JournalofFairTrade 2 1 1

Journal of Fair Trade
Journal of the Fair Trade Society,

supported by the Pluto Educational Trust
Action ≈ Learning ≈ Theory ≈ Justice
Volume 2 • Issue 1 • June 2020
Atypical Fair Trade Collection – Part 1
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Cover design by Melanie Patrick
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ISSN 2513-9525 (print)

ISSN 2513-9533 (online)
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Journal of Fair Trade
Journal of the Fair Trade Society,
supported by the Pluto Educational Trust
Action ≈ Learning ≈ Theory ≈ Justice
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Pauline Tiffen
JOURNAL MANAGER
Sally Jennings
FAIR TRADE SOCIETY CO-ORDINATOR

Ellie Sugg
EDITORIAL BOARD
Robert Doherty (University of York)
Daniel Jaffee (Portland State University)
Patrick Van Zwanenberg (Centro de Investigaciones para la Transformación, Argentina)
ADVISORY BOARD
Dana Geffner (Fair World Project)
Jamie Hartzell (Divine Chocolate)
Laura Raynolds (Center for Fair & Alternative Trade)
Erinch Sahan (World Fair Trade Organization)
Hans Theyer (Fairtrade America)
Diederik van Iwaarden (Utrecht University)
AIMS AND SCOPE
The Journal of Fair Trade (JoFT) aims to be a source of leading, multi-disciplinary research on Fair Trade,
encompassing a full range of topics, interests and voices in new works, ideas and lively debate about the
challenges and future of Fair Trade. The concept of Fair Trade for this Journal includes all efforts to ensure that
trade is fair for all, with a holistic concept of need and the challenges we face. The work we publish will include
that of academics and mentored producers, business leaders and activists. Our emphasis will be on
documenting and analysing experiences under a rubric of:
Action ≈ Learning ≈ Theory ≈ Justice.
The Fair Trade Society is a membership organisation set up to support the Journal of Fair Trade. Its growing
membership is made up of people who care and who wish to reclaim and reboot the ideals of a distinguished,
global social movement. Members benefit from digital access to the Journal of Fair Trade and joining offers the
opportunity to shape the direction we take.
ABOUT THE PLUTO EDUCATIONAL TRUST

The Pluto Educational Trust (PET) is a UK-registered charity whose aim is the advancement of education. PET
aims to contribute to the publication and dissemination of new thinking that can help address poverty, unmet
social need and human rights. PET recognises that there is often a gap between social activism, practice and
theory that influences society and leads to social change. PET therefore aims to provide new avenues for
activists, practitioners and scholars from around the world to focus their efforts in the social sciences within a
sympathetic framework.
Contents
Fair Trade Futures

Atypicality: foundational principles making trade fairer 1
Pauline Tiffen, George Williams and Patrick Van Zwanenberg
Essays
Fair Trade software: empowering people, enabling economies 4
Peres Were, Julie Madeley and Mädchen Munsell
Fair Trade and distant production: the normalisation of the North in book publishing 13
Audrey Small
The ‘burden’ of traceability in gold supply chains 22

David Finlay
Fair Trade cannabis: a road map for meeting the socio-economic needs and interests
of small and traditional growers 27
Sylvia Kay, Martin Jelsma and David Bewley-Taylor
Changing the optics on palm oil: Fair Trade smallholder supply chains from the
palm’s ancestral home in West Africa 35
George Williams
Bioleft: open-source seeds for low-input farming systems 39

Almendra Cremaschi and Patrick van Zwanenberg
Visit our website: www.joft.org.uk
Atypicality: foundational principles making trade fairer
This issue of The Journal of Fair Trade is taking a different approach. We are calling this an ‘Atypical Fair Trade
Collection’ (Part 1). We asked people involved in some rather unusual Fair Trade or ‘fair-trade-like’ initiatives to
write for us. From software and seeds, to palm oil and cannabis, we wanted to know what kinds of products,
connections and social relationships were being developed, and why. What was wrong or unjust about
conventional ways of producing and selling those products or services?
We received a fascinating set of essays and articles, half of which are set out in this edition. There are two
premises for the a-typicality concept that we want to outline in this introduction. The first is that despite the
diversity and unusual nature of these initiatives, compared to more established Fair Trade product areas, some
common, perhaps universal or foundational, principles run through and across all the cases. In addition to the
interesting array of cases and products presented, we hope that their approaches begin to illustrate what
makes trade fairer to all those who need better treatment/terms. It is suggested that these underlying
dimensions of all types of trade are critically important to both those who care about what they buy, and those
who aspire to make such changes in their own business practices and communities.
Righting Wrongs, Deliberative Collaborations

Firstly, the social movements that began the journey of consumer–producer connectivity and direct trading
across all the atypical cases featured in this collection did not prioritise their work based on the scale or
commercial potentialities of the products alone. They focused their energies on forming and strengthening
small-producer organisations, and creating new supply chains connecting into an international trading system
that lacks recognition of those labouring across and within the supply chain. All protagonists described in this
collection have strived to right wrongs, end exclusions and build robust economic exchange on fairer terms.
Above all, the ways of working they chose to adopt both prioritise producer needs and reflect consumer
interests and concerns.
The myriad of initiatives, across all types of products, holds important lessons for those who wish to
understand what underlies responsive and responsible trading. Several of our atypical initiatives have drawn on
ideas about openness and collaboration developed within the emerging free and open-access culture, free/libre
software movement. Nowadays, experimentation with radically open and highly collaborative ways of
producing new knowledge and material objects can be found everywhere from agricultural seeds and farm
machinery; to scientific hardware; to community based ‘maker-spaces’. What is distinctive about these
initiatives is that they support a way of working based on a combination of the free circulation of knowledge,
unencumbered by property rights and other restrictions, and extensive and deliberative collaborations,
widening the number of people involved in working jointly on a shared activity or on a shared conception of a
problem. This approach to working has been spurred on by distinct motivations as the articles in this first of
two collective sets of Atypical Fair Trade essays shows.
Many forces underpin such initiatives and the studies collected here display a diverse set of drivers.
However, prominent among all of these atypicality essays are the aspirations to support more democratic
forms of production, addressing problems that are ill-served by conventional markets and state institutions,
and enhancing broader ideals and norms of solidarity and sharing between conventionally ‘divided’ producers
and consumers. Undoubtedly the availability of networked digital infrastructure and the idea, first developed
by the free/libre software movement, of ‘hacking’ existing intellectual property law to create a legal basis for
creating ‘knowledge commons’ has helped advance the effectiveness of atypical initiatives and help overcome
the issue of ‘distance’.
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Journal of Fair Trade Volume 2, Issue 1, 1–3
Broader Visions, Moving Away from the Core

Secondly, we need to ask why we are talking about ‘atypical’ Fair Trade? This is a conscious decision and a
reflection of the, by now, deep association of fair trade with a core, mostly conventional commodity, product
‘set’. The evolution of Fair Trade under Fairtrade certification systems, with their global reach and inclusion of
all kinds of companies undoubtedly led to a boom: in consumer awareness, routes to market, sales, and
volumes of certified products sold. Numerous ‘Fair Trade’ schemes came into existence. The ‘Fairtrade Mark’ of
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) becoming the largest and most widely recognised. In
2016, UK retail sales of Fairtrade certified products reached £1.64 billion.
However, sales are concentrated in a small group of products and producers. In 2016 seven major Fairtrade
products accounted for 93% of all the farmers and workers in the system: bananas, sugar, cocoa, coffee,
flowers, seed cotton and tea. Around the world, nearly 1,600 producer organizations, representing more than
1.7 million farmers and workers, are active in Fairtrade.1 Fairtrade certified farmers and workers are spread
across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, but with high concentrations in specific countries. For
example in 2014, 49% of all Fairtrade farmers and workers were located in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. These
constitute the top three countries for numbers of Fairtrade farmers and workers, closely followed by India
(Fairtrade International, 2016). Surprisingly, only one quarter of Fairtrade certified farmers and workers are
women (ibid). And, excluded from Fairtrade International’s geographical scope are members of the European
Union and G8-countries, which means that unjust and environmentally damaging work and production
systems, and low socio-economic status and exploitation cannot directly be embraced and transformed within
this system.2
Many organisations have sought to push at the boundaries of this mainstream ‘Fairtrade’ system by
developing supply chains that bring under-represented countries, women producers, new or less well-
established producer groups and different commodities or products into the marketplace. This thrilling
diversity, plus the retained focus on producers and community needs, and resistance to trading models that
perpetuate exclusions and discriminations, links the Fair Trade movement directly with the UN’s 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development. The phrasing of the pledge that ‘no one will be left behind’ (UN Resolution 70/1,
2015) has since become the unofficial sub-title to the accompanying 17 Sustainable Development Goals. A
subsequent publication from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) unpacks this further,
suggesting that there are five key factors that contribute towards people ‘being left behind’: discrimination,
shocks and fragility, governance, socio-economic status, and geography (UNDP, 2018). Unpacking this further
still, ‘discrimination’ is explained as ‘biases, exclusion or mistreatment […] people face based on one or more
aspect of their identity’ – gender, ethnicity and religion for example. ‘Geography’ encompasses those who, as a
result of their place of residence, experience ‘isolation, vulnerability, missing or inferior public services […] or
other infrastructure gaps’. Socio-economic status includes those facing ‘deprivation or disadvantage’ related to
income, life expectancy and education. Finally, ‘shocks and fragility’ refers to exposure to risks such as climate
change, natural hazards and violence. The UNDP emphasises that the pledge is aimed specifically at ‘curbing
inequalities between people, groups and places’; correcting for legacies of discrimination and exclusion both
between and within countries.
New Concepts Needed

All of the articles in Volume 2 Issue 1 involve ‘Fair Trade’ as defined by this Journal of Fair Trade. They reflect
thoughtful and successful efforts to create new concepts, supply chains and connectivity within atypical,
and sometimes unexpected, product areas. At the same time, all of the essays illustrate some of the
challenges of bringing such products to market and overcoming the grip of mainstream, commercial
models, which are mostly devoid of, or are operating in ignorance or opposition to such intents.
1 https://www.fairtrade.net/act/fairtrade-for-producers
2 https://files.fairtrade.net/standards/Geographical_Scope_Policy_EN.pdf
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Atypicality: foundational principles making trade fairer
Notwithstanding, the movement for a just and sustainable economy has exploded into many thousands of
forms and multi-dimensional ethical economy engagements, variously local, national and international.
There is much here in common between all these experiences and their solution-finding trading with the
underlying values of the fair trade movement, but, rather intriguingly, there has so far been little in the way
of interaction between these various movements. We have not yet started the vital task of ‘joining the dots’
and finding the best elements and approaches that spur genuinely fair, change-making trading practices.
We hope this collection will take us a further step on the journey.
February 2020
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Fair Trade Software: empowering people, enabling economies
Peres Were is Director, Strategy and Partnerships for Competa Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. She is involved
in digital skills development as a catalyst for youth employment in Kenya, through research, consulting,
and setting up IT Enabled Services (ITES) firms for both local and international investors in Kenya. She
worked closely with the Kenyan Ministry of Information and Communication in developing policy towards
the growth of Kenya’s ITES industry and served as an Advisor to the former Prime Minister of Kenya.
Her role included positioning Kenya as a global ITES destination by encouraging inward investment into
the country, implementing growth strategies for the industry, driving automation of the public sector
and developing policy for skills development for the ITES sector in Kenya. She has also advised the
government of Uganda on strategies to kick-start growth in its ITES sector through the development of
incentives specific to the country’s ITES sector. Her articles on the ITES industry have been published by
the leading regional business media and international journals. Peres Were holds a B.A in Anthropology
from the University of Nairobi and an MBA from the University of Leicester.
Julie Madeley is an Outsourcing Consultant for Competa IT in the Netherlands. She began her career as
an analytical chemist in the pharmaceutical industry before becoming an expert in Laboratory Information
Management and Chromatography Data Systems (LIMS and CDS). Her expertize lies in the analysis of
business requirements, implementation management, and testing and validation of these systems. With her
former employer, AstraZeneca, Julie gained many years of expertize in system implementation and support.
She has extensive experience of ongoing support using external outsourcing of major software projects to
locations such as India. Julie is the former director of FairSource, a company that promoted the use of Fair
Trade Software in the UK.
Mädchen Munsell is a Communications Intern for Competa CodePamoja in the Netherlands.
Abstract
Fair Trade Software (FTS) builds on the principles of conventional Fair Trade and applies them
to software services in developing countries. Using a model of Shared Value Creation, FTS
leverages reputation enhancement opportunities for companies in OECD countries to encourage
them to share knowledge with partners in developing countries. Working in this way has been
demonstrated to improve the quality and capacity of software companies in developing countries
and generate digital employment for urban youth. The improvement gains can lead to significant
improvements in other sectors that rely on digital services, e.g. healthcare and education.
Keywords: ICT4D; digital training in developing countries; Fair Trade innovation; Fair Trade
Software
Introduction
Rapid advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have contributed to making the world
the global village that it is now often described as, and the digital economy has brought the countries of the
world into closer interactions with each other. Trading of diverse digital products and services now takes place
on a global scale hitherto not experienced. Lower Middle Income countries present a large market for ICTs, and
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the capability of ICTs to transform sectors such as healthcare, transport and logistics, or microfinance in
developing nations is well documented. OECD High Income countries are the areas associated with
technological innovation. These countries have maintained a lead in ICT and continue to be regarded as the
knowledge centre in the field of ICT [1]. Least Developed countries and Lower Middle Income countries mainly
play the role of consumers rather than producers of software and ICTs, which can be attributed to various
factors including limited expertize and resources to support the industry.
Despite this, digital employment is recognized as playing a key role in employment creation in developing
countries and, therefore, there is an urgent need for more effective collaboration and knowledge sharing to
fast-track the growth of the software industry in developing nations [2,3]. Fair Trade Software (FTS) is a recent
development that has evolved from the conventional Fair Trade movement with the goal of creating
employment both directly, though work such as software development, and also indirectly by enabling the use
of digital technologies to achieve transformation of other sectors. Taking the established Fair Trade principles
of ‘North–South’ partnership and supply chain intervention, FTS extends Fair Trade into the digital world to
help seed the software industry in developing countries and provide employment relevant to marginalized
urban youth. This essay explores the FTS concept and shows how FTS can offer a sustainable model in value
chains for software production and services.
Conventional Fair Trade

