It has been almost 20 years since Fair Trade pioneers and social justice advocates started with an idea. And surely, after many long hours worked and many battles won and lost, Fair Trade has started to hit the mainstream in a big way.

In 2002 Fair Trade coffee hit a market share of $400 million, and since then it has been enjoying a growth rate of around 37% worldwide. But in a global commodity market dominated by a few big players, some people are now concerned that Fair Trade will be a victim of its own success. Since the explosive market growth of Fair Trade coffee, big companies like Starbucks, Proctor and Gamble, and Nestle jumped on the Fair Trade bandwagon.

In 2005 Nestle introduced its Fair Trade Partners Blend® product to the UK market, causing an uproar amongst Fair Trade advocates around the world. Close observers of Nestle’s worldwide activities noted that Partners Blend only accounted for 1/10th of 1% of Nestle’s total coffee imports. Accusations of corporate greenwashing ensued (for more on greenwashing and Fair trade, see here and here).

To summarize the argument, according to Rodney North of Equal Exchange, Nestle’s move was

the latest in a long line of actions by the world’s largest food businesses to make small gestures that look good in isolation, but ultimately forestall real change for impoverished small farmers, and instead offer marketing, PR, and token efforts in its place.

Essentially, greenwashing can be seen as a mega-company offering a single Fair Trade product, while ignoring the social justice concerns associated with 99.99% of their other products. By surrounding the Fair Trade product with gleaming press releases and stellar marketing campaigns, the company can deflect criticism and create confusion around the concept of Fair Trade, a concept that is rather nebulous and ill-defined for all but the most discerning and educated consumers. North concludes:

At the inception of the Fair Trade movement 20 years ago it was intended to be an alternative approach to international trade that addressed the endemic poverty, economic vulnerability, and isolation of the millions of small-scale farmers who grow most of the world’s tropical agricultural commodities, and as such challenge the status quo. It was not designed as a marketing device.

It seems to me that the evolution of Fair Trade into a marketing device, for better or for worse, is a somewhat inevitable process. But what does this mean? Do the standards need to be revised? Can a group like Transfair USA, that depends on income from certification, be relied on to blow the whistle when companies like Nestle and Starbucks are pushing the Fair Trade envelope? Does this call into question the entire system of Fair Trade?

And, how fair is a certified product that relies on scores of middlemen, food processors and retailers who take full advantage of all the value added to a raw material as it moves through the supply chain? Is it possible to certify something as fair within the context of a supply chain that wasn’t designed with fairness (or even unfairness for that matter), in mind?

These are some of the questions that will be addressed on the next series of shows on the Agroinnovations Podcast. So if you care about Fair Trade, be sure to listen.