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How Fair Trade Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Child's Wi Chuck Bryant. This is the
0:15
Speaker 1: five hundred and something time that I said that, Oh yeah,
0:19
Speaker 1: we're not to the sixes yet, are we? No? No,
0:21
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a little while. What are we mid five? Yeah?
0:24
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like we hit five D word around
0:26
Speaker 1: January D of January. It's a lot of knowledge we're
0:29
Speaker 1: doling out for free, folks. We're like, we're in like
0:35
Speaker 1: like five twenty maybe, Yeah, I thought there might be
0:38
Speaker 1: more than that. Um, you're doing okay, I'm great, good?
0:42
Speaker 1: How are you okay? Like my back hurts a little bit,
0:45
Speaker 1: and Yumi is convinced that it's a kidney infection onset,
0:49
Speaker 1: so she's like, you need to drink a lot of
0:51
Speaker 1: apple cider, vinegar and baking soda diluted in water and
0:55
Speaker 1: cranbery juice. That's what I'm doing. And water. Yeah, that
0:58
Speaker 1: went too, But I've got stuff diluted in water, so
1:01
Speaker 1: that counts. But it's um kind of rough. You know,
1:05
Speaker 1: I don't know that your coffee counts? Is water? No,
1:08
Speaker 1: it does actually, you know that the whole you should
1:11
Speaker 1: drink eight eight ounce glasses of water a day. You
1:13
Speaker 1: can factor in coffee. Yeah, and it's totally made up,
1:16
Speaker 1: Like there's no one's ever said that you really should
1:20
Speaker 1: do that. It just kind of came on as like
1:22
Speaker 1: an early meme, I guess. And there's never There's not
1:25
Speaker 1: any evidence that an adult human living in a temperate
1:28
Speaker 1: climate of average health couldn't survive without any additional water
1:33
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, because we get it from things
1:36
Speaker 1: like food and other stuff. I think the idea is
1:39
Speaker 1: that you benefit from drinking water. Again, there's not necessarily
1:42
Speaker 1: any scientific evidence. That pretty much made up. I'm not
1:48
Speaker 1: so sure. I'm telling you look it up back to you, Okay,
1:50
Speaker 1: all right, we'll have a look up off. Okay. Um,
1:54
Speaker 1: But that's not what this is about, Chuck, Nor is
1:56
Speaker 1: it about my possibly um impending kidney infects in hospitalization.
2:02
Speaker 1: It is about the idea that everyone around the world
2:07
Speaker 1: deserves to make a decent, sustainable living wage, agreed, or
2:14
Speaker 1: should at the very least get a should see the
2:19
Speaker 1: fruits of their labor in a fair way. Yeah, this
2:23
Speaker 1: kind of flies in the face of something called um capitalism.
2:27
Speaker 1: The free market system a little bit, because in the
2:30
Speaker 1: free market system, one of the big things you have
2:32
Speaker 1: is pretty much every man for himself. Now, everyone in
2:35
Speaker 1: a free market system, a completely theoretical, unfettered free market system,
2:40
Speaker 1: has the opportunity to enjoy the fruit of his or
2:42
Speaker 1: her labors, has the opportunity to make a decent, livable wage.
2:47
Speaker 1: But one could also argue that the bounce of power
2:50
Speaker 1: has tipped so far in favor of a consolidated, internationally
2:57
Speaker 1: connected few that at that's just not a real possibilitynymore,
3:02
Speaker 1: that theory that theoretical version is now an impossibility, right,
3:06
Speaker 1: I think, hey, Mountain, that might be a good time
3:08
Speaker 1: to recommend to people to go listen to our previous podcast,
3:12
Speaker 1: Is the free market really free? Oh? Yeah, that's a
3:14
Speaker 1: good one. Wasn't that the name of that one? That
3:16
Speaker 1: was a good one. That was a good one. Um. So,
3:19
Speaker 1: because this balance of power has tipped so far post
3:23
Speaker 1: pretty much post World War two is when it happened.
3:26
Speaker 1: There are there are some people out there who have
3:29
Speaker 1: come up with the idea that maybe we should go
3:33
Speaker 1: an extra mile and make sure that the people who
3:36
Speaker 1: are actually making all the things we enjoy, For example, coffee, wine,
3:40
Speaker 1: soccer balls. People who bananas, bananas, it's a big one.
3:45
Speaker 1: People who actually make these things get a an income
3:50
Speaker 1: that is like something that anyone who is on the
3:53
Speaker 1: receiving end of these bananas and coffee would recognize as
3:56
Speaker 1: a livable amount of money in return for what they're
4:00
Speaker 1: doing us. That's right. This is not a call for communism.