Fair Trade is a market-based social movement that aims to protect the interests of producers located in
developing countries by implementing changes to value chains that ensure greater equity. The origins can be
traced to European and American imports of textiles and handicrafts from socially and economically
disadvantaged communities around the world [4]. Under Fair Trade practices, producers, distributors, exporters
and retailers must adhere to established rules and regulations that govern trade dynamics. The rules and
regulations are established by a number of network organizations that exist to promote the interests of the
movement and to certify that products are made in accordance with the movement’s aims. One such
organization is the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO).
Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity
in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to,
and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South.
(World Fair Trade Organization, 2019)
The WFTO promotes the need for change in the rules and practice of conventional trade, and shows how a
successful business can also put people first. This is further expounded through ten ‘Principles of Fair Trade’,
which establish core values that include creating opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers;
transparency and accountability; fair trading practices; payment of a fair price; good working conditions;
commitment to non-discrimination and gender equity; capacity building; and respect for the environment.
Fair Trade has achieved considerable success and is a well-known and popular concept with consumers.
However, the Fair Trade movement also continues to (sometimes unfairly) attract criticism in areas such as
inability to monitor standards, lack of supply chain transparency, inefficiency, failure to incorporate ideas from
the latest theories on economic development, and increasing environmental criticism related to carbon
footprint [5,6,7].
Fair Trade Software

In many developing countries IT infrastructure, such as Internet connectivity, has improved significantly, and
ICT skills are increasingly taught at schools and universities. This should have opened up a world of
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opportunities for urban youth, a very large and growing marginalized group [8], to earn incomes from the
digital economy. However structural market inefficiencies exist, creating capability and capacity gaps that
make it difficult for local companies to deliver complex ICT projects or build sustainable ICT businesses at scale
[9]. Unemployment is high amongst graduates in African countries and this is often blamed on poor quality of
education or a mismatch between education and the requirements of employers [10]. In the context of ICT,
Nairobi University anecdotally estimates that 90% of students fail to find a job in ICT. Consequently, many
graduates form small companies as a freelance vehicle and an alternative to unemployment. Formed by
inexperienced graduates, African-owned ICT companies often struggle to survive, competing against each
other for small-scale projects and lacking the management expertize required to engage the market at a higher
level. Capability and capacity gaps in the local market result in many mid-sized projects remaining unfulfilled,
while most large-budget IT projects are outsourced to international IT service providers outside the continent,
excluding local players from participation.
A particular concern is that many of the unfulfilled projects are in areas of high social impact, such as
healthcare, transport or agriculture. For example, an NGO may have a project to build, say a local language
mobile phone app to provide remote health assistance, check the queue at a well or check the price of products
at a market. The business model and requirements for the project may be well understood but the NGOs may
struggle to get developers who can deliver their projects on time and to the standard they require. Rules
regarding the spending of funds may require money to be spent in-country, despite the lack of appropriate
skills. Budgets are often too low to make outsourcing a viable last resort even if it is possible. Key projects fail
due to capacity gaps in managing software development projects.
In 2010 Dutch software firm Competa began to investigate whether extending Fair Trade principles to the
software development industry could be a way for people in Lower Middle Income countries to acquire the skills
required to close the gaps and locally create software designed to solve local problems in areas such as
healthcare. The firm made contact with small ICT companies in Nairobi, Kenya, and ran a number of small pilot
projects to test the concept. The initial vision for FTS was as a form of ‘Impact Sourcing’ [11], whereby software
would be developed by cross-border teams with team members in both developing countries and the EU. It was
anticipated that corporate customers could be found who would want products built in this way, such as
websites bearing a Fair Trade Software label as a way to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR)
credentials to consumers. Like many other Impact Sourcing initiatives, the initial FTS concept proved difficult to
sell. From the corporate ICT perspective, potential customers had concerns over the quality of products, and/or
very low-cost expectations due to the perception that wages are very low in Lower Middle Income countries.
From the corporate CSR perspective, it was found that companies prefer to create CSR initiatives under their
own brand rather than use a Fair Trade brand that may not resonate with all of their customer segments. These
problems were further compounded because ICT departments tender contracts, and FTS or CSR credentials do
not have a heavy weighting in the selection criteria. Furthermore, those responsible for CSR are rarely involved
in ICT projects. Nonetheless there was considerable interest in the concept on an individual level. Feedback from
initial conversations with potential clients, meetups, conferences et cetera showed that many, especially
younger, people could see a connection between the widely known Fair Trade concept and the desire to utilize
digital technologies for economic improvement in less developed countries. Encouraged by this, an independent
not-for-profit organization, the Fair Trade Software Foundation, was founded in 2011 to attempt to develop a
working economic model and establish rules and regulations applicable to Fair Trade and the software industry.
Over the last decade the Foundation has evolved the concept of FTS towards a model based on Shared Value
Creation (see below) [12].
The Foundation, governed by an independent international board, aims to create growth and opportunity
in the ICT sector in developing countries through global partnerships, with a focus on improving economic
prospects for marginalized urban youth in developing countries through sustainable digital employment. As
with conventional Fair Trade, FTS focuses on value chain innovation. The FTS concept has evolved from simple
Impact Sourcing, with the emphasis now on creating and sustaining partnerships between software companies
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in developed and developing countries and encouraging them to collaborate on projects in Africa. A typical
model is that an African partner is paid by a contracting client, such as an NGO, with an EU-based partner
supporting the project pro bono. FTS programs have a strong mentorship component that leverages local
teams working with more experienced international teams, creating an ‘expertize supply chain’ that supports
the transfer of modern best practice in teamwork and management to people in developing countries. The goal
of this is to help create a robust local IT sector in developing countries, not only creating employment directly
but also shortening and strengthening supply chains, thus enabling the development of other sectors that are
highly dependent on IT.
It should be noted that some of the people working on FTS projects are from very poor backgrounds,
many had no job prior to being involved in an FTS project, and several have been from slums or been
homeless. Some practitioners of conventional forms of Fair Trade have a preconception that poverty is a rural
phenomenon, and there is a prevalent misconception that possession of a university degree implies a wealthy
background. However, the majority of graduates in developing countries are predominantly locally educated
(as opposed to children of wealthy parents educated abroad) and, whilst some may be from backgrounds that
could be defined as ‘middle class’, graduates include people from poor backgrounds who have managed to
obtain government scholarships or have benefitted from other initiatives to attain higher education.
Educational initiatives include conventional Fair Trade initiatives – revenue from Fair Trade funds schools in
poor areas and the beneficiaries of such initiatives are now old enough to graduate. For example, one of the
people who was trained on CodePamoja and went on to run the Barclays bank project (see below) grew up on
a small farm selling crops to a Fair Trade cooperative and attended university on a scholarship. It cannot be a
goal of Fair Trade to educate people who are then unemployed or only engaged in low-grade employment –
ways need to be found to enable social mobility beyond agricultural and rural communities. By filling in the
missing rungs on the economic ladder FTS helps to extend Fair Trade, offering an alternative to agricultural
employment for the offspring of those engaged in production of conventional Fair Trade products and thereby
improving social mobility.
FTS has a clear benefit for participants located in developing countries, but the economic driver to
encourage participation by companies in OECD High Income countries is perhaps less apparent. Economists
Porter and Kramer [13] demonstrated the link between competitive advantage and participation in social value
creation. Competa has demonstrated that direct financial incentive to participate in FTS projects is not
necessary as secondary commercial benefits, such as brand and reputation enhancement or improved
employee recruitment and retention, can far outweigh any potential benefit derived from simple financial
margins on products or services sold (see Figure 1).
Other companies are now running similar projects and a joint project between Competa and German
development agency GIZ, WorkPamoja, exists to encourage more organizations to work in this way.
WorkPamoja seeks to promote three-way partnerships between NGOs and others with a need for ICT services
in sub-Saharan Africa, with local ICT companies working under the guidance of mentors based in EU countries
in accordance with FTS principles. To date, WorkPamoja has been in contact with more than 150 NGOs and
development organizations, and around 20 projects are in the start-up phase.
FTS is proving to be sustainable due to the mutual benefit derived from collaboration, and is not reliant on
making a margin on products sold in developed countries, nor on charity, philanthropy or other external
donations (see Figure 1).
The FTS Foundation is run by a board with representatives bringing domain expertize from industry,
technology, economic development and media. The Foundation actively engages with governmental
development organizations, universities and non-governmental organizations on current themes in both
software engineering and international economic development, with the goal of further developing the
concept of FTS.
The FTS Foundation strives to avoid or eliminate criticisms of conventional Fair Trade, particularly in the
region of standards compliance and monitoring. The Foundation is collaborating with Utrecht University on the
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Figure 1 Impact Sourcing vs. Shared Value Creation
development of a Social and Environmental Auditing tool, openSEA [14]. This is a web-based tool that allows
360-degree reporting and auditing of project participants, and shows results in several ways (text, numbers,
charts). The openSEA tool facilitates benchmarking and can check the results of auditing against thresholds for
pre-defined certification levels. The Foundation intends to make tools such as this available to other groups,
including to the wider Fair Trade community to help address auditing, monitoring and transparency concerns.
In addition to efforts to improve standards compliance and monitoring through the use of digital tools, the
Foundation is keen to stress that the digital supply chain of FTS inherently avoids issues such as carbon
footprint that are associated with the transportation of products. Digital payment reduces the opportunity for
corruption.
Case Studies
The FTS model has successfully delivered a number of ICT projects in Kenya. Some examples are given below.
CodePamoja
CodePamoja (meaning ‘Code Together’ in Kiswahili) is a training program to give IT graduates in Kenya the
opportunity to gain work experience by participating in real software development projects with
counterparts in the Netherlands. The program recognizes that important soft-skills, such as project
management, can only be learned by working with more experienced mentors. Collaboration in virtual
teams with members in different geographical locations provides role models that are otherwise in short
supply in developing economies. Over a two-year period CodePamoja trained over 100 young people in
Nairobi, improving skills and increasing employment prospects for young graduates and, at the same time,
ensuring the adoption of international best practices among the Kenyan firms that hire people from the
CodePamoja program. CodePamoja succeeded in transferring key project management and customer
requirements analysis skills needed to make a success of IT projects that would otherwise have failed due to
poor management. Many of these projects have a real social impact in areas such as healthcare and finance
[15]. As a result, youth engaged in these projects have benefited from business growth, access to jobs,
international linkages and partnerships. Around 90% of those trained secured employment or have gone on
to form start-up companies, compared to only 10% of regular IT graduates. A recent (2019) survey conducted
by the authors of this essay on behalf of an international NGO followed up former CodePamoja attendees
and invited them to report a number of metrics designed to measure career progress. The survey revealed
significantly faster career growth and much higher current salaries for CodePamoja-trained graduates
compared with graduates who did not attend the program (see Figure 2). Partners are currently being
sought to expand the program further.
Barclays Bank of Kenya (now renamed Absa Group)

Barclays Bank of Kenya required a mobile customer relationship management system to enable the bank to
provide accounts and microfinance for people in rural areas who were previously almost impossible to finance.
The complex software was built by a Nairobi IT firm, BTI Millman, with Fair Trade Software collaboration to
teach project management. The proprietary software is now being used by the bank across Kenya and has
resulted in more than a million people in rural Kenya gaining their first bank account and access to financial
services, and tens of millions of Euro being made available as microfinance.
mPAMANECH
mPAMANECH (Maternal, Newborn and Child Health) is an FTS-enabled project for the African Population and
Health Research Centre. Nairobi IT firm DewCIS built the mobile application to replace numerous paper-based
forms and allow healthcare facilities to save and store patient data for better referral and management of
patients. Fair Trade Software collaboration taught the skills required to understand how to gather and analyze
customer requirements from people who are not used to providing input for IT projects.
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Figure 2 CodePamoja
Current Developments and Challenges

The concept of FTS is now adequately developed and tested, so the present challenge lies in scaling the
concept and encouraging wider adoption. The number of organizations involved in FTS is growing and the
Foundation currently has around twenty members and forty prospective members from commercial,
government, academic and NGO organizations in the EU and sub-Saharan Africa. The Foundation would like to
increase participation further – the number of ICT companies in the EU is sufficiently large that it is likely that
far more EU companies could participate in FTS projects without a dilution of the commercial benefit in the EU.
One of the mechanisms being considered to encourage wider adoption of FTS is the creation of tools and
services that can be used more widely. Where possible tools will be released as Open Source software to
encourage product development and re-use. The intention is to host some tools, such as openSEA, on the
Foundation website to make them available at a low cost, or for free.
It is thought that the principle of finding synergy through cross-border collaboration can be applied across a
number of other sectors – there is nothing particularly special about the ICT industry other than the high
degree of international collaboration and extensive use of online collaboration tools. The Foundation welcomes
contact with other sectors interested in adopting the model.
A new FTS Foundation website is currently under development and is scheduled for release by the end of
Q2 2020.
Conclusion
Fair Trade Software is a growing initiative grounded in the internationally accepted principles of Fair Trade. It
has been demonstrated that by extending Fair Trade into digital employment for urban youth, FTS can
leverage international synergies to achieve measurable development goals through collaboration and the
exchange of knowledge. ICT companies and ICT professionals in developing countries find that through
participation in FTS projects they have improved capacity to engage with local markets, unlock potential and
facilitate the growth of other sectors of their economies. However, FTS is not simply about job creation but
rather about giving people the ability to create the digital tools they need to unlock other sectors of the
economy. The capacity of FTS to enable and catalyze forward linkages into other sectors of the economy
means that FTS carries the potential to play a role in transforming economies, as well as improving social
mobility in developing countries.
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Informatics Working Paper no. 68. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3431732 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.3431732
4. Cole, N.L. and Brown, K. (2014). The problem with fair trade coffee. American Sociological Association, 13(1), 50–55.
5. Cole, N.L. and Brown, K. (2014). The problem with fair trade coffee. American Sociological Association, 13(1), 50–55.
6. Smith, A.M. (2009). Evaluating the criticisms of Fair Trade. Economic Affairs, 29, 29–36.
7. Smith, A.M. (2009). Fair trade, diversification and structural change: Towards a broader theoretical framework of
analysis. Oxford Development Studies, 37(4), 457–478.
8. Sommers, M. (2010). Urban youth in Africa. Environment and urbanization, 22(2), 317–332.
9. Heeks, R. (2002, October 30). Failure, success and improvisation of information systems projects in developing
countries. Development Informatics Working Paper no. 11. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3477762 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3477762
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10. Ponge, A. (2013). Graduate unemployment and unemployability in Kenya: Transforming university education to cope
with market demands and the lessons for Africa. International Journal of Social Science Tomorrow, 2(3), 1–12.
11. Carmel, E., Lacity, M.C. and Doty, A. (2016). The impact of impact sourcing: Framing a research agenda. In Nicholson,
Brian; Babin, Ron; Lacity, Mary C. (Eds.) Socially Responsible Outsourcing (pp. 16–47). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
12. Porter M.E. and Kramer M.R. (2019). Creating Shared Value. In G. Lenssen and N. Smith (Eds). Managing Sustainable
Business. Dordrecht: Springer.
13. Porter M.E. and Kramer M.R. (2019). Creating Shared Value. In G. Lenssen and N. Smith (Eds). Managing Sustainable
Business. Dordrecht: Springer.
14. Haxby, A. and Lekhi, R. (2017, May). Building capacity in Kenya’s ICT market using cross-border scrum teams. In Jyoti
Choudrie; M. Sirajul Islam; Fathul Wahid; Julian M. Bass; Johanes Eka Priyatma (Eds.) International Conference on Social
Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (pp. 359–366). Cham: Springer.
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accounting, 2019 13th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), Brussels, Belgium,
1–12. doi: 10.1109/RCIS.2019.8877042
12
Fair Trade and distant production: the
normalisation of the North in book publishing
Audrey Small
Audrey Small is a lecturer in the French department at the University of Sheffield. Her current research
areas include publishing in West Africa and the problematic categories related to ‘African literature’.
She is currently completing a monograph on francophone African publishing and the question of a
‘postcolonial library’.
Abstract
This article seeks to articulate some of the major theoretical difficulties raised by associating
book publishing with Fair Trade, building on the concept of the ‘distant producer’ as
critiqued by both Frank Trentmann and Matthias Zick Varul. Where these scholars examine
the framing of the Fair Trade producer as always being based in the global South, this article
explores an instance of a ‘distant Northern producer’ of sorts, with particular reference to the
publishing of ‘francophone African literature’. The dominance of Northern publishers in this
field creates a complex series of ‘normalisations of the North’, in which Paris is normalised
as the centre of cultural production; the French language is normalised as the dominant
language of culture; and non-print literatures are marginalised in global cultural production.
Specific issues concerning intellectual production and property then may be seen as sitting
uneasily alongside traditional models and perceptions of Fair Trade.
Keywords: livre équitable; International Alliance of Independent Publishers; francophone

