Born of Idealism, Bound by the Market: The Ins and Outs of Fair Trade Certification

A wanderer at heart, forging local ties, living simply and contentedly, seeking the heart of things…

Q = Da Chunfeng  A = Joya

A: I did my postgraduate studies at an agricultural engineering school in France, where one of my professors was the president of Fairtrade France; that was how I was first introduced to the concepts of fair trade. After graduating, although I wanted to join a fair trade organisation, there were no suitable opportunities. It wasn’t until I had been working back in China for a year and a half that Fairtrade International began recruiting in China, and that is when I joined.

Q: What did your specific duties entail at the time?

A: When I first started (in 2013), there were 13 agricultural cooperatives in China that had already obtained Fair Trade certification, with several others in the process. Previously, European colleagues would fly to China to assist these cooperatives in getting certified. As the demand for certification grew, the organisation needed permanent staff based in China, which is why I was hired.

My primary role was helping farmers obtain certification. However, those who usually came seeking certification were not the farmers themselves, but import-export trading companies. Typically, a company wanted to be Fair Trade certified, and therefore wanted the farmers they collaborated with to enter this chain.

My job involved visiting villages to understand the local situation, introducing the concept of fair trade to the villagers, explaining what was required for certification, and then helping them prepare the necessary documentation.

For farmers and cooperatives that were either in the process of being certified or had already achieved it, I helped them resolve issues and pass assessments. The Fair Trade assessment standards are extremely detailed, with hundreds of specific criteria. The evaluation begins immediately after the application; farmers or cooperatives have two to three years to meet the standards step by step, and they must continue to be assessed even after certification. My job was to assist them in meeting each checkpoint. This process involved a great deal of organisational communication between different farmers and between cooperatives.

At the time, I also organised the establishment of a Fair Trade tea mutual aid group in China, holding regular training sessions for tea-growing farmers and cooperatives. If a cooperative felt they needed technical training, I would invite relevant experts to conduct workshops for them.

Another major part of my work was international market matchmaking. When overseas clients wanted to purchase Fair Trade products from China, I would take the import-export traders to visit the farmers. I also accompanied farmers to domestic and international agricultural trade fairs to help them expand their markets.

Q: You mentioned earlier that Fair Trade certification has a system of standards. Can these certification standards be integrated with the actual conditions of Chinese agriculture?

A: The standards cover three main areas:

First, defining what constitutes a “small-scale farmer” based on cultivation area and economic income;

Second, requirements for specific production methods, emphasizing environmental protection and minimizing the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides;

Third, requirements for the local cooperative’s organisation and management methods.

Because there are vast differences between regions worldwide, it is often very difficult to use a unified standard for measurement. The number of Chinese farmers and cooperatives entering the Fair Trade system is not large, and they joined later than those in other Asia-Pacific countries, so the level of attention paid to my work in China was not particularly high.

Furthermore, the international image of a “farmer” does not align with the target demographic that Fair Trade focuses on; they aren’t seen as being as impoverished or in need of help as those in South America, Africa, or India. I frequently gave feedback to my overseas colleagues that Chinese farmers are not like that.

From a practical implementation perspective, many parts of the Fair Trade standards are not well-suited to the Chinese context. For example, there is a chapter in the manual called “Fairness and Democracy,” which is a key principle emphasised by Fair Trade. The standards require that decisions be made through collective meetings and voting, a method that many farmers are not accustomed to.

Based on democratic principles, we hoped at the time that the involvement of sellers or import-export companies in the farmers’ affairs would be as minimal as possible. Yet in China, the opposite was true: almost all cooperatives seeking Fair Trade certification were led by trading companies. These traders were not only deeply involved in the certification process but even appeared on the list of cooperative members, which is very rare in other countries. These companies not only held a monopoly over the cooperative’s decision-making but often meant the farmers could only sell their certified produce to that single company.

Women and children are also sensitive topics. According to the operating guidelines, when visiting farmers, we cannot simply photograph children without prior consent. However, in China, it is very normal for children to help their families with farm work during the busy season. Therefore, if external auditors came to inspect, we would advise the farmers that it was best not to have children present. Because some auditors do not understand the local culture, they apply a European mindset and conclude that this is child exploitation.

We understand the intent behind these clauses; for instance, in some banana plantations, there are indeed severe issues with child labour exploitation, making it difficult to relax standards on child protection. Moreover, the differences between countries and regions are too great to create special clauses for every single location. Our colleagues in China provided feedback on the domestic situation to the international body, but I personally saw no specific adjustments.

Q: Compared to the situation in China, how is Fairtrade implemented in other countries?

A: My team worked primarily in the Asia-Pacific region, where I noticed that Fairtrade is more widely accepted in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand. This may be due to historical factors; for example, many Indians speak English and have a more Westernised mindset, making requirements such as “democratic cooperation” easier to embrace.

Furthermore, even when facing the same standards, farmers in these regions provide more direct feedback. I found that Chinese and Indian farmers often have very different personalities; in India, farmers are very direct about their views, whereas Chinese farmers are more reserved and observant. They don’t offer comments immediately and tend to be more passive in the practice of “democratic cooperation”.