4:04
Speaker 1: This is a call for fair pay via something called
4:08
Speaker 1: fair trade. And um, the idea is that uh, you
4:14
Speaker 1: and I and whoever else wants to support this kind
4:17
Speaker 1: of cause might not mind going into their local and
4:20
Speaker 1: we're gonna use coffee a lot, because that's one of
4:22
Speaker 1: the big daddies. Yeah, that's might not mind going into
4:26
Speaker 1: their their coffee shop or their grocery store wherever you
4:28
Speaker 1: hunt down your coffee and paying a little bit more
4:31
Speaker 1: for your coffee. It's got that fair trade stamp on
4:33
Speaker 1: their knowing that ultimately the worker who picked those beans
4:37
Speaker 1: is going to be cared for in a you know,
4:40
Speaker 1: humane fair way. It's gonna get a decent amount of
4:44
Speaker 1: money for their for their product. Um, and you you
4:47
Speaker 1: kind of hit something on the head when you said,
4:50
Speaker 1: seeing that fair trade label, there's a really big distinction
4:53
Speaker 1: between a product that carries a certified fair trade label, yeah,
4:58
Speaker 1: and something that's marketed as fairly treated that means nothing.
5:03
Speaker 1: It means absolutely nothing like that that they might as
5:07
Speaker 1: well say, like the contents inside are orange and green maybe. Yeah,
5:11
Speaker 1: it's the whole mislabeling, misleading, misleading labeling of things, which
5:17
Speaker 1: is just like the organic deal certified organic versus these
5:20
Speaker 1: you know, this crap food that will say like contains
5:24
Speaker 1: naturally uh natural ingredients or things like that. Emily has
5:29
Speaker 1: to fight spedal all the time with her company because
5:31
Speaker 1: she's one of the people that tries to only use
5:35
Speaker 1: you know, fair trade ingredients and certified organic. And she
5:39
Speaker 1: gets angry every day when she sees products body products
5:42
Speaker 1: that slap something on their label like naturally good and
5:46
Speaker 1: people think that means it's all natural or all natural.
5:49
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that it's organic or all natural. It's
5:55
Speaker 1: it needs to be regulated more in it. And it's
5:56
Speaker 1: so that's such a cynical thing to exploit, Yeah, like
6:00
Speaker 1: thing that really meant something at one point in time
6:03
Speaker 1: for dollars, you know, to to market something that doesn't
6:07
Speaker 1: mean anything, it's actually not good for you, and marketing
6:09
Speaker 1: it as good for you while using and already established
6:14
Speaker 1: UM consumer trusted label or phrasing. It's just that's said.
6:20
Speaker 1: It's one of it's one of the wrong things in
6:22
Speaker 1: the world. But let's just say that that's why a
6:24
Speaker 1: fair trade people, fair trade groups have UM. They jealously
6:27
Speaker 1: guard their h there UM labels. Yeah, so that when
6:32
Speaker 1: you do see them, you can't trust what's going on.
6:35
Speaker 1: And they'll you know, companies at mislabeled or mislead with
6:38
Speaker 1: their labels also make their labels look like the other
6:42
Speaker 1: labels even and the font and the color is just
6:45
Speaker 1: like it's so underhanded, it's really awful. So let's talk
6:49
Speaker 1: about the background of this alright. It started in the
6:51
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties with something called Alternative Trade Organizations a t
6:55
Speaker 1: o S, not the Fraternity a t S. They were
6:58
Speaker 1: doing beer bonds and you know other things. Uh, I
7:03
Speaker 1: couldn't say what I was gonna say. I think everybody knows. Uh.
7:07
Speaker 1: They were humanitarian groups that started this, and basically they
7:11
Speaker 1: wanted to alleviate poverty in developing nations by cutting out
7:15
Speaker 1: middlemen between small producers in the north Northern hemisphere and
7:20
Speaker 1: small businesses in the southern hemisphere. More profits directly going
7:24
Speaker 1: to workers who picked the bean again with coffee, and
7:28
Speaker 1: then I guess over time they found that this this
7:31
Speaker 1: process could work. But you really do need middlemen, right
7:35
Speaker 1: So yeah, not always, but depending on where you are
7:38
Speaker 1: in the process or right, but if you're using the
7:41
Speaker 1: existing I guess trade routes and system of trade that's
7:45
Speaker 1: been established globally in the world, um, you there are middlemen.