African literature
Where historical overviews of the contemporary concept of Fair Trade refer to individual types of product, they
quite accurately cite ‘handicrafts’ and textiles as the first major group of products to emerge on the market in
the 1960s, followed by commodity foodstuffs such as chocolate and coffee in the 1980s,1 and then efforts to
develop fair trade in fashion, music and tourism emerging later. To this day, books are not part of the familiar
iconography of ‘Fair Trade’ for the contemporary consumer; while an image of a cup and saucer or of the
outline of a T-shirt in the correctly branded context easily invokes commodities such as coffee and cotton, there
is no such immediately identifiable image for a fairly traded book, nor much evidence of consumer concern for,
or awareness of, issues of fair trade in the publishing industry. Publishing has always had its own iconography –
particularly the colophon, today the publisher’s logo but historically that of the printer – which is perhaps
understood more in terms of relative prestige than of specific modalities of trade. A certain perception of book
publishing as a prestige industry, employing highly skilled and highly educated producers throughout its supply
chain, and targeting highly educated consumers with high levels of disposable income, has perhaps
contributed towards making book publishing a rare arena for discussions of fair trade.
However, from its inception in 2002 the International Alliance of Independent Publishers has explicitly
incorporated the language of ‘fair trade’ into its work on publishing; from the French commerce équitable and
the Spanish comercio justo, the Alliance created the phrases livre équitable and libro justo, rendered as ‘Fair
1 See for example Eagle L. and Dahl S. (2005). Ethical issues in marketing relationships. In L. Eagle and S. Dahl (Eds). Marketing Ethics and Society (pp. 75–99,
p. 84). London: Sage; and Nicholls A. and Opal, S. (2005). Fair Trade: Market-Driven Ethical Consumption (pp. 19–24). London: Sage.
13
Trade Book’ in English. The Alliance’s short definition of this idea on their website deploys some familiar ideas
in discussions of fair trade, moving from an overarching idea of ‘solidarity’ to the specific action of intervention
on pricing, via mentions of the ‘sharing of costs linked to intellectual and physical production of books’, and the
importance of ‘respecting the publishers’ cultural contexts and identities’.2
The purpose of this article is not to analyse the work of the Alliance specifically,3 nor to set out prescriptions
on how or whether the idea of fair trade should or should not be applied to book publishing, in any part of the
global Souths or Norths. Instead, the focus is on one particular area of contention that brings together
longstanding debates in the fields of both fair trade and of francophone African literature, and which allows for
an initial appraisal of the idea of fair trade as applied to books: the question of ‘production’. To do this, we will
take as a starting point the analyses presented by Frank Trentmann and Matthias Zick Varul, with specific
reference to the ways they both criticise the construction of a ‘distant producer’.4 This will allow for an
exploration of the impacts of distant production. The idea of ‘distant production’, building on what Trentmann
and Varul say about the expected ‘distant producer’ in their examples, further complicates the image of fair
trade that they criticise, and could open up new avenues in the debate about fair trade models in a productive
way. While the distant producer in the sources analysed by Trentmann and Varul is located in the global South,
in my example ‘distant production’ is occurring in the global North. Seen from the South, the book publishing
industry may be viewed as an instance of distant production. This de-centring of the North chimes with
Trentmann’s call for attention to ‘a longer and more troubled genealogy of consumption and power’5 in
discussions of fair trade but, as we shall see, does not resolve the multiple problems involved in circumscribing
what would constitute fair trade in the trade in print.
Both Trentmann and Varul locate the producer and the consumer of fair trade goods in certain types of
economy. Trentmann’s examination of colonial deployments of ideas that connect to contemporary fair trade,
such as the British ‘Empire Marketing Board’ of the interwar period and its campaigns to encourage British
consumers to support producers in the distant colonies,6 shows how ideas of fair trade can be traced much
further back in history than the 1960s. Alongside troubling ideas of the relative ‘hygiene’ of produce from
different colonies, Trentmann explores the ways in which ‘[m]oral consumerism […] could serve imperialist
projects’ and ‘Fair Trade can be said to create a dyadic relationship of carer and dependent’.7 Varul’s
contemporary focus, on the other hand, allows him to go further in a striking critique of what he calls a
‘romantic commodification’8 in which a self-defeating type of patronising ‘fair trade imagination’9 ends up
undermining efforts to establish truly ethical modes of consumption. Such criticism of fair trade is a familiar
one, though many working in the field might respond that the picture is not so bleak, and Varul himself is at
pains to emphasise that he does see fair trade as a worthy goal and that his specific examples do not condemn
the entire enterprise.
Turning to what Trentmann and Varul say directly about ‘producers’, the picture nonetheless does seem
bleak. Both writers dissect the problems that arise in a simplistic perceptual binary of ‘Southern producers and
Northern consumers’.10 In this pre-defined, unequal relationship, ‘distant producers’ in the global South are
2 The short presentation of the Alliance’s definition of the ‘Fair Trade Book’ in English, French and Spanish is available on their website: www.alliance-
editeurs.org, along with pdf copies of slightly longer statements on their conception of this term. Useful publications on the Alliance’s work include Luc Pinhas’
Éditer dans l’espace francophone (Paris: Alliance des éditeurs indépendants, 2005), the collective Des paroles et des actes pour la bibliodiversité (Paris: Alliance
des éditeurs indépendants, 2006), and their journal Bibliodiversity.
3 It is also important to note at this stage that the Alliance is by no means the first or only organisation to represent a network of publishers, in the global
South or elsewhere. Hans Zell, a seminal source on publishing and book development in Africa, provides an impressive list of ‘supportive’ organisations on his
website: http://www.hanszell.co.uk/links.htm. The range of national and international associations that pre-date the Alliance, and the intensity of their activity,
are well known to actors in the field.
4 Trentmann, F. (2007). Before ‘fair trade’: Empire, free trade, and the moral economies of food in the modern world. Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space, 25(1079–1102), p. 1080; Varul, M.Z. (2008). Consuming the Campesino. Cultural Studies 22.5 654–679, p. 661.
5 Trentmann, p. 1080.
6 Trentmann, pp. 1082–1087.
7 Trenmann, p. 1086.
8 Varul, p. 659 and infra.
9 Varul, p. 661.
14
Fair Trade and distant production
Audrey Small
altruistically helped out by ‘heroic affluent consumers’11 in the North. Southern producers may then all too
easily be ‘exoticised,12 in Trentmann’s terms, or ‘commodified’ to the extent of becoming ‘exhibits of
authenticity’ in Varul’s.13 Furthermore, the Southern consumer disappears entirely from view in this
relationship. In this construction the Southern consumer has no agency whatsoever in choosing whether or not
to be ‘heroic’ in selecting fair trade products; as consumers, they simply do not exist.
The dismaying picture that emerges from some of the conclusions drawn by Trentmann and Varul would
seem to suggest that the very last thing one should do is look to models of ‘fair trade’ for ways to think through
problems in book publishing. Varul’s analysis in particular suggests that the ‘fair trade imagination’ should be
viewed as a cautionary tale rather than as any kind of potentially useful lens. Yet this framing of a singular
Southern producer as ‘distant’, and the total occlusion of any Southern consumer, could give rise to useful new
appositions of questions that seem to recur in analyses of both fair trade and francophone African literature.
This article examines three instances of the ‘normalisation of the North’ in order to explore how some of the
problems identified by Trentmann and Varul may be reproduced in the book trade, and to propose some initial
questions about what a fair trade in book publishing might mean. Examples are limited to ‘francophone Africa’,
a clumsy but evergreen generalisation that groups together very different countries where French may rarely
be an individual’s first, or only, language but often dominates in print production.
There are two important problems that should be dealt with as preliminaries. Firstly, publishing is a complex
business anywhere in the world, and formal FLO certification would present a serious challenge to any
publishing enterprise. Alex Nicholls and Charlotte Opal have pointed out that the process of Fair Trade
certification is better adapted to some products than others, arguing that some are so ‘diverse in terms of
production techniques and specifications’ that it would be ‘nearly impossible to devise and audit certification
standards’ to suit.14 This would certainly apply to the process of producing a book, where compliance with fair
trade certification rules would surely need to be demonstrated on every aspect, from the sourcing of paper and
the selection of printer, to fair reward for the writer of the book, via attention to copyright and distribution
contracts. In a search for a good example to highlight the uniqueness of the book industry, one study of
publishing in the USA contrasted it with ‘selling cornflakes’15 to support a special case for book publishing. This
highlights one area of complexity in thinking through questions of ‘production’ in print literature: a special case
is often made for books, for an array of cultural, educational, political and social reasons. Furthermore,
complex questions of the value attached to individual roles in the production of a book are permanently in play.
How illustrators and translators are rewarded, or even credited, in the physical presentation of a book has been
a particular source of contention,16 and a particularly knotty problem is how ‘fair trade’ publishing would settle
on models for the role of the publisher in the ‘production’ of literature.
Secondly, the dangers in seeking to apply ideas of fair trade – certainly if seen in the terms that Varul
attacks – to literary production are amplified in the context of the publishing of African literature. Given the
focus on basic commodities in the early decades of fair trade referred to at the start of this article, and the
resulting perception of ‘fair trade’ as perhaps applicable to certain types of product and even certain types of
society, as suggested by both Trentmann and Varul, the risk is of an insulting implication that a literary work
can be reduced to having the cultural significance and longevity of a teabag or a banana. The potentially racist
implications of the latter example are particularly clear. It must therefore be clear in any discussion of fair trade
as applied to literature, or any art form, that the focus is on modes of production in the publishing industry and
structures of trade in the book industry more widely, rather than on literature itself. We should heed Makhily
12 Trentmann, p. 1081, p. 1086.
13 Varul, p. 667, p. 668.
14 Nicholls, A. and Opal, C. (2005). Fair Trade: Market-Driven Ethical Consumption. London: Sage (p. 24). Their discussion of the difficulty in finding reliable
ways to certify fair trade (pp. 127–150) also raises complex questions about the applicability of such industry standards to aesthetic and artistic work.
15 Greco, A.N., Rodríguez, C.E. and Wharton, R.M. (2007). The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century (p. 29). Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
16 The seminal text on the position of translators is Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.
15
Gassama’s warning not to ‘étudier l’Afrique comme l’on étudierait un mammifère’ [‘study Africa as one would
study a mammal’],17 and carefully delineate precisely what any idea of ‘fair trade’ might apply to.
Distant production and the ‘normalisation of the North’

