Tag Archives: fair trade

advocate, Corporate control of food

The Trans Pacific Partnership – An attack on our democracy and sovereignty

Our sovereignty at stake

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 19th October, 2013

It is ironic that the candidate who staked so much of his political capital on his ability to ‘stop the boats’ and ‘protect this nation’s borders’, should roll over so promptly when in office like a Cheshire cat and have his political tummy tickled by the likes of Cargill and Monsanto.

Ironic, but not surprising, because Tony Abbott’s first words on winning the 7 September Federal election were to declare that Australia was now ‘open for business’.

While our men and women in uniform are dispatched to patrol our borders to make sure that no ‘illegal’ humans can enter, transnational corporate capital can come and go more or less as it pleases.

It is not enough that we roll out the red carpet for these ‘foreign investors’ as though they were royalty. Now, with the new administration’s commitment to sign up to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) without reservation, we are ceding a large chunk of our sovereignty to them as well.

Not heard of the TPP? That’s hardly surprising, because, like nearly all free trade negotiations since the infamous ‘battle of Seattle’ back in 1999, the 12-nation TPP talks, involving Australia, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, have been conducted exclusively behind closed doors. More than that, it’s only due to the leaking of 2 of the 26 chapters under negotiation that we know anything about the substance of this agreement.

One of these chapters is titled, innocuously enough, Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). What this means is that foreign investors have the right to take state and federal governments to international tribunals if they dare pass legislation, or adopt policy, that conflicts with Australia’s obligations under the TPP.


One of Australia’s first civil society forums on the Trans Pacific Partnership, held at the Hawthorn campus of Swinburn University, on 14 October 2013. My contribution begins at 1:06 and ends at 1:25.

What does this mean in practice? Under an earlier free trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the oil and gas company Lone Pine Resources sued the Canadian government because the state of Quebec had a moratorium on coal-seam gas fracking.

While we don’t know for sure – because the draft TPP is a closely-guarded state-and-corporate secret – it is thought by those who have followed the process closely that other chapters will impact on our domestic freedom of action in a number of ways. For example, there may be well be prohibitions on any laws requiring the mandatory labelling of products containing genetically-modified organisms.

There may also be restrictions or even prohibitions on the ability of governments to adopt procurement standards that preference local suppliers and local jobs. National governments’ freedom of action to adopt laws and rules that safeguard the environment may be curtailed, should such rules impact on transnational corporate profits.

TPP

 

The trouble is, we won’t know what this agreement contains until the negotiations have been concluded, when it will be presented to the Australian Parliament, and the Australian people, as a fait accompli.

What we do know is more than enough to set alarm bells ringing loudly. The other chapter that has been leaked contains provisions designed to tighten already restrictive intellectual property laws. One Canadian media commentator, on reviewing the powers the draft TPP confers on international media conglomerates, said that it ‘would turn all Internet users into suspected copyright criminals [and] appears to criminalise content sharing in general’.

Before some of our most basic rights and freedoms that we take for granted are signed away behind some closed door, supposedly in the name of ‘growing the economy’ and ‘boosting employment and productivity’, we must at the very least be entitled to know the detail of what this agreement contains.

Whether or not he ‘stops the boats’ and ‘protects our borders’, Tony Abbott will be selling our national sovereignty to the highest bidder if his government signs onto to the TPP in its current form.

 

advocate, Coffs Coast, Small-scale farming

Fair Trade – A story not told enough?

Fair Trade Coffee

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 20th July

In food and beverages, ethical and sustainable products are a booming niche market sector, which has doubled in the last four years.

Fair Trade is leading the way, averaging an astonishing 50% year-on-year growth over the last five years, according to Fairtrade Australia New Zealand operations manager Craig Chester.

Talk about recession-busting. In barely 10 years, products bearing the Fairtrade ANZ label now generate sales in excess of $191 million.

Chocolate is largest segment of the fair trade market, at 62%, followed by coffee at 31%, and tea at 6%.

Fair Trade is a certification system that allows importers and retailers of products from developing countries to sell them under the Fair Trade label. So what does Fair Trade actually mean in practice?

This was the discussion I had with Bellingen-based coffee roaster Amelia Franklin. For Amelia, being herself perhaps unique as the proprietor of a 100% woman-owned coffee roasting business, a very important element of the Fair Trade system is its strong support of gender equality and the empowerment of women.

“To be Fair Trade is to be a co-op, which is a group of small farmers with small plots, getting together and selling their product as a community”, she explained.

“One of the main guidelines is that women have an equal voice in the co-op. There needs to be women representing all the farmers’ families, and there needs to be women making decisions. When you look at countries like Papua New Guinea (PNG), where the only people to sit in the circle are men, that changes the dynamic. That gives women a voice. I think that’s a good thing”, she said.

Fair Trade

For Amelia, another very important part of Fair Trade is its support of education.

“The children are going to school, they’re not working”, Amelia told me. “So you’ve got maybe 500-1000 family members in the co-op, and one member might cover up to 15-20 people, including several children. If you have 500-1000 members, then that means that all those children are going to school, and all those women have a voice.”