7:49
Speaker 1: Like you. You have a coffee grower in Ethiopia, he
7:53
Speaker 1: can't get that to you. You know in New England,
7:57
Speaker 1: you do need a middlement. What they figured out with
8:00
Speaker 1: fair trade is that you can certify the people in
8:04
Speaker 1: between to make sure that the money is getting to
8:07
Speaker 1: the producer. And rather than cutting out the middleman to
8:11
Speaker 1: increase the income of the of the original producer in
8:14
Speaker 1: the developing country, you go to the consumer on the
8:17
Speaker 1: consuming and and say, hey, you mind paying a little
8:20
Speaker 1: more for this and in return, we will guarantee you
8:23
Speaker 1: that this the person you who made this coffee that
8:27
Speaker 1: you're enjoying, gets that money. That extra money, like you
8:31
Speaker 1: are basically essentially sending it to this guy, and we're
8:34
Speaker 1: the ones who are going to make sure that happens
8:35
Speaker 1: and We're gonna do so through this labeling. That's right.
8:39
Speaker 1: Uh In is actually when the labeling itself was born
8:43
Speaker 1: with a Dutch ato called uh soladara dad. Is that
8:49
Speaker 1: not right? Solidad as you see, we got yet another
8:52
Speaker 1: like email about our pronunciation. We try people, that's part
8:57
Speaker 1: of the charm of the show. Some people don't like it.
8:59
Speaker 1: I unders in um so solidaridad from uh from the
9:05
Speaker 1: Dutch region of the world, from Amsterdam, from the Netherlands,
9:08
Speaker 1: from Holland, from all those places. They said, you know what,
9:12
Speaker 1: we should label these things, help people out when they're shopping,
9:16
Speaker 1: get them in the main street markets without compromising. You know,
9:20
Speaker 1: the trust that consumer has in these products. And that
9:23
Speaker 1: is basically where fair trade was born. And we do
9:28
Speaker 1: have one stat here in two thousand one, not super recent,
9:32
Speaker 1: but just to show you and how people pay for coffee.
9:36
Speaker 1: Coffee fluctuates in price. It's like you know, any commodity.
9:40
Speaker 1: So uh in two thousand one the price stepped really
9:42
Speaker 1: low and the coffee growers were receiving only about forty
9:45
Speaker 1: five cents per pound for coffee, but fair trade coffee
9:48
Speaker 1: buyers paid a dollar twenty one per pound that year
9:53
Speaker 1: to ensure that these people, despite the fluctuations, were able
9:57
Speaker 1: to keep the lights on for their business. Essentially, because
10:00
Speaker 1: every fair trade organization sets a minimum price, a minimum
10:04
Speaker 1: fair price that their their producers are gonna get no
10:09
Speaker 1: matter what, no matter what the market does, no matter what.
10:12
Speaker 1: And I believe if the market goes up, they get
10:15
Speaker 1: they get the higher of the two, but at the
10:17
Speaker 1: very least they're getting that minimum price for their product.
10:20
Speaker 1: So what is an f l O. This is sort
10:22
Speaker 1: of how it starts or how the process itself starts,
10:26
Speaker 1: or you want to talk about that. Yeah, alright, the
10:29
Speaker 1: fair Trade Labeling Organization. So that's that's one of them.
10:34
Speaker 1: There's there's a number of labeling organizations, like there's Transfer USA,
10:39
Speaker 1: there's a European European Fair Trade Association, right, And apparently
10:43
Speaker 1: I guess the f l O is like the the
10:46
Speaker 1: agency that oversees the agencies. That's the impression that I have.
10:51
Speaker 1: But basically say that you want to um, say that
10:54
Speaker 1: you you are a coffee roaster, and again we're going
10:57
Speaker 1: with coffee because that's the big one, and you say, hey,
11:00
Speaker 1: I really want to get in on this fair trade
11:02
Speaker 1: action for whatever reason. It doesn't matter if you want
11:05
Speaker 1: to increase your own sales or whatever. It doesn't matter.
11:08
Speaker 1: You can't exploit this process, right, No, but that's the thing, like,
11:13
Speaker 1: like the coffee roaster can be like, you know, everybody's
11:16
Speaker 1: into this fair trade thing, and I think I can
11:17
Speaker 1: sell a lot more if I go through this process,
11:20
Speaker 1: So let me do it. And they contact the FLO
11:23
Speaker 1: or a labeling organization. They say, great, we will sell
11:26
Speaker 1: you a license for ten thou pounds of fair trade
11:30
Speaker 1: coffee beans. So it's a contract for a set amount. Now,
11:34
Speaker 1: what they could do is set the coffee roaster up
11:37
Speaker 1: with an already certified fair trade UM producer and supply chain.