One vital point to take from Gassama’s warning is that there is no single model of publishing that applies to the
entire continent: studies of ‘publishing in Africa’ over the last sixty years have both highlighted shared
challenges and demonstrated areas of great contrast. In terms of understanding how fair trade and book
publishing may connect, looking to elements of colonial history could be instructive or a potential blind alley.
For example, the creation of East African Educational Publishers in Nairobi in the 1960s could not have been
replicated in Conakry, where colonial rule, decolonisation and then relations with the former coloniser all took a
radically different shape.18 Any number of contrasts between modern-day Guinea and Kenya are possible, from
blunt population statistics to the different functioning of markets for print in their major international African
languages (such as Kiswahili or Pulaar). Colonial history may also be of little concern to contemporary
publishers, who may be more focused on decisions taken at the national level over who accesses the school
textbook market, or how the establishment of print on demand publishing (for francophone countries,
particularly by the French publisher L’Harmattan) affects their work.
It is vital to understand which elements of the past and present of any country are in fact important in
shaping an idea of what a ‘fair trade’ in publishing might look like. In the francophone African book trade, the
dominant position of French publishers was established in the colonial period, and continues to this day. There
are many reasons for this structural reality, just one of which is the way world trade policy relates to different
parts of the book industry. The long and complex history of international trade agreements would be one vital
area where expertise from fair trade specialists working with African publishers could shed light on which
aspects of these agreements have the greatest impact on the book trade, and what lessons from the past are
available. For example, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton point to the limited role and marginal
‘bargaining power’ that ‘developing countries’ had in the early post-war years when the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established. (Oddly, Stiglitz and Charlton do not mention the fact that many
‘developing countries’ were still colonised, a factor that may have somewhat affected their freedom of
manoeuvre.) There is little reason to think that the incorporation of ‘the right of developing countries to impose
quantitative and other restrictions to protect their infant industries’19 was agreed upon with any thought of
book publishing, as so few African countries had independent commercial publishing houses in the early post-
war period. Publishing in the North was normal. The focus in major trade talks was on larger markets, where we
could also note that those fair trade icons of agricultural produce and textiles were in fact excluded from the
GATT and covered by separate agreements. Much of the energy in favour of protecting an infant publishing
industry seems to have been diverted into the establishment of the Florence Agreement on the Importation of
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials (1950), which is largely concerned with eliminating import and
export charges, and the Universal Copyright Convention (1952). Both of these led to substantial debate on
whether they actually resulted in a level playing field for African producers of intellectual property.
One might be forgiven for thinking that no such level playing field emerged. Luc Pinhas has observed that
UNESCO research showing that Africa produced 1.4% of book titles published worldwide in 1960 – that great
year of African independences – was still valid at the close of the twentieth century.20 This is despite the huge
17 Gassama, M. (1978). Kuma : Interrogation sur la littérature nègre de langue française (p. 19). Dakar-Abidjan: NEA.
18 On the history of East African educational publishers see, for example, Chakava, H. (1988). A Decade of Publishing in Kenya. 1977–1987. One Man’s
Involvement. In African Book Publishing Record, 4.14, 235–241; and Chakava, H. (1996). Publishing in Africa – One Man’s Perspective, Bellagio Studies in
Publishing, 6. Cambridge, MA: Bellagio Publishing Network and Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Kamau, K. and Mitambo, K. (Eds) (2016). The
festschrift Coming of Age: Strides in African Publishing. Essays in Honour of Dr. Henry Chakava at 70. (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers) also contains
many useful essays on more contemporary issues in publishing in Kenya and elsewhere. On the consequences of the rapid French withdrawal from Guinea
in 1958, see Diallo, A.M. (1995). La Guinée et la Francophonie. In L’Éducateur 15–16 (1993), 36–38; and Kaba, L. (1995). Lettre à un ami sur la politique et le bon
usage du pouvoir. Paris: Présence Africaine (pp. 65–69).
19 Stiglitz, J.E. and Charlton, A. (2005). Fair Trade for All: How Trade can Promote Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press (p. 43).
20 Pinhas, L. (2005). Éditer dans l’espace francophone. Paris: Alliance des éditeurs indépendants (p. 74).
16
Audrey Small
growth in population, in the formal education sector and in African print literature itself. Global trade policies in
their widest form certainly contribute to the overall economic context for African publishers, but more specific
policies – set at the international and national levels – also have a major impact. For African publishers
themselves, the more immediate policy question centres upon how the market for school books is organised,
and they are unanimous in emphasising the importance of the school market in the financial viability of the
publishing industry in any given nation.21 In his study of the school market for UNESCO in 2003, Jean-Pierre
Leguéré makes a direct link between a ‘marché confisqué’ [confiscated market] in educational publishing that
favours foreign publishers and the survival of local publishers, and indeed to that of African literature itself.22
Moussa Samba has recently referred to the situation as a ‘mainmise’ [stranglehold] and to the Hachette livre
company as ‘« mercenaires » de l’édition’ [‘mercenaries’ of publishing].23 Hélène Kloeckner, in turn, estimated
that while the school market represented between 75% and 90% of the overall book market in Africa, just 1% of
these books were produced in Africa.24 There is little reason to imagine that this proportion has changed a
great deal this century. More recently, two scholars who regularly attend the annual Salon du livre de Paris25
reported that while African books were available, the number of titles published in France outnumbered those
published in Africa to the extent of representing a ‘monopole littéraire [dans lequel] on pourrait en effet
concevoir que les littératures africaines sont encore et toujours une « affaire du Nord »’26 [a literary monopoly
[in which] one could indeed think that African literatures are still ‘the North’s business’].
This suggestion of a ‘literary monopoly’ raises three key issues of vital cultural, economic, social and
political importance. There are further issues, which will become apparent in the discussion below, but the
three ‘normalisations of the North’ examined here seem to be the most immediate ones that connect fair trade
and book publishing.
The first consequence of the dominance of French publishing houses in francophone African print literature
is that the North – in this instance France, and specifically Paris – becomes normalised as the centre of creative
activity. While the intellectual work of production (that of the writer) and the physical work of production (such
as that of the printer) might be carried out anywhere in the world, a final ‘production’ – perhaps in a theatrical
sense – takes place in Paris. Book launches, press conferences and participation in festivals and key events like
Paris Livre, all seen as vital parts of the ceremony of publication, add to this sense of cultural performance. Paris
is also inscribed into the physical book itself: in contemporary book design, the publisher is always assured a
cover position and also a mention in the ‘front matter’ where the reader has a second opportunity to register
the name and location of the publisher. (In contrast, detail on where a book was printed and bound is relegated
to the ‘back matter’ inside the book, as information of lesser importance.) The ever-multiplying colophons of
Parisian publishing houses on the covers of African books reinforce the perception that the North is the
‘normal’ place for African writing to be published.
The current catalogues of two of the major Paris-based publishers active in African markets, as mentioned by
Hélène Kloeckner, provide an idea of the scale of Parisian publishing of African writing, and of the scale of
Northern competition faced by African publishers. In 2018, Hachette, France’s largest publisher, announced more
than seventeen thousand nouveautés [new titles], while Éditions L’Harmattan had nearly eleven thousand titles
solely in the ‘Afrique sub-saharienne’ section on its website. In the same year the print catalogue for Nouvelles
Editions Africaines du Sénégal, Senegal’s leading publishing house, contained fewer than a hundred titles.
21 See, for example, Arlindo dos Santos, J. (2006). L’accès au livre et à la lecture : le cas de l’Angola. In Des Paroles et des actes pour la bibliodiversité. Paris:
Alliance des éditeurs indépendants (pp. 85–91); Sylla, O. (2007). Le Livre en Côte d’Ivoire. Paris: L’Harmattan (pp. 19–22; pp. 79–88).
22 Leguéré, J.-P. (2003). Approvisionnement en livres scolaires : vers plus de transparence. Afrique francophone. Paris: UNESCO (p. 22).
23 Samba, M. (2018). L’édition au service de la culture, de la formation, de la recherche et du développement durable en Afrique : Plaidoyer pour une
véritable formation des éditeurs africains. In M. Samba (Ed.) Actes du Colloque International à l’occasion de la célébration du Cinquantenaire de l’EBAD. Les
sciences de l’information documentaire au service de la recherche, de la formation, de l’intégration et du développement durable (pp. 193–200 ; p. 195). Dakar:
Editions de l’EBAD.
24 Kloeckner, H. (2003). À quand une édition scolaire africaine ? Africultures 57, pp. 71–85, p. 71.
25 This major book fair and forum for discussions of publishing, which rivals the Frankfurt Book Fair and prides itself on the numbers of international
participants, was renamed simply ‘Livre Paris’ in 2016.
26 Reboul, A. and Thierry, R. (2013). 33e Salon du livre de Paris : l’édition africaine du centre vers les ‘marges’ (1e partie). Émergences, affirmations,
perspectives. Africultures, http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=article&no=11479.
17
The comparison is not like for like, for many reasons. For example, titles by African authors or aimed at African
markets are only a small part of Hachette’s range, and France’s population is more than four times that of
Senegal. Such blunt statistics are only worth so much, but unless a consumer takes into account all manner of
caveats – a simple example being the relative population sizes of Senegal and France – the ‘shop window’ public
presentation of website and catalogue reinforce the idea that the North is the centre of the African book trade.
This situation has all kinds of complex cultural ramifications that there is not space for here. Recent research by
Claire Ducourneau, for example, has underlined how this Northern centre, particularly via the prestige of certain
publishing houses and the award of high-profile literary prizes, retains a certain power of cultural ‘consecration’
that accrues persistently to the North.27
Overall, by dint of their overweening power, presence and prestige, Parisian publishers seem to have
Adam Smith’s ‘absolute advantage’ in occupying a kind of naturalised space of creative production. ‘Africa’,
in turn, is normalised as a space that does not produce high-status goods or very much by way of intellectual
property. This returns us to the highly problematic ideas of fair trade discussed by Varul. While his arguments
may in places be overstated – for example, that a consumer might be daft enough to ‘imagine themself as
guerrillero’28 on selecting a ‘fair trade’ branded coffee with an image of Che Guevara on the packet – there
are clear resonances for book publishing in his analysis. Varul asserts that certain uses and misuses of what
he calls the ‘fair trade imagination’ mean that ‘Third World intellectuality’ is ‘systematically denied’ and the
notion of the fair trade producer becomes limited to ‘simple manual labour power’.29 This is indeed a danger
in the current dominance of the North in African publishing. The relative rarity of titles published even in
major ‘francophone’ cultural centres such as Abidjan and Dakar, mentioned by the researchers who visited
the Salon du Livre and easily deduced in a comparison of publishers’ catalogues, is a longstanding fact of
publishing life that can be confirmed by a glance through any bibliography of or about francophone African
literature. But it embeds a perception of the North as the centre of intellectual production, while also
making ‘Africa’ a singular space rather than a vastly diverse continent. The repercussions for African writers,
who risk becoming a kind of ‘exotic producer’ if seen predominantly through the distorting lens of distant
production in the North and its literary institutions, have been an important question in discussions of
African literature in European languages for decades.30 Varul’s warning of the dangers of ‘romantic
commodification’ hits the nail on the head.
Furthermore, Varul uses a striking image that is well-known to any reader of African literature to describe
the image of fair trade producer countries in the marketing literature he attacks: ‘Joseph-Conrad-Land’.31 This
invokes Chinua Achebe’s description of Conrad as racist in his presentation of Africa and Africans in Heart of
Darkness. Achebe’s position has been endlessly debated, but a point of interest for our purposes is that his
essay opens precisely with an account of meeting a man on an American university campus who is surprised
to hear that Achebe teaches African literature, as ‘he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff,
you know.’32 Achebe dates this encounter to 1974, but it can still be asked today if traces of that attitude
might still exist, enabled, in part, by current patterns in the creation and circulation of knowledge. Here we
can turn again to the criticisms of ‘fair trade’ put forward by Trentmann and Varul. Trentmann argues that a
key difficulty in perceptions of fair trade is that they are built on ‘uneven cultural representations’33 and that
part of the fair trade approach ‘all too easily envisages a Northern consumer and a Southern producer.’34 This
connects to Varul’s argument that an impact of this imbalance is that ‘the authentic fair trade producer
27 Ducourneau, C. (2017). La Fabrique des classiques africains. Paris: CNRS Editions.

28 Varul, p. 661.
29 Varul, p. 661. Varul does not problematise the phrase ‘Third World’.
30 See, for example, Huggan, G. (2008). Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press
(pp. 106–108).
31 Varul, p. 661.
32 Achebe, C. (1988). An Image of Africa: racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. Oxford: Heinemann (p. 1).
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Audrey Small
remains solely a producer without ever becoming a full member of the global consumer society.’35 Again, it is
important to look carefully at their arguments; both writers are focussed on variants of ‘fair trade’ marketing,
which do not necessarily reflect the views of a thoughtful consumer. The consumer – whether Northern or
Southern or impossible to connect to either identity – may well be a good deal more aware of ‘being marketed
at’ than Trentmann and Varul perhaps give them credit for. But we can note that inaccurate and damaging
perceptions of Africa, such as Achebe’s encounter, are not limited to egregious marketing of ‘fair trade’
produce and producers.
There are two further vital areas where the ‘normalisation of the North’ in book publishing has a very
damaging effect; those of language and of print itself. Here some of the particularly intractable problems
of a fair trade in African literature become clear, even in the work of the International Alliance of
Independent Publishers.
The ‘language question’ in francophone literature is a vast area of debate, which cannot be covered in
detail here.36 Limiting our scope to the idea of the ‘normalisation of the North’, it is clear that the dominance
of French publishers continues to normalise the prominence of the French language in African literatures.
Texts published in African languages in Paris, or even in bilingual editions, form a vanishingly small minority.
This fits with a commercial logic for French publishers of targeting the largest and richest global market for
print publications, but it has important economic and cultural consequences for the publishing industry in
‘francophone’ African countries. As Seydou Nourou Ndiaye, founder of Éditions Papyrus and member of the
International Alliance of Independent Publishers, has pointed out, in some African countries ‘la langue de
l’édition n’est pas celle du peuple’37 [the language of publishing is not that of the people]. This normalisation
of French as the language of publishing risks feeding into a perception of French as the language of literature
itself: a completely alien monolingualism may be normalised in the domain of print and the term ‘literature’
may become understood as solely ‘francophone’. In ‘francophone’ Africa there is a real danger, particularly
among new readers and younger readers, that ‘literature’ is perceived as something in print, in French and
‘in Paris’, truly ‘une affaire du Nord’, rather than something relevant to their lives and open to their influence
and participation.
In Ndiaye’s precision of expression in referencing the language of publishing, we can also infer a comment
on the un-published. As an activist, poet and publisher working regularly across multiple languages, Ndiaye is
very conscious that non-print literatures can all too easily be marginalised or entirely excluded from discussions
of ‘literature’ if print literature is normalised as somehow the sole literature, or the ‘most important’ one, and
other literatures are treated as mere adjuncts. This is the third ‘normalisation’ enabled by the dominance of the
North: that of print literature itself. For instance, it is commonplace in international scholarship on African
literatures to make a distinction between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ literatures, the ‘modern’ being print-
published in European languages and the ‘traditional’ covering a massive range of cultural texts in African
languages.38 This creates a peculiar idea that literatures in African languages are somehow ‘not modern’, when
it would be more accurate to see them as vital sources of creative energy and of constant transformation. If an
opposition to ‘the North’ is needed, a more balanced way of presenting the contrast would be to point to the
relative underdevelopment of oral literatures in the contemporary North. The Northern domination of the
‘shop window’ presentation of African literatures, however, leaves little space for non-print literatures, or for
the creative mixing of languages, forms and genres that do not fit any particular mould. The ways that digital
publishing may break these moulds, for example, receives too little attention in studies of publishing.
35 Varul, pp. 662–663; emphasis in the original.