Fair Trade also supports sustainable agricultural practices, although the system itself does not duplicate or replace organic certification. Fair Trade producers are typically small-scale farmers, working on two-hectare plots, so ‘they’re not putting fertiliser and pesticides on their coffee’, said Amelia.

Whereas in large-scale coffee production, ‘you’re looking at deforestation and full irrigation, and pesticides and fertilisers because you’re completely stuffing with the environment, to engage in that kind of monoculture’, she said.

In terms of the difference that the Fair Trade premium – 2% of the market price on green beans – makes, this is determined democratically by the co-operative through a discussion and voting process.

“[The co-op] will have a number of projects they want to achieve”, Amelia told me. “One of the first things they usually do is put in a nurse’s post in their community, so they have direct access to primary health care. I’ve been to PNG and in remote areas the basic health care is minimal. And many people don’t access that health care because they have to pay, and they can’t afford it.”

“Also there’s often no school nearby, so the second thing they do is build a school and fund a teacher”, she added.

Coffee – whether it’s Fair Trade or not – is a commodity crop for export. So what about support for growing basic food groups?

“There is a massive problem in PNG with the food quality”, Amelia told me. “It’s terrible. Many people live on a diet of canned meat and two-minute noodles. Supermarkets are full of canned produce from China, that’s what people are eating.”

“I visited a cocoa-growing Fairtrade community. Fairtrade were supporting a lot of women to be trained in horticulture, and encouraged them to grow their own food. Australians don’t see that as part of Fair Trade, they don’t see what it does on the ground [in countries like PNG]. There are so many good stories to tell, but Fair Trade isn’t telling them enough. It’s not perfect, but they do really good work”, Amelia finished.

advocate, Coffs Coast, Local and regional food economies, Small-scale farming

Bootstrapping independent coffee roasting on the Coffs Coast

Amelia Franklin

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 22nd June, 2013

Sugar and tea was said to be the fuel that drove forward the workers in the mills and factories of England, as it led the world into the industrial revolution.

In our time, coffee has replaced milky tea as the beverage of choice for the white collar workers and entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of the information technology and communications revolution of the late 20th and early 21st century.

But now, as then, the world is connected. Tea and sugar were produced somewhere, and that somewhere was often on large plantations were the workers were either indentured slaves or paid very little. Either way conditions were poor and the work was harsh.

Coffee is likewise often grown on large plantations, where the conditions are harsh and the pay is poor. Often, children labour in these plantations, picking the ripe red fruit that contains the green coffee beans alongside their parents and siblings.

The coffee industry globally has revenues in excess of $80 billion per annum. Most of the profits wind up in the hands of multinationals like Nestle and speculators on futures markets, while many coffee growers don’t earn enough to feed their children, let alone send them to school.

Amelia Franklin
Amelia Franklin

There is an ethical alternative, and it’s called fair trade coffee. In our region, Amelia Franklin is the embodiment of fair trade principles.

“When I went into coffee, I just wanted to do fair trade and organics, because I didn’t want to impact on anyone else, that was the main objective”, Amelia says. “I didn’t want to make my life and my son’s life good, at the expense of another family. That’s not OK. I’d rather be poor, and not have that knowledge that where the product is coming from is impacting on someone else’s family in another place to make a profit for myself.”

Amelia is a fiercely independent and values-driven young woman who owns and operates her own coffee roasting and grinding business, based in Bellingen. She has struggled every step of the way and overcome major obstacles, building during the course of 10 years an ethical business with significant sales and a staff of four, including herself. And as I will discuss in the second part of her story, her business directly supports the education of children and the equality of women, amongst many other benefits, in the regions where she sources her coffee: Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Sumatra, Ethiopia and Timor Leste.

Amelia entered the coffee business with no prior experience or mentoring. She even spent a year teaching herself how to roast coffee, after borrowing $20,000 to buy a 5-kilo coffee roaster from Turkey and a grinder; and selling her 1960 FB Holden to purchase a tonne of green beans.

The early days were daunting, even scary. “The whole garden was filled with coffee beans that were burnt or under-roasted”, Amelia recalls. “In that year I thought, What the hell have I done? I’ve screwed up big time, I’ve put myself into a lot of debt, and I don’t even know what I’m doing!”

“There were a lot of tears and fist-pounding on the floor”, she adds with a smile. “But people started to buy my coffee, and I got a couple of big customers in Sydney, and I thought, I must be doing something right.”

Her initial loan came via an equipment finance company, at an extortionate 18% interest rate. Because she had no job, no established business record and no assets, Amelia found herself with little option but to go down that route. It took her four years to clear the initial $20,000 loan, after she had repaid more than double the original amount in interest.

“Going into debt to start a business is not the best way forward”, she reflects ruefully. “It would be good if there were some sort of interest-free loans for start-up businesses”, she adds, pointing out that she has neither the experience or the time to spend long hours writing grant applications, and nor can she afford to employ someone to do that work for her.

Amelia Franklin’s story will be continued. Don’t forget the inaugural Sawtell Veggie Swap this Sunday, 23rd June, from 11.00 am – 2.00 p.m., at Sawtell Public School. Bring your surplus veggies, or just a plate to share!