11:44
Speaker 1: Or they can go in and say we can go
11:47
Speaker 1: ahead and certify your existing supply chain and producer. And
11:51
Speaker 1: that's what they do. The the coffee roaster pays for
11:54
Speaker 1: that license, sends the f l O out, They go
11:57
Speaker 1: through the supply chain make sure that all this money
11:59
Speaker 1: is going back to the producer who is expected to
12:03
Speaker 1: get it right. Yeah, And they actually send people, human
12:06
Speaker 1: people visit farms to ensure that all their business practices
12:10
Speaker 1: and their farmers are adhering to these procedures. And not
12:13
Speaker 1: only that, they also add a dash of like sustainability,
12:16
Speaker 1: like they're that they're not using like horrible environmental techniques
12:20
Speaker 1: for stuff. And but yes, basically to make sure that
12:22
Speaker 1: this producer isn't just like a you know, dull disguised
12:27
Speaker 1: as like some some dude, you know, like they're going
12:30
Speaker 1: to do some detective work and once they figure out
12:32
Speaker 1: that everything's legit and it falls into the fair trade standards,
12:37
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about later, then that's certified, the license
12:41
Speaker 1: is exercised, and that ten thousand pounds is delivered and
12:44
Speaker 1: that guy can put that on the ten thousand pounds. Yeah,
12:47
Speaker 1: and it's not always just a one time visit. They
12:48
Speaker 1: can also follow up with periodic inspections to ensure that,
12:53
Speaker 1: you know, that you keep up with that kind of
12:55
Speaker 1: governance and you didn't just like pull a fast one
12:57
Speaker 1: on them and you know, get out your house in
12:59
Speaker 1: order for one day, you know. While and there there's
13:03
Speaker 1: the licenses. Usually there's like there's a contract involved, like
13:07
Speaker 1: so the middlemen who are involved have to participate in
13:11
Speaker 1: these standards. And one of the standards is you have
13:13
Speaker 1: to sign like at least a six month contract usually,
13:17
Speaker 1: which is actually kind of a lot for these producers
13:19
Speaker 1: because a middleman can be like, oh, this guy's selling
13:21
Speaker 1: it for way cheaper. I'm going over to him. You know,
13:23
Speaker 1: this producer is guaranteed six months of going to this
13:27
Speaker 1: middleman and um and getting the money from them. Well yeah,
13:31
Speaker 1: and like you said, six months doesn't sound like much,
13:33
Speaker 1: but I get the feeling that it was just like
13:35
Speaker 1: it's the wild West out there. Yeah, you know, like
13:37
Speaker 1: you can drop someone from day to day. Yeah. Well
13:40
Speaker 1: they can be like, well, this guy's selling for a
13:41
Speaker 1: penny lesson you force this guy down, and now this
13:44
Speaker 1: guy is down to two cents, So you go to
13:45
Speaker 1: another guy and be like, this guy's down to two cents.
13:47
Speaker 1: You can just play as many small farmers as you
13:49
Speaker 1: want against off against one another and and drive prices
13:53
Speaker 1: down as low as you want. That. Fair trade prevents
13:55
Speaker 1: that from happening by forcing middleman to to sign a contract. Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: so that's one of the tenants. Um. Another is direct
14:02
Speaker 1: trade between the producers and buyers. So they try to
14:05
Speaker 1: eliminate the middleman when they can. In Central America they
14:08
Speaker 1: call the middleman coyote. Yeah, I mean, I thought that
14:11
Speaker 1: was interesting. Um. So in order to do this, they
14:14
Speaker 1: encourage these farmers to get together and form co ops
14:17
Speaker 1: export co ops band together. You know you've got a
14:20
Speaker 1: little more power. Um. So something that that he points
14:23
Speaker 1: out here too is that the exporter, if it's a plantation,
14:26
Speaker 1: the fair trade standard requires that national laws governing the
14:30
Speaker 1: minimum wage UH and regulations covering the conditions be upheld
14:35
Speaker 1: and the workers rights are all upheld as well. So
14:38
Speaker 1: that's when you're not I guess forming a co op
14:41
Speaker 1: no um, but fair trade tends to encourage co ops
14:46
Speaker 1: democratically run co ops. Um. But yeah, they're they're they're
14:52
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily completely opposed to the idea of certifying
14:58
Speaker 1: something that's run as a plant takes rather than a
15:00
Speaker 1: co op, as long as the workers are treated well.
15:02
Speaker 1: And one of the other things they do, like if
15:04
Speaker 1: there is a if they do run into a plantation
15:06
Speaker 1: system and the workers are fine, everything's good, they attach
15:11
Speaker 1: what's called the social premium. So if you are, say,
15:15
Speaker 1: there's a chocolate importer called Double Chocolate, the U B
15:19
Speaker 1: B l E. I think it's in the UK, and
15:21
Speaker 1: they they sell fair trade and chocolate, and they on
15:23
Speaker 1: their site they were saying that they pay an extra
15:26
Speaker 1: um I think two hundred dollars a ton of cocoa
15:29
Speaker 1: per ton of cocoa. And that's just a social premium
15:32
Speaker 1: that's on top of whatever the market prices or whatever
15:35
Speaker 1: the minimum fair trade prices, whatever is higher. In addition
15:39
Speaker 1: that they pay an extra two hundred bucks right off
15:41
Speaker 1: the top for a ton of cocoa. And that is
15:44
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily go right back to the um the producer.