36 Two very insightful overviews of the range of debates around ‘francophonie’ can be found in Little, R. (2001). World Literature in French; or Is
Francophonie frankly phoney? European Review, 9, 421–436; and Milhaud, O. (2006). Post-Francophonie? In EspacesTemps https://www.espacestemps.net/
articles/post-francophonie/.
37 Seck Guèye, A. (2014, August). Seydou Nourou Ndiaye, éditeur et militant des langues africaines. « Nous avons réussi la prouesse d’écouler les 1000
exemplaires du livre de Thuram en moins de deux mois. » Le Témoin Hebdomadaire d’Informations Générales, 1175(7–13), 4.
38 Ruth Finnegan’s classic analysis gives an example of the range of literatures suggested by the term ‘oral literatures’. See Finnegan, R. (1970). Oral
Literature in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press (pp. 1–15 and infra).
19
Conclusion
These three ‘normalisations of the North’ – those of the ‘location of publishing’ (to adapt Homi Bhabha’s
famous title), of language and of print itself – together create a context in which it is very difficult to spot
anything approaching ‘fairness’ in the contemporary book trade in francophone Africa. This is where the
Alliance’s invocation of ‘fair trade’ could be transformative. Their consultative model, which involves
discussion – and, crucially, decision-making – among a range of African book professionals, places the desires
and needs of the Southern consumer centre-stage, and is debated by experts who know their market
intimately. Members of the Alliance select titles that are of interest to their readerships; set retail prices and
sizes of print run likely to suit their markets; and bring their expertise to bear on many other aspects of book
production.39 A striking example of the latter is the change to the cover of the Alliance’s 2008 edition of
Véronique Tadjo’s L’Ombre d’Imana. Voyages jusqu’au bout du Rwanda, originally published in France in 2000.
According to Florence Bianchi, the original cover was judged unsuitable for ‘African markets’ by the Alliance
members and changed to one that was more ‘adapté’ [appropriate].40 This raises multiple questions: for
example, for which market the original cover was judged suitable – is this a case of the exclusion of the
Southern consumer? – but also how the Alliance came to a new decision, with publishers representing eight
different African countries involved in this particular co-edition, from Tunisia to Rwanda. Such discussions
serve to highlight the fact that African markets are not uniform, an aspect of the book trade that is much less
likely to be acknowledged in a model of distant production.
As noted at the start of this essay, the Alliance is, in many ways, not new, and may often be just one of
many national and international associations a publisher participates in. It seems, however, to be the first
association of its kind to explicitly foreground the terminology of fair trade, and this merits attention. A ‘fairer
trade’ involving a greater diversity of book professionals from the South making decisions in the processes of
book production and distribution could undermine the ‘romantic commodification’ criticised by Varul. The
‘fixed identities’ and ‘aesthetic backcloth’41 he perceives in a faulty model of fair trade could be pushed aside,
and the questions of ‘agency, authenticity, and material culture’42 raised by Trentmann at the end of his analysis
could come to the fore.
The Alliance’s lead in attaching the concept of fair trade to book publishing raises a fascinating set of
questions, though it can offer no instant resolution to the longstanding normalisation of the North. Critics
could point out that the Alliance is itself based in Paris; publishes on a traditional print model and in major
‘international’ languages such as French43; and has acknowledged the support of the Organisation
Internationale de la Francophonie44, which has long attracted concern that ‘beneath the surface of a seemingly
cultural concept, political imperatives generate much of the momentum behind the idea of francophonie.’45
Establishing precisely what fair trade publishing would involve for African countries should draw first and
foremost on the knowledge and experience of African publishers and other book professionals, while also
seeking to privilege the voice of the ‘Southern consumer’, who seems to vanish so entirely from the perception
of fair trade discussed by Trentmann and Varul.
Yet the range of questions raised by the Alliance’s deployment of the idea of fair trade in book publishing –
only some of which have been discussed here – could serve to highlight the unequal relationships examined
by Trentmann and Varul, and to initiate a debate on the ways in which ideas of fair trade as applied to book
39 See Quinqueton, T. (2007). L’Autre Mondialisation de l’Édition. Esprit, 5, 46–53.

40 Bianchi, F. (2008). L’interculturel en bibliothèque : état des lieux, problématique, enjeux’. Bulletin des bibliothèques de France, 6, 105–106. Her full report
is available here: http://bbf.enssib.fr/consulter/bbf-2008-06-0105-014. Tadjo’s bestselling L’Ombre d’Imana. Voyages jusqu’au bout du Rwanda was originally
published by Editions Actes Sud (Paris, 2000).
41 Varul, p. 668.
43 There are limits to this line of criticism: while the Alliance has established ‘language networks’ in three European languages that have a colonial history in
Africa, there are also networks of publishers working in Arabic and Farsi, each of which has its own unique history and constituency.
44 See, for example, the back cover of the 2007 launch catalogue of the Alliance’s ‘Terres solidaires’ series, available here: https://issuu.com/alliance_des_
editeurs/docs/catalogue_terres_solidaires. This collection included Tadjo’s L’Ombre d’Imana, cited above.
45 Hargreaves, A.G. and McKinney, M. (1997). Introduction: The post(-)colonial problematic in contemporary France. In A.G. Hargreaves and M. McKinney
(Ed.). Post-colonial Cultures in France (p. 3). London and New York: Routledge.
20
Audrey Small
publishing may be of service in opposing the damaging inaccuracies that these scholars examine. The ‘distant
production’ of books is a problem for publishers in ‘francophone Africa’ that is not replicated identically in all
‘francophone African’ countries, in other African countries or in other parts of the South. Yet expertise about
fair trade could prove productive in answering fundamental questions that have yet to be treated by
international trade mechanisms, the publishing industry, assorted literary institutions and international
scholarship. The concept of ‘fair trade’ is constructed and interpreted in both local and global cultures,
including being constructed in print, as here. The Alliance’s choice to specifically invoke the notion of ‘fair
trade’ therefore raises important questions for readers and for scholars, and perhaps more widely for
questions of fair trade in the arts.
21
The ‘burden’ of traceability in gold supply chains
David Finlay
David Finlay is Responsible Minerals Manager at the Fairtrade Foundation. His role is focused on two
main areas – supporting businesses in the UK to use Fairtrade Gold in their supply chains and, additionally,
working with institutional donors and impact investors to accelerate the number of mine sites aligning
with Fairtrade standards.
Abstract
Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) constitutes 15% (600 tonnes) of global gold
production but, as a sector, remains largely veiled to both businesses and consumers in
developed Western markets. The movement towards the ‘responsible sourcing’ of such
gold is beginning to gain traction, especially in the jewellery sector, but has started some
two decades after equivalent movements for responsible coffee, cocoa and tea, and is
accompanied by its own – often surprising – challenges. This article provides an overview
of both the ASM landscape and the challenges facing miners and supply chain actors in
delivering responsibly mined gold to the point of end-consumer products. It concludes
with two examples of mass-balance models that Fairtrade is introducing to drive
increases in the volumes of responsibly mined gold sold from mine sites, which accounts
for and responds to the ‘burden’ of full traceability for both large- and small-scale supply
chain actors.
Keywords: gold; mining; responsible sourcing; ASM; business; extractives; supply chain;
traceability; Fairtrade gold
What is ASM?
The Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) sector provides an income to 16 million people and can be broken
down into two component parts; artisanal mining – which is broadly defined by non-mechanised approaches to
recovering gold, using rudimentary tools – and small-scale mining – which is defined principally by the volumes
of gold recovered (being less than medium and industrial mine counterparts). Often, small-scale mining is also
typified by the use of basic recovery techniques and, according to country context, definitions between each
component part blur. For example, a ‘small-scale’ mine in Peru would be seen as a medium or semi-industrial
mine in Uganda.
Within ASM – and mining more broadly – there are two further categories that are germane to distinguish
upfront; alluvial mining (which involves recovering free-gold from water sources, such as panning for gold in
rivers) and hard rock mining (which involves extracting rock from underground and crushing it to recover gold
bearing content).
Across the ASM sector there are a range of cross-cutting challenges linked to hazardous working conditions,
transient labour and informal trading networks. Hazardous conditions for miners in the most basic, hard-rock
mining contexts may include having to descend 200-feet underground in un-reinforced mine shafts by climbing
down a mud or timber shaft. Once underground, miners are at risk of pit collapses and carbon-monoxide
poisoning from the use of pumps underground to eliminate the flooding of mine shafts. Other challenges,
above ground, include the absence of protective equipment for processing rock and the widespread use of
22
David Finlay
mercury to recover gold, which poses the risk of brain damage for miners and also the risk of polluting
surrounding water sources. In visits to mines, especially in East Africa, the author has seen hazards including
exposed mercury pits, where waste mercury and materials are left in pits to seep into the soil, as well as disused
pits where falls involving adults or children are not uncommon.
Much of the labour associated with the ASM sector is casual. While individuals do come together into
membership structures to form mining groups, these individuals themselves will often be engaged in other
forms of income generation (e.g. farming) at different points in the year, while specific activities are outsourced
to transient casual labourers. While new mine pits are being developed, for example, the number of workers on
site may expand significantly, while at other times weather factors may curtail mining-related activities, such
as during the rainy season.
There is often an association between ASM and informal trading networks, which sit outside of regulated
trade. Because of this informality, the business models of mining operations themselves can rely on informal
structures to sustain themselves. Where access to finance through formal institutions (e.g. banks) may be
limited, mines may turn to informal traders for cash – repaying their debts in the form of discounted gold sales.
The relationship between traders and mine sites can become bonded and introduce a limit to the
environmental and social improvements mines are incentivised to make. In straightforward terms, if you have
always used mercury to recover gold, and the person buying gold from you is not motivated to see its
elimination, the options open to you for its eradication are themselves limited.
The challenges associated with responsible sourcing

In the last ten years a range of certification schemes (e.g. Fairtrade and Fairmined), as well as third party due-
diligence frameworks (e.g. OECD Conflict minerals), have come to the fore, which are founded on the premise
that ASM’s can operate formally and contribute to economic change through licit trade.
In the case of Fairtrade gold, mine sites are supported to align with the Fairtrade standard for precious
metals – a recognised marker of best practice for the environmental, social and governance performance of
mine sites. This standard ensures that working conditions are safe for miners, social issues are tackled
(including child labour), and that systems are in place both to protect the surrounding environment and the
health of miners themselves.
After achieving Fairtrade certification, gold from these mines can be sold as ‘Fairtrade Gold’, generating a
minimum price and an additional $2,000 a kilo premium payment for re-investment back into mining
communities. Example investments made by Fairtrade-certified mine sites in the recent past include health
clinics, education subsidies for young people and finance towards income diversification schemes. In south
Peru, for example, women have co-invested in a now thriving textile business, which provides an income for
people away from mining.
‘Gold’ at this stage of sale at the mine level is un-refined and referred to as ‘gold sponge’, which is typically
85% pure gold. It is sold initially to refiners, most of whom are in Switzerland, who refine this material to a
point of ‘Four Nines Gold’; 99.99% gold purity, liberating other metals, including silver, in the process. After
this, gold passes on to one of three sectors: jewellery, banking or technology.
In the case of jewellery, gold tends to flow from refiners to manufacturers who create finished pieces of
jewellery on behalf of jewellers, or else reform gold into a range of semi-finished forms (e.g. gold wire or gold
grain), which jewellers and goldsmiths themselves can then use to create their own pieces in a workshop
environment.
Finished pieces are assayed in Edinburgh or Birmingham to verify their gold content, as well as to apply
other markers that relate to the properties of the material used, including the application of the FAIRTRADE
Mark in the context of pieces made with Fairtrade Gold. This Mark acts as an assurance to consumers that the
gold content in a piece of jewellery comes from a Fairtrade-certified mine and has generated benefits for the
miners and their community.
23
There are a number of challenges facing responsible sourcing schemes working in jewellery and other
supply chains. Three of the key challenges include a) generating a supply of responsibly mined gold; b)
accessing responsibly mined gold; and c) the cost of maintaining physical segregation across the supply chain.
Generating a supply of responsibly mined gold

With gold trading for over $40,000 per kilo, trust can be in short supply among mine sites in an ASM context.
The introduction of new entities, including certification schemes, into mining contexts can be met with a high
degree of scepticism to start with, with large amounts of time needed to establish trust with mine sites. In the
early stages of relationship development important commercial information, including, for example, the
average recovery rates of gold per month, may be withheld due to fears over security, limiting the level of
assurance that can be provided to would-be buyers on the availability of gold.
When identifying mines to work with, Fairtrade – and other schemes – are faced with a tension between
‘established’ mines (whose ‘need’ for the benefits of certification may be less pronounced), and mines who
could benefit from certification but need large amounts of costly support and who may be recovering volumes
of gold too low to export.
In cases where mine sites are motivated to align with Fairtrade standards, there can be a myriad of
challenges attached to providing the technical support needed to comply with environmental and social
requirements, which may not have been observed to date, alongside the introduction of traceability and other
systems, which – while opening up a range of benefits after certification is complete – do come at a material
and transactional cost to mine sites themselves at the point of change.
Accessing responsibly mined gold

Once a mine site has aligned with a third party scheme (such as Fairtrade) and has met the due diligence
requirements of an international buyer, this is just the first step towards gold actually reaching
international markets.
The price paid for gold locally is very different to cash-crops within the Fairtrade system. In the case of the
latter, goods are perishable and power is often consolidated at the level of traders, who may alter their
purchase price at the last moment, undermining farmers who, by this stage, have no other market to sell their
soon-to-perish crops to. By contrast, in the case of gold, the demand for this material is both high and not
time-limited. As a result, miners may have opportunities to sell gold legally (or illegally) into a range of channels
for a very high percentage of the international global price. In this context, the incentive to sell to a Fairtrade
trader specifically may not be as high as in a cash-crop context.
Furthermore, there are examples of mine sites who have dual or triple certification with schemes away from
Fairtrade, meaning that there are a range of different accredited channels through which their material could
be sold. In such cases, fierce competition between responsible sourcing schemes to link buyers with the same
gold can have the effect of consolidating power in the hands of the mine sites, rather than traders, and
reversing the conventional dynamics seen in global material supply chains between buyers and sellers.
The cost of maintaining physical segregation across the supply chain

