta River Estates banana plantation in Ghana. FLO Sugar cane in Paraguay before it becomes common sugar, a product most consumers may not even realize is possible to be traded fairly. FLO A section of ThreeSixty's coffee and tea aisle is stocked with a range of Fairtrade and Equal Exchange fair trade products. Provided to China Daily

Is shopping in a crowded and often confusing marketplace worth the effort? Elizabeth Kerr reports.

A supermarket in Hong Kong usually bursts at its seams with every imaginable food item spread over shelf upon shelf, row after row to attract buyers' attention.

Food is something Hongkongers take very seriously. No less for a large expatriate community. People look around and intently survey what's new on the menu.

Notably, there has been a growing awareness among the people about the value and benefits of eating fresh food. That's perhaps the reason why LOHAS (lifestyle of health and sustainability) is coming up with assortments of organic and natural items.

Fruits like bananas have always been a big hit among the masses, and a big business,too. The reason is simple. They're inexpensive and healthy. The banana farming industry employs hundreds of thousands of workers around the globe. But in Ecuador, one of the world's biggest banana exporters, only 1 percent of its 300,000 workers were unionized till 2002, and most still labor in dreadful conditions. With no extra benefits or incentives on offer, they are exposed to deadly pesticides and toil hard. Long hours at slave wages and harassment are daily features. But it gets Hongkongers a huge bunch of bananas for under HK$8 - or HK$20 of coffee and honey. So that's okay, right?

Wrong says Saxon Wright, the founder of Sydney's Pablo & Rusty's coffee shops and the roastery that supplies them. "We pay farmers well over double the Fairtrade price, on an average. It's only a token amount; you're talking about 10 cents above the absolute base commodity trade price on the New York Futures. And prices are high. Today it's about $1.70 a pound. That's not a lot for your coffee."

Ever since Fairtrade was founded in 1992, the little green and blue label that adorns a number of products these days has emerged as the world's most vocal advocate for fair trading. But for many consumers, it's a bit confusing. LOHAS has blurred the lines between labels we've been told to look for. It's not quite clear whether the words "organic" and "natural" are synonymous, or, for that matter, what sustainable or organic foods really mean. More vexing is the age-old debate on the veracity of "truths" that come with the advertisements that feature Fairtrade-labeled products. Nor are people quite sure whether the Fairtrade products really worth buying at all.

However, the UK-based Fairtrade Foundation's take is simple: Work with business and communities (chiefly in developing countries with an aim to remove inequalities and ensure sustainable livelihoods for those who produce bananas, coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, cotton and a raft of things. Contrary to popular belief, it is a lobby group, not a brand, that licenses the independent Fairtrade mark for products. It is a member of the German Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), a global alliance of labeling initiatives that sets fair trade standards (fairtrade.net currently lists no partner for Hong Kong or the mainland).

However, the question on the "fairness" of Fairtrade is still unanswered.

Wright's beans are used at Oscar's, a fairly new cafe on Wellington Street, and he deals directly with his suppliers around the world as part of Australian Independent Roasters. He isn't interested in getting into the Fairtrade game. "One of my gripes is that they're saying they are the only means to achieve a sustainable way of giving good value back to the farmers," he says. The Fairtrade message has spread so far and wide that no one wants to hear about Wright's policies, the premium fees he pays for coffee beans, or Fairtrade's shortcomings. On top of that, Wright argues that Fairtrade locks farmers into a trading system with rigid rules that defeat much of its purpose. "Once (a producer) starts supplying Fairtrade it's really hard to get out, because you lose your supply chain. You sell through (their) marketplace and suddenly you lose access to a broader market where you could get a higher price," he says. It's enough to make a shopper feel guilty of not doing the right thing.

However, the FLO's Chief Operating Officer Tuulia Syvaenen disagrees. "FLO International welcomes any initiative which benefits poor farmers and workers by offering fairer terms of trade ... We welcome other systems that work towards fairer trading conditions as long as they meet minimum price, environment, labor, health and safety criteria, among others," he explains.

Wright slams Fairtrade for its single-minded focus on wages. But Syvaenen argues, "Fairtrade works to improve opportunities for those among the most disadvantaged by the global trade system - small-scale farmers and workers ... and provides stability that rural families need for survival. Or else they are left with the only alternative to migrate to overcrowded urban centers," he says.

Wright also points out that apart from barely meeting fair market prices, Fairtrade happily sacrifices product quality in favor of marketing (an important factor) and often lets critical environmental lapses slide, if not create them - a fair argument in the context of the popular consumer wisdom that fair trade products aren't as "good" as the popular branded ones.

In Syvaenen's view, quality isn't the key criterion for certification. "What Fairtrade offers is additional funds ... to invest in improving the product quality, although this is not mandatory," he says.

Environmentalism is a concern and Fairtrade's eco-standards are under review. But there is a bigger picture at stake, too. "First and foremost, Fairtrade aims to secure the rights and offer better trading conditions to as many marginalized producers and workers as possible," Syvaenen says.

So where does that put consumers? Is this a case of sleeping with the enemy? Is it time to boycott Fairtrade in a growing fair trade awareness market like Hong Kong?

Not so soon. Wright admits that finding an ethical product is difficult. "That's where Fairtrade has done well. It's a massive voice," he says.

And shoppers are surely listening if Sean Robson, buying manager for Dairy Farm's specialty stores, is to be believed. He cites a growing number of requests (the management does in fact read out those comment cards) from customers for more fair trade products. "There's significant interest in the benefits and what it means by buying fair trade to somebody in a distant land ... Any producer that doesn't use that logo is making a mistake."

Major food manufacturers are hearing it too in some cases; chocolate behemoth Cadbury recently embraced fair trade for its raw commodities. "It's great when big brands go Fairtrade," says Robson. "As a retailer, that's what you want. You want those big players to say, 'We're going fair trade.' That makes it mainstream."

Wellcome, Marketplace, Oliver's and ThreeSixty all fall under the Dairy Farm umbrella, and between the four, offer approximately 150 fair trade products. Fairtrade certification is indeed a factor for Robson when he stocks the shelves, and it's vital for ThreeSixty, which touts itself as Hong Kong's premier organic, natural - and fair trade - supermarket. PARKnSHOP's would only respond to repeated requests for a comment with, "Thank you for your interest" in it. In fact, PARKnSHOP has a large variety of products and strives to come up with a lot more - each designed and made with an aim to suit customers' needs and tastes. "We will continue exploring new items and new categories, including fair trade products."

ThreeSixty was born when customer patterns indicated there was a growing demand for LOHAS shopping, and for Robson Fairtrade remains a gauge for stocking products that consumers want. "We had a wide range of organic and natural items in Oliver's for example. And the demand and sales of those products, in part, spurred the idea for ThreeSixty. We knew many people were shopping in two or three or five different places." While he understands there could be controversy in some circles regarding Fairtrade's practices, he doesn't personally deal with producers and needs a barometer that can be used in good faith. "We buy our products trusting in the Fairtrade logo and all that it stands for ... We believe in the logo."

At present that is all consumers really have. For all the activism, fair trade remains firmly outside the mainstream for the time being. "I'm sure the guys at Fairtrade would like us to put products in all the Wellcome stores, but at this stage the market is quite small," Robson says. Of course, Fairtrade is not alone. The other trusted labels include Equal Exchange and Rainforest Alliance. But Fairtrade remains the most recognizable standard people look to while buying, say, bananas. Maybe the system isn't foolproof, but still it's a better choice than its alternatives.

(HK Edition 09/16/2010 page4)