15:48
Speaker 1: It goes back to the producer's community, and it is
15:50
Speaker 1: used for things like scholarships, water projects, and notation projects
15:54
Speaker 1: like schools whatever. Um. But it's that social premium is
15:59
Speaker 1: an addition to raising the individual's income, it raises the
16:03
Speaker 1: well being of the entire community. Yeah. Well with the
16:06
Speaker 1: idea too that that's just gonna be good for everyone's
16:08
Speaker 1: business ultimately. Well, yeah, that's the thing. That's that's where
16:11
Speaker 1: it's kind of it turns capitalism in on it on itself.
16:14
Speaker 1: Like the idea that you can democratize through capitalism is
16:18
Speaker 1: a huge like neo con idea. Yeah, and I mean
16:22
Speaker 1: it's true, like it does work. Um, but they're saying,
16:26
Speaker 1: but we need to do that through a certain measure
16:28
Speaker 1: of Marxism, right. It's kind of kind of funny. Yeah. Uh.
16:33
Speaker 1: And the final tenant, which you already sort of mentioned,
16:35
Speaker 1: was the minimum prices for farmers. The idea what they
16:38
Speaker 1: want here is obviously to make sure that the price
16:41
Speaker 1: that the farmer gets is more than the cost of production,
16:44
Speaker 1: because you know, everyone's out to make a dollar here
16:47
Speaker 1: and there. Um. And so they actually take a survey
16:50
Speaker 1: um to make sure that the you know, the price
16:52
Speaker 1: is right on the money, and it covers things like
16:55
Speaker 1: the cost of living, um, cost of production, and even
16:58
Speaker 1: the cost of complying with the fair trade standards. So
17:01
Speaker 1: they roll that in there as part of their accounting
17:03
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and we should say also, um, it
17:06
Speaker 1: is the to purchase a license for fair trade and stuff.
17:13
Speaker 1: It's on the ultimate I guess distributor, the coffee roaster
17:18
Speaker 1: in the case of coffee, UM, or the chocolate producer
17:21
Speaker 1: in the case of cocoa, purchases whatever. Um. And before
17:25
Speaker 1: I think until two thousand and four, like it was
17:26
Speaker 1: free if you were the actual person producing like the
17:30
Speaker 1: raw material the good like the coffee or the cocoa.
17:34
Speaker 1: But then the flo said, you know what, we need
17:36
Speaker 1: to charge you guys a little bit too. So I
17:39
Speaker 1: think that further encourages co ops because a small farmer
17:43
Speaker 1: in in. You know, Ethiopia can't necessarily afford whatever it
17:47
Speaker 1: costs to be in the system. Okay, that makes sense.
17:50
Speaker 1: And let's let's take a second here, chuck um to
17:54
Speaker 1: remind people exactly what the disparity is between the people
17:58
Speaker 1: who eat the chocolate and the people who produced the cocoa. So,
18:01
Speaker 1: say you were living in Teamore or Lesti in Southeast
18:05
Speaker 1: Africa in two thousand five, guess how much you're annual
18:09
Speaker 1: income would be expected to be. Well, what am I
18:12
Speaker 1: doing in my growing You're just a president of it.
18:15
Speaker 1: You're doing whatever you want, but you're you're an average.
18:18
Speaker 1: I have a petticab. Okay, you have a petticab since
18:22
Speaker 1: you live in Teamre or Lestie. I think I'm saying
18:24
Speaker 1: that right, lest one of the two man, I hope
18:29
Speaker 1: I'm saying that right. You made four d in two
18:31
Speaker 1: thousand five for the whole year and two in Malawi.