If gold is successfully purchased on Fairtrade terms and integrated into Fairtrade supply chains there is a
mandate for physical segregation at refiner and manufacturing levels. This way of operating means that when
you buy a gold ring that is Fairtrade-certified gold, you can be certain of its material provenance and that the
mine from which it came complied with Fairtrade standards and received a premium payment. So far, so good.
However, physical segregation of gold is not always simple and bears extra costs, which are ultimately
passed on to the consumer. As noted elsewhere, manufacturers who buy Fairtrade gold as fine, 24-carat gold,
will transform this into a range of semi-finished materials (gold wire, grain and sheet), which are then available
for jewellers to buy and to fashion into finished pieces of jewellery in their workshops.
24
David Finlay
Each semi-finished material will be manufactured in segregation and the waste material from the
manufacturing process must also be physically segregated, re-melted separately and re-introduced exclusively
into Fairtrade lines.
Further still, the karatage and colour of gold sold by manufacturers also varies, in line with the preferences
of jewellers and consumers. So gold wire, grain or sheet may be stocked as 9kt, 18kt or 24kt gold, and in any of
a rose gold, white gold or brilliant gold finish.
Of course, manufacturers are – to a certain extent – setup precisely for such operations and there is a sense
to the transaction costs involved in the case of manufacturing single, consolidated, finished pieces – for
example a ring band. However, in the context of highly engineered and multi-part creations, the inclusion of
Fairtrade gold – and the weight placed on full traceability across the full supply chain – is less clear-cut.
For example, a high-end watch may have upwards of 300 individual components, of which around ten may
be caste in gold, each weighing less than one gramme. To manufacture each of these components in a
physically segregated production cycle adds costs, which may not marry up with the marginally limited
benefits the equivalent volume of gold sold on Fairtrade terms generates for miners themselves. While
aggregate benefits can be delivered through manufacturing and sales of such watches at scale, the broader
nexus between traceability, costs and benefits is one which is underpinned by complexity and needs to be
carefully weighed up in the sourcing decisions of individual businesses as well as the campaigning efforts of
civil society organisations who scrutinise them.
Responding to challenges and the future of Fairtrade gold

The challenges noted in acquiring and then working with responsibly mined gold do not absolve businesses
from taking their sourcing decisions seriously. More needs to be done, however, to ensure that the balance
between working with responsibly mined gold matches the costs of doing so.
To respond to this traceability–cost–benefit nexus, we have recently expanded the ways in which businesses
can work with Fairtrade Gold. For businesses interested in making large sourcing commitments, our Gold
Sourcing Programme (see Figure 1) makes it possible for end brand to directly purchase fully-traceable Fairtrade
Gold from a refiner and to fold this into their manufacturing facility. After this point, the traceability is then lost.
In exchange for this, the end-using business is able to make a group-level claim on their website and their
CSR materials pertaining to the volume of gold they have sourced on Fairtrade terms and the associated
Non-certified
mine
Refiner Manufacturer Jewellery

brand
Organizational level
Certified sourcing claim
mine
Physical traceability Documentary traceability

Figure 1 Fairtrade’s Gold Sourcing Programme enables businesses to make a sourcing commitment at an
organisational level
25
Goldsmith
Certified Importer Refiner Master Operator No on-product claim
mine Generic sourcing claim
Physical traceability
Figure 2 Fairtrade’s Goldsmiths Scheme enables smaller businesses to work with Fairtrade Gold in a
streamlined fashion
premium payment and benefits this has contributed to for origin mine sites. Crucially, such businesses are not
able to use the FAIRTRADE Mark on individual finished pieces – so there is no end-consumer claim, but the
group as a whole can demonstrate that a percentage of the gold used in their pieces in general comes from
Fairtrade-certified mine sites.
We have an equivalent sourcing solution for small goldsmiths (see Figure 2), which provides them with
permission to buy fully-traceable Fairtrade Gold from manufacturers and to generate generic claims that
indicate their support for Fairtrade Gold (in general), without having to subscribe to audit and reporting
costs usually associated with working with Fairtrade. However, again, the trade-off here for such goldsmiths
is no on product claims can be made, as there is no system of verification beyond the point of purchased,
semi-finished materials.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while the challenges facing businesses seeking to responsibly source gold are very real, there are
a growing number of practical solutions that offer a choice between ‘fully-traceable’ systems and mass–
balance systems (where certified gold loses traceability within the supply chain but still drives the same
benefits for mine sites themselves). The decoupling of this link between sourcing practices of businesses and
the physical material used in individual finished products will be important for driving sales of certified gold
from the perspective of mine sites, but this must be carefully balanced against clear and transparent
communications, both from businesses and certification schemes to consumers; not just in gold but for other
precious materials too – especially gemstones – where the journey towards responsible sourcing solutions is
still in its infancy.
26
Fair Trade cannabis: a road map for meeting the
socio-economic needs and interests of small and traditional growers
Sylvia Kay, Martin Jelsma and David Bewley-Taylor1
Sylvia Kay is Project Officer working at the Agrarian and Environmental Justice programme of the
Transnational Institute (Amsterdam). Her work focuses on issues around land and food politics, natural
resource governance, rural development and agricultural investment. More recently she has been engaged
in debates around drugs and development, and the prospects for fair(er) trade cannabis.
Martin Jelsma is Director of the Drugs and Democracy programme at the Transnational Institute
(Amsterdam) and Senior Research Associate at the Global Drug Policy Observatory (Swansea University),
working on links between drugs policy, conflict, human rights and development, often in collaboration
with small farmers of cannabis, coca and opium.
David Bewley-Taylor is Professor of International Relations and Public Policy, and founding director of the
Global Drug Policy Observatory, Swansea University, UK. He has collaborated with, and produced policy
reports for, a range of drug policy organisations beyond academia and at present is a Senior Associate of
the International Drug Policy Consortium and a Research Fellow of the Transnational Institute’s Drugs and
Democracy Programme.
Abstract
Policy changes over the past five years have dramatically reshaped the global cannabis
market, opening up legal markets for medical cannabis and, increasingly, also for adult,
non-medical use. Despite the fact that these shifts look set to bring a clear range of benefits
in terms of health and human rights, there is concern over the many for-profit cannabis
companies from the Global North that are aggressively competing to capture the licit
spaces, squeezing out small and traditional cannabis farmers from the Global South. If
the construction of the global cannabis prohibition regime was an historic mistake, then a
transition towards a legally regulated market that concentrates profits in a handful of Big
Pharma, Ag, Tobacco and Cannabis companies, while locking out small-scale farmers in the
Global South, only serves to further this damaging legacy. The focus of Fair Trade cannabis
must be to empower small and traditional producers in the cannabis trade, based on a
number of first order principles, market strategies and public policies. Crucially, growers
must be enabled to organise amongst themselves and forge coalitions with other actors in
order to advocate for appropriate frameworks and interventions.
Keywords: cannabis; sustainable development; human rights; market strategy; co-

operatives; war on drugs; drug policy; Fair Trade
Cannabis is the most widely consumed drug in the world, with 188 million people reportedly having used
cannabis at least once in the year leading up to 2017.2 This reflects also its widespread cultivation. While even
1 The authors are grateful to the comments provided by two anonymous reviewers whose careful reading of the draft greatly improved the argumentation
and detail. Any remaining errors are our own.
2 United Nations (2019). World Drug Report 2019. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (p. 11).
27
rough cannabis production figures are notoriously difficult to obtain, extrapolations from various sources show
that cannabis represents a lifeline for many millions of people, particularly those living in marginalised, rural
areas across the Global South.3 Despite such widespread use and cultivation, cannabis remains officially
scheduled under the three international conventions that underpin the international drug control regime as a
narcotic or ‘dangerous drug’ without any medical benefit or use value. The motivation behind classifying a
plant – whose cultivation and use in agriculture, traditional medicine, and religious and cultural practices goes
back many centuries – in this way reflected competing corporate and geopolitical interests prevalent in the
early twentieth century.4 These became further entrenched over the course of the twentieth century as moral
panics around drug use were whipped up in support of a general prohibitionist stance towards drugs.
The harms caused by the global control regime based on the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic
Drugs have been severe. They include millions incarcerated for even low-level drug offences, the escalation and
prolongation of conflict through the ‘war on drugs’ and the boon that criminalisation represents for organised
crime, and the social profiling of certain racial, ethnic and low-income groups. They must also include the
opportunity costs of prohibition in terms of diverted man power and resources that could have been more
worthwhile spent elsewhere, as well as the loss of patient access to medical cannabis in palliative care and to
treat a range of conditions.
However, policy changes over the past five years or so have dramatically reshaped the global cannabis
market. Not only has there been an unprecedented boom in medical markets, but, following policy shifts in
several jurisdictions, a growing number of countries have also engaged with, or are preparing for, legal
regulation of non-medical use. Such moves are triggered by a recognition that decades of repressive policies
have proved ineffective and have had grave negative consequences, and this looks set to bring a clear range of
benefits in terms of health and human rights.
Nonetheless, there are also growing reservations regarding unfolding market dynamics. Among these is
concern over the many for-profit cannabis companies from the Global North that are aggressively
competing to capture the licit spaces now rapidly opening in what may be a multi-billion-dollar global market.
This threatens to push small-scale and marginalised traditional farmers from countries like Colombia, Mexico,
Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Morocco, South Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon, India, Nepal or
Thailand out of the emerging market. This is despite the fact that they have supplied the illicit market for
decades, often under extremely precarious and conflict-prone conditions, in which cannabis forms part of a
broader survival economy.5
For example, in South Africa, cannabis, or dagga as it is known locally, has formed part of a subsistence
economy for more than 200 years, with many small-scale farmers reliant upon cannabis for their livelihood. Much
of this production is located in the Pondoland region of the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s least developed
regions where public services are scant and cannabis is grown, primarily by women, as the only cash crop. Despite
South Africa having legalised cannabis for medical use in 2018, there is little hope among farmers – to the extent
that they are even made aware of these changes – that the policy will benefit them. Instead, they see the playing
3 The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has, for example, avoided issuing global production estimates since 2009 given the extreme
difficulties in obtaining any kind of reliable data. Country reporting provides some insight. For example, in Kazachstan it is estimated that 140,000 hectares of
cannabis (both wild and cultivated) are to be found in the Chui valley, with up to two-thirds of the valley’s inhabitants involved in the harvesting of cannabis
herb or resin. In Morocco, estimates of the number of people involved in cannabis cultivation vary between 90,000 and 140,000 households. In St. Vincent and
the Grenadines it has been reported that up to 40% of the population live off cannabis. For Afghanistan, UNODC’s latest cannabis survey estimated the number
of cannabis-growing households as around 65,000. For further discussion of some of these figures see: Jelsma, M., Kay, S. and Bewley-Taylor, D. (2019). Fair(er)
Trade Options for the Cannabis Market. Policy Report 1, March 2019, Cannabis Innovate (pp. 11–13).
4 Buxton, J. (2020). Drug control and development: The purposive blind spot. International Development Policy, Geneva: The Graduate Institute (forthcoming).
5 These survival economies are driven by many complex dynamics. However, amongst them must be included the perverse effects of highly unequal
trade and investment agreements that are underpinned by an extractivist logic and centred around the interests of transnational (mostly Northern) capital.
These have directly contributed to significant increases in illicit cultivation. For example, the arrival of multinational bauxite companies in Jamaica led to the
displacement of small farmers from their lands, triggering an upsurge in cannabis cultivation as well as large-scale out-migration. Meanwhile, the dismantling
of the EU–Caribbean preferential trade agreement for bananas in the 1990s essentially wiped out the banana economies of many of the Windward Islands of
the Eastern Caribbean. In St.Vincent and the Grenadines alone, the dismantling of this regime led to an 85% decline in the number of banana farmers between
1992 and 2007. Some, if not the majority, were to then find their way into illegal cannabis cultivation as a source of income. In this way, the special burden that
the international drug control regime has placed on traditional producing countries in the Global South is replicated in more ways than one.
28
Fair Trade cannabis
field tilted towards big companies and foreign investors who have the capital and political connections to apply
for medical licenses. As one farmer states: ‘Our people feel betrayed, because all of the licenses are being issued to
companies from elsewhere, while we who have been growing this plant here for generations, who have the skills, who
have the knowledge, who have the land, are still being criminalised.’6
The construction of the UN-based global cannabis prohibition regime was an historic mistake with severe
consequences, but if the transitioning towards a legally regulated market results in a corporate takeover that
concentrates profits into a handful of Big Pharma, Ag, Tobacco and Cannabis companies, and pushes small-
scale farmers in the Global South out of business, another historical mistake is already in the making.
From the ‘War on Drugs’ to a development, human rights and public health-based
approach
The aim of Fair Trade, or fair(er) trade,7 is thus to shift the global debate and practice on cannabis out of the
exclusive realm of law enforcement and international drug control agencies towards one that is firmly
anchored in a development, human rights and public health-based approach. As noted above, this is not
based on any altruistic or moralising imperative but rather the scientific evidence base around the medical
benefits of responsible cannabis use and the best way to treat problematic use and reduce harm. Furthermore,
it would unlock opportunities that are only now just beginning to emerge as countries and states are moving
towards regulating cannabis for medical and/or adult non-medical use. This is based on the understanding that
with the right policies in place, cannabis can deliver jobs, income and food security, reduce the health bill, and
free up otherwise precious budgetary resources currently spent on interdiction that can then be allocated to
other vital public services and development outcomes. Such an approach would align with states’ obligations to
end poverty, hunger, and the causes of structural inequality and discrimination in the context of the 2030
Sustainable Development Agenda.
Following this, it is vital that those who endured supplying the illicit cannabis market, those who were most
affected by the ‘war on drugs’ and those who, in many ways, paved the way for recent policy changes, should
be first in line to benefit from the emergence of licit spaces in the market. From a Fair Trade perspective, this
would centre on the socio-economic needs and interests of small and traditional growers from producing
countries in the Global South. And, while not our focus here, the same holds true for black and Latino
communities in the U.S. or for ethnic minorities elsewhere that have been disproportionately affected by drug
law enforcement.
The motivation for prioritising small and traditional cultivators is not only based on concerns for social and
racial justice but also care for the environment. Much of the industrial-scale growing of cannabis, for example,
takes place indoors, in highly controlled greenhouse conditions using intensive monocultures. When
translated to outdoor systems, this approach will undoubtedly have impacts on biodiversity and soil health.
Although important not to romanticise the practices of small farmers and the very real challenges they face
when growing in sometimes extremely fragile ecological zones, small-scale, organic, outdoor production uses
much less energy, using natural sun light rather than electricity to provide indoor lighting and heating
systems. In small-scale production, cannabis is also much more likely to be intercropped with other food, fiber
and/or medicinal species that are of direct benefit to producers, providing agrobiodiversity as part of well-
understood risk mitigation and ecological management strategies. These benefits are, however, not
automatically accrued and any system – indoor, outdoor, small-scale or industrial – will require careful
monitoring and evaluation.
6 Clark, C. (2019, 14 October). People feel betrayed: Small-scale dagga growers fear exclusion from legal trade. GroundUp. Retrieved from: https://www.
groundup.org.za/article/people-feel-betrayed-small-scale-dagga-growers-fear-exclusion-legal-trade/
7 We use the term ‘fair(er) trade’ here in recognition of the definitional complexities and contested meanings associated with the terms ‘Fairtrade’, ‘Fair
Trade’, ‘Fairly Traded’ and other derivations. Without entering into this debate, we make use of more expansive notions of fair trade, understanding this to
signify models that are built around a rights-based, inclusive and environmentally sustainable approach to market engagement, drawing on the high-order
principles developed by what might be called the ‘Fair Trade Movement’.
29
The below is an attempt to define several first order principles outlining what a Fair Trade cannabis market
could look like:
First order principles of Fair Trade cannabis8
1. Demonstrate a commitment to upholding human rights and strengthening social and economic
justice by integrating them as core values within any initiative.
2. Centre on producer empowerment and community benefit sharing through more equitable terms
of trade. In this model, producers are not just seen as providers of raw materials but as value creators.
Baselines prices can be agreed within cannabis cooperatives with social premiums invested in training
and skill development in order to ensure that a greater share of the added value is retained and
returned to growers and local and regional economies.
3. Use production methods that adhere to strong environmental sustainability standards in relation
to land, soil and forestry management and the use of energy, water and agricultural inputs. Producers
are supported in developing environmentally sound techniques.
4. Put in place proper labour protections to ensure worker safety, health and satisfaction. A zero-
tolerance approach is taken with regards to labour or sexual exploitation. Workers are paid a fair price
for their labour in accordance with the local living wage.
5. Encourage more democratic control, participation and decision-making processes through inclusive
business models and systems of worker-driven social responsibility. Particular attention is paid to the
role of women and gender sensitive governance processes.
6. Generate transparency and traceability in the operation of the cannabis market and supply chain
through mandatory disclosure of investors and the putting in place of appropriate and producer-
friendly licensing, quality control and standard-setting systems.
7. Focus on longer-term strategies, with special attention placed on marginalised communities and rural
areas in (traditional) producing countries. This includes opening up a path to compliance for good faith
cannabis producers who are transitioning out of illegality. Restorative justice should be considered for
those previously excluded or criminalised.
8. Resonate with the social history of a particular place, foregrounding traditional growing communities
and the role of cannabis in their cultural and religious identities and practices.
While these first order principles may appear aspirational at present, there is no reason why they cannot be
put into practice through concrete strategies for implementation. This requires political will and vision, and an
understanding that markets do not arise spontaneously but require active creation, regulation and guidance.
This is not within the gift of any one actor or investor alone. Rather, it will require a strategic compact between
enlightened public policy makers, responsible investors and organised growers’ communities to develop
country and/or regionally owned visions for how cannabis can be part of a broader developmental success
story. This stands in contrast to how much of the global cannabis industry has unfolded thus far, which has seen
a glut of new investors enter the market in a very short time frame, resulting in speculative bubbles, booms and
busts, market saturation, and allegations of fraud. The danger of an approach that thus seeks to ‘attract
investment first, ask questions later’ is that development opportunities figure a distant second.
A strategic compact for Fair Trade cannabis