Occasionally, farmers are asked to be interviewed by the media to tell their stories. Farmers in the aforementioned countries have more agency and a stronger sense of autonomy regarding the establishment of cooperative standards; they are often better educated, can express themselves in English, and possess the confidence to do so.

Q: Why did you eventually leave this job? Did this experience bring any reflections?

A: I always believed that the philosophy of Fairtrade could help farmers establish a virtuous cycle. We often say, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Rather than simply providing material aid, it is better to help farmers understand how to solve their own problems. For instance, I would advise farmers not to focus solely on immediate profit distribution once they’ve made a gain, but to invest in upgrading production conditions and long-term local public works (such as infrastructure, schools, and healthcare) for more sustainable development.

However, after starting the job, I gradually began to notice many contradictions within the Fairtrade system.

Firstly, the certification standards are set by Westerners and do not particularly align with the needs of every region. Secondly, the foundation is market-driven, following the logic of “the big fish eating the small fish”. It achieves a level of formal fairness, but not substantive fairness.

The original conceptual design of Fairtrade was to facilitate the flow of resources, ensuring farmers could enter the market with the guarantee of a reasonable price. It also aimed to organise them to participate in large-scale trade fairs, encourage mutual aid and exchange between similar producers across borders, and provide technical production training.

But for me, it felt like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Although my colleagues and management started from a place of fairness and justice, the power of the capital market is too overwhelming; we were all swept away by the tide of the market, powerless to stop it. This is the inequality caused by capital-driven trade; any form of trade, whether “fair” or “unfair”, only exacerbates this inequality.

The seemingly democratic decision-making processes within the organisation were, in some cases, manipulated by capital. In China, for example, the membership lists of some cooperatives included local officials and traders, who could significantly influence decisions through the “society of connections” (renqing). In South American Fairtrade organisations, cooperatives made up of local farmers often lacked equal power compared to agricultural associations formed by landowners, behind whom stood large agribusinesses and investors from developed countries.

Around the time I left, there were many internal adjustments, and many people departed, including my former mentor, the former chair of the Fairtrade organisation in France. The original intention of Fairtrade was to empower producers, yet paradoxically, producer organisations began fighting for power and profit within the institution. At international Fairtrade conferences, representatives from various countries fought for a greater voice within the organisation, lacking the empathy and solidarity one might imagine. This left me feeling somewhat disheartened.

Many staff members working in marketing earned significantly more than I did. They had previously worked in marketing for large international corporations like Nestlé and Carrefour and were accustomed to the way capital operates. Even after moving to a humanitarian agency, it was impossible for them to completely change their old ways of working. When I worked with them, we often had divergent ways of thinking.

While interacting with farmers in my capacity as a staff member, I also sensed a great deal of injustice: The farmers work tirelessly, with no weekends or concept of a 35-hour work week, yet they earn the least. Meanwhile, the agency staff wear suits and ties, fly international flights across the globe, stay in nice hotels, and give speeches everywhere telling people that farmers in such-and-such country are desperately poor and need our help.

Because I had received a certain education and had access to various social resources, the gap between my salary and theirs was vast, and this did not actually feel justified. This feeling became particularly intense when I truly connected with the farmers. They would warmly offer the very best they had to host you, even though their own standard of living was not high. This disparity made me feel hypocritical, and I found I could no longer continue in the job.

Q: Beyond Fair Trade, do you believe there are better ways of producing and distributing goods?

A: In the early days of Fair Trade, from the 1960s until around 2000, some farmers did benefit. However, with the rise of globalisation, Fair Trade began to mirror capitalist methods—the exploitation was simply less severe, less blatant. Furthermore, regardless of how noble the intentions behind a model may be, applying a single universal standard across the globe inevitably creates its own form of injustice.

Personally, I am now more inclined towards regional production and distribution—the smaller the area, the better—to avoid international or cross-border trade. When the distance is too great, even if consumers buy with the best of intentions, it remains impossible to truly know what is happening at the other end of the chain. Fair Trade was originally intended to cut out the middleman, but if the supply chain is shorter and the distance between producer and consumer is reduced, the divide between them narrows.

China should look to its own specific circumstances when imagining new possibilities for production and distribution. As the purchasing power of domestic consumers grows, we are seeing the emergence of ‘conscious consumers’—those who are mindful of the impact of their spending.

At the same time, more young people are returning to the countryside and farming. I have seen this in France in recent years: people who were once doctors, nurses, or lawyers choosing to retrain as farmers, shifting their role from consumer to producer.

While selling these products will undoubtedly be difficult at first, I believe that the market’s appetite for such values-driven, niche produce will only grow; at the very least, many young people are now keen to buy directly from local smallholders. Some school canteens are even providing organic meals or sourcing all their ingredients from nearby farms.

In reality, consumption and production are not a binary opposition. Rather than insisting on specific models like ‘Fair Trade’, we should return to a foundation of trust between people and ethical engagement based on a sustainable way of life.

I still hold a glimmer of hope: if our current patterns of consumption become absurd enough, some people will inevitably long to return to a more primal state. The pandemic, for instance, abruptly severed the ties of modern life, reminding us that the existence enabled by sophisticated digital platforms could one day collapse. When that happens, perhaps people will choose to return to a simpler way of living and embrace alternative models of consumption.

Images provided by the interviewee

Interviewed and written by Da Chunfeng

Edited by Wang Hao