18:36
Speaker 1: You made five six dollars in Somalia's six hundred dollars
18:39
Speaker 1: in Congo six seventy five for a year. A year,
18:44
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days of labor, or a
18:47
Speaker 1: large portion of three sixty five days. Take Christmas off
18:50
Speaker 1: in the petticab by the all right, three hundred and
18:52
Speaker 1: sixty four days of labor got you four hundred bucks,
18:54
Speaker 1: and teamore or lesti um on the high end in Naritria,
18:58
Speaker 1: you made up whopping nine in seventeen dollars. In the
19:02
Speaker 1: United States and two thousand five average US citizen spends
19:07
Speaker 1: a hundred and fourteen dollars a day spends. Yeah, so
19:12
Speaker 1: that's that's the concept of fair trade is like, you
19:15
Speaker 1: have this extra couple of dollars, pay it for this,
19:20
Speaker 1: and we will make sure that that guy in Eritrea
19:24
Speaker 1: gets it, and he's going to benefit, and in fact,
19:26
Speaker 1: the whole world will benefit because there's that whole democratic
19:29
Speaker 1: peace theory where like supposedly there's a correlation between democratization
19:34
Speaker 1: and a decrease in war and belligerence between nations. So
19:38
Speaker 1: who knows, it could just be beneficial for everybody. Yeah,
19:41
Speaker 1: and this isn't welfare. This isn't uh give taking from
19:45
Speaker 1: the rich and giving texting the rich and giving it
19:47
Speaker 1: to the poor who you know can't get off their
19:49
Speaker 1: butts and go work. These are people working very hard
19:52
Speaker 1: at their job that you are ultimately benefiting from. When
19:56
Speaker 1: you take that step of coffee that you're enjoying, and
20:00
Speaker 1: it's it's like we did it in our own country
20:03
Speaker 1: when we started enacting, like saying hey, kids shouldn't work
20:07
Speaker 1: in factories and they should make eight cents a week.
20:10
Speaker 1: We did it here in the fair trade label ensures
20:13
Speaker 1: that wherever your product is coming from around the world,
20:16
Speaker 1: that the same thing is going to be you know, happening. Yeah,
20:19
Speaker 1: it's it's intervention exploitation. But they're still critics. Yeah, there
20:22
Speaker 1: are definitely critics and criticisms um in with fair trade,
20:28
Speaker 1: and I mean they're legitimate too. Yeah, I mean not
20:31
Speaker 1: a lot of criticisms about people saying, hey, you shouldn't
20:34
Speaker 1: do this and take care of workers. Probably there's probably
20:38
Speaker 1: a handful of people out there that think that it's
20:39
Speaker 1: more the um but generally, yeah, it's a criticism of
20:43
Speaker 1: fair trade in the fair trade organizations, not of the
20:46
Speaker 1: people who are actually, you know, producing this stuff. Yeah,
20:49
Speaker 1: basically saying you're ignoring the basic tenets of supply and
20:54
Speaker 1: demand in a way because you're you're attaching an inflated
20:58
Speaker 1: price above the market value without doing anything else right,
21:04
Speaker 1: and because it's difficult to kind of get these things
21:08
Speaker 1: to market more difficult than than a regular thing. There's
21:10
Speaker 1: been a real focus on things like coffee or bananas,
21:14
Speaker 1: so in these areas where you can grow coffee and
21:16
Speaker 1: can grow bananas, since fair Trade is saying, hey, if
21:19
Speaker 1: you grow this stuff and you do it the way
21:21
Speaker 1: we want you to, you'll get four times what you
21:24
Speaker 1: know you're getting paid. Without us, more people are gonna
21:28
Speaker 1: flock from cotton to coffee, and there's gonna be an
21:31
Speaker 1: oversupply and that's ultimately going to drive prices down for everybody. Right.
21:36
Speaker 1: Another criticism is that fair trade generally UM addresses these
21:40
Speaker 1: co ops that we were talking about, and maybe if
21:43
Speaker 1: you were just a single farmer, that's like, I don't
21:44
Speaker 1: want to be in a co op, but I still
21:47
Speaker 1: want to be fair trade. It's a little more difficult,
21:50
Speaker 1: and UM these co ops just like anything else, when
21:54
Speaker 1: you get more than two people together in a room,
21:56
Speaker 1: there is a possibility for greeting corruption. So some of
22:00
Speaker 1: these co ops have been attacked for mismanaging fair trade proceeds,
22:04
Speaker 1: and UH supporters say, you know what, we can only
22:07
Speaker 1: do what we can. We're trying our best. We're not
22:09
Speaker 1: saying we're going to solve the world's poverty problems. But
22:12
Speaker 1: what we are saying is that we can ensure that
22:15
Speaker 1: these farmers and these co ops and these workers are
22:18
Speaker 1: getting paid at fair wage enough to live on. Uh
22:21
Speaker 1: when you eat your delicious or drink your delicious roasted
22:24
Speaker 1: coffeesh And I guess I the one that makes the
22:28
Speaker 1: most sense to me is the encouraging oversupply on the
22:32
Speaker 1: market and driving down prices for other people and everybody
22:34
Speaker 1: in general. Yeah, but um, yeah, and it really that
22:38
Speaker 1: that could be very easily solved by just focusing on
22:41
Speaker 1: other products as well. Yeah. Right now, they say about
22:45
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand farmers are benefiting from fair trade right
22:48
Speaker 1: now worldwide. That was a Yeah, that's an o eight
22:51
Speaker 1: stant So I bet it's over a million now because
22:54
Speaker 1: it's growing baby. Yeah. I mean that's another thing too,
22:57
Speaker 1: is that the sectors are growing to like, uh, in
23:00
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's, fair trade coffee grew like within
23:05
Speaker 1: a couple of years. So, I mean, like it's a
23:08
Speaker 1: good way to go if you're a poverty stricken coffee farmer.