Unlocking the potential for Fair Trade cannabis thus means making use of all the tools that are available in the
public policy toolbox, as well as leveraging a broader community of practice – including, first and foremost,
8 These first order principles first appeared in Jelsma, M., Kay, S. et al (2019).
30
Fair Trade cannabis
small and traditional cannabis growers but also others engaged in, for example, the legal and medical fields –
to help shape emerging cannabis markets. There are many possibilities here. For example, a strategic compact
for Fair Trade cannabis could involve:
•• Quotas that stipulate that a certain percentage of cannabis product must be sourced from small
growers (for example in Colombia, Law 1787 of July 2016, which opened up the medical cannabis
market, stipulates that companies must obtain at least 10% of their raw material from small growers).
•• Minimum pricing for delivery of cannabis so that producers are guaranteed a specified income stream.
•• Affirmative licensing laws that prioritise, in the first instance, frontline communities and small and
traditional cultivators before opening up to larger players, in order to give them a head start in the
market (for example San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento are pioneering social equity
programmes that prioritise licenses for people with low incomes who have lived in an area ravaged by
the ‘drug war’, while a tiered licensing system for small farmers has been introduced by the Cannabis
Licensing Authority (CLA) of Jamaica).
•• Setting up a development fund from the fees collected from the issuing of licenses and/or other
revenue collected from, for example, export customs and duties, to be re-invested in cannabis-growing
communities and regions.
•• Lessening barriers to entry for small- and medium-sized producers who can be squeezed out of the
market due to prohibitive administration, compliance and security costs. This can involve targeted
training sessions in meeting Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Good Manufacturing Practices
(GMP)9 standards, and exchanges with specialised liaison officers (for example from medical cannabis
authorities) on how to navigate the relevant bureaucracy. It could also include recognition of more
producer-friendly quality assurance systems, such as participatory guarantee systems, that rely on peer
review mechanisms as a complement to more official, top-down regulatory frameworks.
•• Enabling a legal medicinal market to develop for cannabis-based ‘alternative health products’, such as
in nutraceuticals or psychotherapeutic products with potential for export.10
•• Making use of cooperative laws and amending them where necessary to allow cannabis growers to
register themselves as collective bodies, taking advantage of the benefits (in terms of, for example,
pooling resources and risks) that this can confer.
•• Enacting land reform programmes where cannabis growers currently find themselves without access to
land or security of tenure (for example 200 hectares of land is to be distributed to traditional cultivators
in St. Vincent and the Grenadines).
•• Adopting an Amnesty Law that would allow cannabis growers to transition out of illegality and open up
a path to compliance (as, for example, put forward in the Cannabis Cultivation Amnesty Bill 2018 of St.
Vincent and the Grenadines).11 Such an amnesty could also include an element of restorative justice
through, for example, the expungement of criminal records for prior cannabis-related convictions, as is
being proposed by the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act in the
United States.12
•• Setting up public cannabis seed banks, research stations and centres of excellence to collect
information and further scientific knowledge on seeds, landraces, growing conditions and medical
9 Good Agricultural Practices involve standards around the use of energy, water and agricultural inputs, and good land management, while Good
Manufacturing Practices involve regulations to ensure consistent product quality, avoidance of contamination, traceability and diligent record keeping.
10 These include cannabis products (in the form of herbal medicines and food supplements) that are used in traditional healing and, more recently, in
holistic remedies and complementary treatments. As of yet, they are not recognised under the definition of ‘medical cannabis’, reflecting the preference
of international control bodies for ‘pharmaceutical’ preparations over more natural, plant-based medicines, creating additional barriers for export from
countries in the South.
11 See: http://www.gov.vc/images/PoliciesActsAndBills/Cannabis_Cultivation_Amnesty_Bill_2018.pdf
12 The bill – which passed in the House Judiciary Committee in November 2020 – calls for the expungement of certain federal cannabis convictions
with expenses being covered by a small excise tax imposed on the legal cannabis industry, as well as the creation of a Cannabis Justice Office
focused on reinvesting resources into communities most affected by prohibition. See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2019/11/20/
marijuana-legalization-judiciary-committee/#329f325d2c35
31
technologies. Focus should be on safeguarding indigenous strains and native seeds to protect against
contamination and cross-pollination. This knowledge should be made accessible to cannabis growers
rather than leaving this in private hands, which can result in growers having to pay for access or even
being excluded completely due to patented technologies.13
A Fair Trade market that has small and traditional growers at its heart would not just seek to lessen the barriers
to entry for these groups but also increase them for others, particularly foreign investors, in order to protect
market spaces and guard against predatory behaviour. This can include the following measures:
•• Restrictions on foreign acquisitions of local licensed companies.

•• Regulations on the maximum size of grow sites (for example, in California cultivation sites are not to
exceed one acre until 2023).
•• Caps regarding majority ownership by foreign persons and companies for access to licenses (as, for
example, undertaken in Jamaica and as appears in the draft law to regulate cannabis in Mexico).
•• Other restrictive regulations on foreign investment (for example in Thailand where the intention, at least,
was to not allow any foreign investment in the first year to facilitate development of local industry).
Of course, in a highly unequal, unpredictable and ever-evolving global market, not all these measures will
necessarily have the desired effects, particularly if there is a lack of strong follow through, due diligence and on-the-
ground monitoring of impacts. Quotas to involve small growers can become tokenistic or end up turning them into
day labourers on cannabis plantations, as has been observed in Colombia.14 Many loopholes still exist. Even in the
case of California, it is estimated that as of February 2018 only 0.78% of the existing 68,150 small growers in the
state had been able to obtain a license, despite the fact that the cannabis legalisation act explicitly stated that the
industry will be built around small- and medium-sized enterprises, with strict anti-monopoly provisions in place.15
Much is thus to be learned from both good and bad practices in different countries across the world.
Growing consumer demand for sustainable cannabis

Investing in market strategies for Fair Trade cannabis is based on the premise that there already is, or will be, a
growing demand for more environmentally friendly and sustainably sourced cannabis products. But what
evidence is there to suggest this is true?
While market research on consumer demand for fair(er) trade cannabis is still very limited, there are signs
that point in a positive direction. A 2016 study of cannabis dispensaries in the city of Portland, Oregon – where
the growth, possession, sale and use of medical cannabis has been legalised since 1998 and the licensed sale of
cannabis for personal use since 2015 – shows promise.16 Of the 64 cannabis dispensaries (roughly half the total
number of dispensaries in the city at the time of the fieldwork) interviewed, 28% reported that customers
frequently request ‘organic or socially responsible’ cannabis, while another 53% say they experience this
request occasionally.
Other experiences centre on the medical cannabis market. In countries such as the United States, United
Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Colombia and Chile, patient advocacy groups are leading the way with a
13 Research on local varieties and traditional breeding techniques would also protect against biopiracy and aggressive patenting under the Convention on
Biological Diversity’s access and benefit sharing provision, and as further outlined in the Nagoya Protocol. This is particularly relevant as ‘strainhunters’ the
world over are continuing to seek out unique, indigenous cannabis varieties for lucrative Western markets, sometimes with little regard to equitable benefit
sharing of these and other plant genetic resources. Stronger scientific research, combined with education and awareness raising workshops for farmers,
can also help to conserve local cannabis landraces that are disappearing due to the introduction of exogenous varieties that are being pushed due to the
higher THC levels. This is the case, for example, in Morocco where local landraces, such as Beldia and Khardala, are vanishing as they are being replaced by
more recently introduced European varieties, despite the fact that Moroccan landraces are more eco-friendly to cultivate and are known to have interesting
cannabinoid profiles, which make them potentially useful for both medicinal and industrial purposes.
14 Martínez Rivera, N. (2019). The challenges of medicinal cannabis in Colombia. A look at small – and medium – scale growers. Drug Policy Briefing No.52,
Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
15 California Growers Association (2018, February 15). An emerging crisis: Barriers to entry in California cannabis. Retrieved from https:// www.
calgrowersassociation.org/crisisreport
16 Bennett, E.A. (2018). Extending ethical consumerism theory to semi-legal sectors: Insights from recreational cannabis. Agriculture and Human Values,
35(2), 295–317.
32
Fair Trade cannabis
call for legal access to cannabis products for medical and therapeutic use. While the primary concern amongst
these patient rights groups is access to high quality and safe cannabis for medical use, concerns about the role
played by ‘big pharma’ have also entered the debate.
This shows the scope for growing the market for Fair Trade cannabis, both for medical and for personal
use, particularly as high profile cases around individual patients or around the exploitative conditions to be
found in illegal cannabis farms play out in the media.17
However, making the consumer case for Fair Trade cannabis will present challenges even in countries that
have moved towards regulation, not least due to the large amount of mis-information surrounding cannabis
that continues to circulate as a result of the continued stigma and legacy of prohibition. It will thus, perhaps
to a greater degree than other more conventional Fair Trade products, require a level of advocacy to raise
awareness and lift consumer consciousness around the prospects for Fair Trade in the cannabis market. It
will also rely heavily on market differentiation strategies by which consumers can identify the provenance
of distinct cannabis products. As the legal market for cannabis expands, a more discerning set of consumers
may be primed to ask questions about origin and who are interested in the idea of craft, sun-grown, organic
product using unique, heritage strains and for community benefit. The opportunities, particularly for
countries that have a long history of cannabis cultivation and indigenous culture around its use, such as
ganja in Jamaica or kif in Morocco, could be significant. Developing appropriate and credible sustainable
labeling systems and making use of tools such as geographic indications would help to strengthen these
competitive advantages.
Future challenges and opportunities for Fair Trade cannabis