23:12
Speaker 1: And it depends on where you are what kind of
23:14
Speaker 1: products are available. It's not like every everything you find
23:17
Speaker 1: in your grocery store will have a fair trade option.
23:20
Speaker 1: Um yeah, but it's kind of been presented and marketing
23:22
Speaker 1: a real like laid back hippie granola away and it's
23:26
Speaker 1: like like, hey, we'll put it out there and tell
23:28
Speaker 1: people about it and if they want it, that's awesome.
23:31
Speaker 1: There's been no like the they If you took the
23:34
Speaker 1: same kind of marketing uh that's applied to the stuff
23:39
Speaker 1: that's not produced fairly, and applied it to fairly traded stuff,
23:44
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure you could generate a lot more interest
23:46
Speaker 1: and have people clamoring for like I want fairly traded
23:49
Speaker 1: beef for whatever. People are gonna want that stuff. They
23:53
Speaker 1: just don't know that they want it yet necessarily, and
23:56
Speaker 1: I think that they're I think that the NGOs who
23:58
Speaker 1: are doing fair trade could do more. Who diversify If
24:02
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, correct me someone who's in the field. You
24:04
Speaker 1: got anything else that's fair trade? Hey? Speaking of NGOs,
24:08
Speaker 1: our favorite co ed cooperative for education. They are who
24:12
Speaker 1: took us down to Guatemala and we got to see
24:14
Speaker 1: their handiwork in person, and it is good work. Yeah.
24:16
Speaker 1: They seek to break the cycle of poverty using education
24:21
Speaker 1: and they've got a great model. Like you said, we've
24:23
Speaker 1: seen it firsthand, we believe in it, and so we
24:25
Speaker 1: are making a call out here. We're plugging for them
24:28
Speaker 1: because they have uh, well, they're in need. Okay. They
24:32
Speaker 1: are looking to triple the number of students they serve
24:34
Speaker 1: over the next three years, so they're gonna need the
24:36
Speaker 1: help with some stuff you should know, listeners. All right,
24:38
Speaker 1: so we got some details for you, folks, the who
24:41
Speaker 1: of this. We're talking fifty four Indigenous Mayan middle school
24:44
Speaker 1: students right right right, These students are getting help literally,
24:48
Speaker 1: like firsthand help. Yeah. They're getting help through scholarships that
24:51
Speaker 1: cover tuition, school fees and a youth development program that
24:54
Speaker 1: foster's community service and leadership among the students. Right. There
24:58
Speaker 1: are two scholarship levels. There's the Diploma sponsor, which is
25:01
Speaker 1: seventy bucks a month, and there's an honorable sponsor, which
25:04
Speaker 1: is thirty five bucks a month. Those are some cute names.
25:06
Speaker 1: That's very cute. So when all this is going down, is, uh,
25:10
Speaker 1: they want fifty four students sponsored by the end of
25:13
Speaker 1: the year. Is there anything greater, Josh than finding a
25:17
Speaker 1: sponsor for every single student? No, And we can do it.
25:19
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a lot of listeners, and we
25:21
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners with big hearts. Actually there
25:23
Speaker 1: is one thing greater. They could cover these students and
25:25
Speaker 1: have a waiting lis for next year. Oh that'd be
25:27
Speaker 1: even better. Yeah, okay, So this is how you do this, guys.
25:30
Speaker 1: You can go to the website www. Dot Cooperative for
25:34
Speaker 1: Education dot org. You can sign up to sponsor a
25:37
Speaker 1: child today. Simply click on the donate now button in
25:40
Speaker 1: the top right hand at the corner that's right. And
25:42
Speaker 1: you know what, a lot of our listeners have gotten
25:44
Speaker 1: involved over the years with co ED and gotten a
25:47
Speaker 1: lot out of it in return as humans as humans. Yeah,
25:49
Speaker 1: it's a genuinely great organization that we've seen, like you said, firsthand. Um,
25:54
Speaker 1: so we would encourage all of you to go help.
25:56
Speaker 1: So that's um Cooperative for Education dot org. You can
26:00
Speaker 1: become either a very acutely named diploma sponsor at seventy
26:04
Speaker 1: bucks a month or an honorable sponsor at thirty five
26:07
Speaker 1: bucks a month. And uh, if you do that, if
26:09
Speaker 1: you sign up for it, let us know because we
26:11
Speaker 1: want to thank you on the air. Sure cool, it's
26:13
Speaker 1: great idea, So go co it, go co a. Thanks friends,
26:17
Speaker 1: So okay, Chuck. Hold on, let's let's take a message break.
26:21
Speaker 1: Huh and then listener mail are really good one this week?
26:30
Speaker 1: Oh now it's time for listener mail, says Jerry. Yeah,
26:35
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh grief. We got a lot
26:38
Speaker 1: of really great responses on the Grief podcast. A lot
26:40
Speaker 1: of people reached out more like had just had people
26:44
Speaker 1: pass away in their family and listen to the podcast
26:47
Speaker 1: that week and helped them out. And uh, we always
26:50
Speaker 1: like hearing those things. So this is from John. Guys
26:53
Speaker 1: would like to thank you for your Grief podcast that
26:55
Speaker 1: helped me with a grieving process for my best friend
26:58
Speaker 1: and brother, Mike. In his death. He was driving in
27:01
Speaker 1: Northern Alberta UH in mid December when he lost control
27:05
Speaker 1: of his car after crossing railroad tracks, got hit by
27:07
Speaker 1: an oncoming car and died on impact. Our family flew
27:11
Speaker 1: there from Vancouver and only had a few hours to spend.
27:13
Speaker 1: Because of some white mishaps, we couldn't even bring his
27:16
Speaker 1: ashes back with us. Mailing his ashes was not recommended
27:20
Speaker 1: to the end of the Christmas season, so we are
27:21
Speaker 1: planning on having a funeral for him without ashes. Luckily,
27:25
Speaker 1: the company he was to work for he was a
27:28
Speaker 1: heavy equipment mechanic and the student at the time, um
27:31
Speaker 1: he Uh. They heard of the news and their head
27:33
Speaker 1: safety guy personally delivered his ashes to our home. We
27:36
Speaker 1: then flew to Manila on Christmas Day and right back
27:39
Speaker 1: in Canada on New Year's I haven't felt the usual
27:42
Speaker 1: symptoms of grief yet, but I'm sure I'll break down
27:44
Speaker 1: and start bawling on the sea bus or something, which
27:47
Speaker 1: would be super awkward. Uh. The first month was definitely
27:50
Speaker 1: the hardest. The moment I always the moment I heard
27:53
Speaker 1: the news has been burnt in my mind. That in
27:55
Speaker 1: a single flower in front of his dorm room from
27:58
Speaker 1: one of the students. The tears really started flowing after
28:01
Speaker 1: I saw that, guys and I saw life in a
28:03
Speaker 1: completely different way. The little things really do count anyway.
28:07
Speaker 1: Mike was most likely listening to podcast at the time.
28:10
Speaker 1: That's what he does when he buys groceries, and he
28:12
Speaker 1: was on the way to the grocery store. Your voices,
28:15
Speaker 1: in fact, may have been the last he heard. Who knows. Uh.
28:18
Speaker 1: There was a frozen pineapple in the crash site, and
28:21
Speaker 1: I know that was his because he loved that stuff.
28:23
Speaker 1: But that said, just in case, he's listening to the
28:26
Speaker 1: podcast in another life, could you please do one on
28:29
Speaker 1: pineapples and that would be for Mike and John. We
28:34
Speaker 1: will certainly look into pineapples my friend and cool. Yeah,
28:37
Speaker 1: I think we should. Yeah, hang in there, dude, it's
28:40
Speaker 1: very tough. I can't imagine going through something like that,
28:42
Speaker 1: but I'm glad we could help in some small, tiny,
28:45
Speaker 1: tiny way. Yeah, and thanks for letting us know about that.
28:47
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. Um. Wow, that was you selected, maybe
28:53
Speaker 1: the best one. Yeah, and we got some good emails
28:56
Speaker 1: about Greek too. Yeah, thanks to everyone who's senting those
28:58
Speaker 1: in and like people or their souls sometimes it's very touching. Yeah,
29:01
Speaker 1: we hope we make you feel better if you want
29:05
Speaker 1: to tell us a story about how we made your
29:08
Speaker 1: family feel a little bit better or you or whatever,
29:11
Speaker 1: as long as we didn't make you feel worse, although
29:14
Speaker 1: we should probably hear about that too. You can tweet
29:17
Speaker 1: to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
29:20
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
29:23
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29:25
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, and you can join us at our
29:28
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