While cannabis is no longer ‘politically untouchable’ and states have forged ahead towards regulating cannabis
in their jurisdictions, one cannot escape the unavoidable UN treaty tensions that arise from these moves. This
closes down export channels and restricts participation in the market. These tensions are not necessarily
insurmountable and creative proposals have been put forward for how to navigate these – such as through
countries signing inter se agreements amongst themselves.18
Nevertheless, even leaving aside the strictures of the international drug control regime, the regulatory
challenges remain considerable. Banking regulations, for example, must be brought in line with cannabis
markets in order for accounts not to be frozen due to proceeds of crime legislation and to allow for the issuance
of loans and grants to cannabis-related businesses. Meanwhile, one should not underestimate the considerable
up-front investments and administrative hoops one must jump through to be considered a legitimate actor in
the cannabis market. It is a situation that privileges early movers and those who can afford to make high-
capital, high-tech investments.
Clearly, there is a world of difference between corporate cannabis and the realities of a small cannabis
grower, which cannot easily be bridged. It will require states to exercise regulatory and discretionary power
in order to set the rules of the game, attract responsible investors, and line up suitable buyers and market
outlets. The potential pay-off for countries that have the foresight to develop these kinds of markets can be
significant. A 2018 report by the CARICOM Regional Commission on Marijuana notes the potential game-
changing impact cannabis could bring to the Caribbean region if a properly defined regional policy framework
is developed:
In addition, the region’s already established and developing tourism economy can be leveraged further by a cannabis
industry located in safe and secure environments. Cannabis can be produced for export as well as for local healing and
17 See, for example, the case of human trafficking and illegal cannabis farms in the U.K. in Kelly, A. (2019, July 26). Enslaved on a British
cannabis farm: ‘The plants were more valuable than my life’. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/26/
vietnamese-cannabis-farms-children-enslaved.
18 Under an inter se agreement, a group of like-minded countries could collectively create a new sub-treaty framework just for cannabis, allowing them to
reconcile their domestic legislation with their commitments under the UN drug control treaties. This could open the possibility of international trade between
regulated licit markets, enabling small-scale farmers in traditional cannabis-producing countries in the Global South to participate in transnational commerce
at both global and regional levels. See: https://www.tni.org/en/article/the-elegant-way-to-end-global-cannabis-prohibition-inter-se-modification
33
can be the foundation for a new and vibrant wellness tourism industry…. The development of an industrial hemp
industry is also envisaged. Cannabis, produced organically and outdoors can also provide for the already lucrative
recreational market.19
Such a multi-faceted territorial framework, in which forward and backward linkages are fostered across sectors
such as agriculture, health and wellness, medicine, tourism, science and manufacturing, will also help to
develop economies of scale around cannabis, reducing dependency on foreign direct investment and allowing
for greater economic returns. This can ensure that growers do not just become the providers of raw material
but can step up into more diversified and value-adding activities.
It is, however, not clear that all countries or regions will have the political vision and will to push for such a
framework. Even among those that are willing to spend the political capital in doing so, it is not a given that this
will produce positive results. Shaping market structures is not the same as determining market outcomes, as any
market-driven social justice initiative – such as that embodied by the Fair Trade movement – will attest to.
This is why facilitating and supporting organisation amongst growers is essential. It is only by growers
coming together, forming networks, forging alliances, articulating demands and mobilising the call for them
to be implemented, that real change can come about. Steps to do so are already afoot at local, national,
regional – even international – levels.20 Cannabis producer co-operatives are rapidly being formed, with some
already entering into licensing agreements with the authorities and investors.21 A few are also actively
engaged in political lobbying and advocacy work, organising consultations, working with the media, and
building support among the wider public for law reform and producer empowerment. These kinds of ‘scaling
up’ (in terms of parlaying grassroots demands into policy proposals) and ‘scaling out’ strategies (in terms of
forging alliances and building South–South horizontal connections) are not dissimilar to how movements
have grown in other sectors.22 The starting point for this kind of work is, of course, different with respect to
the international legal framework regulating cannabis and will thus depend to a greater degree than usual on
national- and state-level context. As the legal market for cannabis expands, the key will be to form coalitions
between growers, consumers, patients, doctors, lawyers, scientists, drug policy activists, development
practitioners and enlightened public policymakers across the Global North and South, to be ready to make the
case for Fair Trade cannabis.
The opportunity is there. It now needs to be grasped.
19 CARICOM Regional Commission on Marijuana (2018, August). Report to the Caribbean Community Heads of Government: Waiting to Exhale – Safeguarding
our Future through Responsible Socio-Legal Policy on Marijuana (p. 5).
20 At international level, TNI convened the first ever Global Forum for the Producers of Prohibited Plants in January 2016, bringing together over 60 farmers
and farmers’ representatives involved in the cultivation of the cannabis plant, opium poppy and coca leaf. This led to a political declaration – the ‘Heemskerk
Declaration’. See: https://www.tni.org/en/publication/the-global-forum-of-producers-of-prohibited-plants-gfppp
21 An example includes that of the signing, in November 2019, of an agreement between two traditional cannabis cultivator groups in St. Vincent
and the Grenadines – Greggs Rastafarian Progressive Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd and the Farmers’ Solution Group (FSS) Limited – with a
cannabis company Green Lava, for export of medical cannabis products. Per the requirements of the government of SVG, Green Lava are obligated
to purchase at least 10% of their cannabis from the two groups, who between them represent 39 traditional cultivators. See: https://mca.vc/
green-lava-signs-agreement-with-traditional-cannabis-cultivators/
22 Agroecology, for example, has grown into a global movement thanks to these strategies, with a particularly strong focus on scaling out strategies
based on peer-to-peer learning taking place in peasant agroecology schools that make use of popular pedagogies and social process methodologies. For
an introduction, see: Rosset, P.M., Machin Sosa, B. et al (2011). The Campesino to-Campesino Agroecology Movement of ANAP in Cuba: Social process
methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(1), 161–191.
34
Changing the optics on palm oil: Fair Trade smallholder
supply chains from the palm’s ancestral home in West Africa
George Williams
George Williams is an Impact & Learning Manager at Traidcraft Exchange. He works closely with the
organisation’s programme teams in South Asia and Africa, documenting achievements, approaches and
lessons learnt from their work with small-scale producers and workers.
Abstract
Traidcraft Exchange and its sister business Traidcraft Plc have been developing Fair Trade
supply chains for over three decades. As core ‘Fairtrade’-certified commodities such as
coffee, cocoa, tea and bananas have become mainstream in the UK market since the late
1990s, Traidcraft has focused energies on bringing new innovative supply chains and new
small-producer organisations into the wider Fair Trade system. The case study presented
here is of palm oil sourced from smallholder farmers in Ghana’s Eastern region: a commodity
normally synonymous with environmental degradation and an area left behind by the
economic development of Greater Accra. The case study seeks to demonstrate how
Traidcraft’s explicit focus on working with small producers and new innovative product
ranges provides a counter-balance to consolidation of certified ‘Fairtrade’ around core
commodities. At the same time, the case study highlights some of the challenges of bringing
new products to market in the UK’s current retail environment.
Keywords: palm oil; Ghana; smallholders; Fairtrade; Fair Trade; SME
Traidcraft Exchange and its sister business Traidcraft Plc have been developing Fair Trade supply chains for over
three decades. As core ‘Fairtrade’-certified commodities such as coffee, cocoa, tea and bananas have become
mainstream in the UK market since the late 1990s, Traidcraft has focused energies on bringing new supply
chains and new small-producer organisations into the wider Fair Trade system. This case study is of palm oil
sourced from smallholder farmers in rural Ghana. As Fairtrade has gone mainstream, concerns have been
raised about the capacity of the system to resist the influence of powerful multi-national corporations (MNCs)
who, whilst bringing scale, are seen by some as compromising the original vision of the movement and its
potential to contribute towards the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDG) pledge to ‘leave no one behind’. The
case study is presented against the backdrop of this debate, demonstrating how Traidcraft Exchange’s explicit
focus on small producers located in challenging environments, and on new innovative product ranges, provides
a counter-balance to the commercially driven priorities of MNCs that are engaged in Fairtrade, and their
reliance on ‘core’ commodities and established producer organisations. At the same time, the case study
illustrates some of the challenges of bringing new products to market in the UK’s current retail environment.
Traidcraft’s ambition to bring under-represented countries, producer groups and new commodities into the
wider Fair Trade system links to the UN’s ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. The Agenda commits its
signatories, the UN’s 193 member states, to ‘endeavour to reach the furthest behind first’ and pledges that ‘no
one will be left behind’ (UN Resolution 70/1, 2015). The latter phrase has since become the unofficial sub-title to
the accompanying 17 Sustainable Development Goals. A subsequent publication from the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) unpacks this further, suggesting that there are five key factors that
35
contribute towards people ‘being left behind’: discrimination, shocks and fragility, governance, socio-economic
status and geography (2018). Unpacking these further, ‘discrimination’ is explained as ‘biases, exclusion or
mistreatment […] people face based on one or more aspect of their identity’ – gender, ethnicity and religion for
example. ‘Shocks and fragility’ refers to exposure to risks such as climate change, natural hazards and violence.
‘Socio-economic status’ includes those facing ‘deprivation or disadvantage’ related to income, life expectancy
and education. ‘Geography’ encompasses those who, as a result of their place of residence, experience
‘isolation, vulnerability, missing or inferior public services […] or other infrastructure gaps’. UNDP emphasises
that the pledge aims specifically at ‘curbing inequalities between people, groups and places; correcting for
legacies of discrimination and exclusion both between and within countries’. As this case study illustrates,
Traidcraft’s work to extend and expand the benefits of Fair Trade to under-represented countries, producer
groups and new commodities has a role to play in the ‘leave no one behind’ agenda.
Oil palm is indigenous to West Africa, but in the public imagination it is more strongly associated with south
east Asia and, specifically, with large-scale destruction of tropical rainforest. Powerful images of vast tracts of
destroyed forest and lost habitat for easily anthropomorphised large mammals have been etched into
consumer consciousness, with plantation grown palm oil as one of the primary drivers (WWF, 2019; The
Independent, 2018). Nonetheless, palm oil is a very efficient ingredient for human food production, yielding 3.7
tonnes/hectare compared to 0.5 tonnes/hectare for sunflower oil, for example (Palm Done Right, 2018). It is
reported that palm oil is found in around half of all packaged food available in UK supermarkets. Given its
ubiquity as an ingredient, and the negative environmental and human impacts of the dominant plantation
mode of production, there is a clear need for an alternative palm oil supply chain that would address these
issues. Traidcraft’s interest was piqued by the possibility of developing a Fair Trade supply chain that originates
from smallholders in palm’s ancestral home of West Africa, and offers positive economic and social impact for
small producers ‘left behind’ in the region’s rural areas.
In 2013 Traidcraft Exchange embarked on a partnership with fellow UK Fair Trade pioneers, Fullwell Mill;
Dr Bronner’s, a US-based natural cosmetics company; and ‘Serendipalm’, a palm oil processing plant in
Ghana. Ghana is sometimes considered a development success story. A ‘medium human development’
country on the Human Development Index (HDI), it ranks 140 of the 189 countries listed, considerably higher
than its immediate neighbours (UNDP, 2018). However, development is fractured along rural–urban lines,
with greater Accra leading the way. This is illustrated by Table 1, which shows the differences in multi-
dimensional poverty between urban and rural areas, and between Accra and its surrounding regions. It uses
data from Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative’s (OPHI’s) multi-dimensional poverty index
(MPI), which integrates the incidence and intensity of poverty across the dimensions of health, education
and living standards (OPHI, 2018, p. 1).
Serendipalm is based in the Eastern region where, as the data in Table 1 illustrates, almost 27% of the
population is multi-dimensionally poor (compared to 10.7% in greater Accra), and almost 8% live in severe
Table 1 Multi-dimensional poverty in selected regions, Ghana

Region MPI score Incidence: % of Average intensity: Severe poverty: %
population that is avg. % of dimensions of pop. deprived in
multi-dimensionally in which poor people 50–100% of weighted
poor are deprived indicators
Urban 0.053 12.8 41.6 2.6
Rural 0.208 44.7 46.6 16.4
Greater Accra 0.044 10.7 41.4 1.6
Central region 0.132 29.5 44.6 9.1
Eastern region 0.118 26.7 44.2 7.9
Volta region 0.136 30.8 44.1 8.7
36
Changing the optics on palm oil
George Williams
multi-dimensional poverty (1.6% in Accra). Serendipalm was established in 2009; it buys locally grown organic
oil palm fruit from around 600 smallholders, each with an average of 2–3 hectares of land. With a workforce of
around 250 people, mainly low-skilled local women, it extracts oil. Dr Bronner’s is both the company owner and
main customer. Serendipalm has grown into the largest employer in the town of Asuom. It pays a premium to
its smallholder suppliers, provides extension services to support organic production, and uses Fair Trade
premiums to invest in local projects such as water wells, street light repair, public toilets and the distribution of
mosquito nets. Serendipalm pays its employees around 25% higher than other local oil extraction plants and
offers paid holidays, free health insurance, free meals and free palm saplings.
However, it was clear from the outset that for Fair Trade palm oil from Ghanaian smallholders to be
competitive in the European marketplace, significant changes would have to be made to the business
operations. Over the project’s two-year duration, numerous changes were made that improved efficiency and
reduced unit costs. A new more efficient expeller, coupled with improved production management, increased
oil extraction rates from 9.5% to 15%. Installing insulation to storage tanks and steaming and clarification vats
reduced heat-up and cycle times by around 20–30%, and fire wood consumption by 50%. The installation of a
weigh bridge increased efficiency in logistics. The addition of two (second-hand) tractors and trailers increased
the efficiency of palm fruit collection from farmers. The introduction of a new, comprehensive internal control
system, as well as the recruitment of a new management team, significantly boosted overall business
performance. As a result, over two years, the cost of Serendipalm oil reduced by 23%, while the prices paid to
farmers increased by 25%; at the same time plant output almost doubled.
As part of this work, Traidcraft developed a new range of eco-cleaning products using Serendipalm oil, with
the Fair Trade organic palm oil ingredient promoted under the ‘FairPalm’ brand. Within the cost structure of
cleaning products, raw material costs tend to be very low; formulation and manufacturing costs are more
significant. Therefore, absorbing the higher costs of Fair Trade palm oil was less challenging for the new range
and initial sales exceeded expectations. However, Traidcraft plc’s annual turnover of just over £12 million
around this time (2012–2014) was spread across a diverse product range that included food, drink, homewares,
clothing, toys and more. Traidcraft’s commitment to FairPalm, as well as commercial drivers around achieving
economies of scale in sourcing, meant the business was keen to expand the use of FairPalm into other
products, including food. It is now an ingredient in Traidcraft’s biscuit range. However, within food items,
ingredient costs constitute a higher proportion of total costs, meaning cost competitiveness of FairPalm
remains challenging.
Traidcraft plc sells its products via a number of channels. Business to consumer channels include Traidcraft’s
online shop and seasonal catalogues. Business to business includes selling via UK’s network of Fair Trade or
‘World’ shops, via distributors into larger retailers and food service companies. Between these two categories
sits a third channel comprised of a network of volunteer ‘Fair Traders’ who sell Traidcraft products (as well as
sometimes other Fair Trade products) on a voluntary basis via small shops and stalls in churches, workplaces,
schools and colleges. Traidcraft’s history extends over 40 years. Customers include people who have supported
the organisation’s ideals since its inception, as well as a generation of newer ethical consumers who have
grown-up surrounded by certified ‘Fairtrade’ products available on supermarket shelves and the high street,
and who are perhaps equally, or even more, concerned by the issues of the ‘climate crisis’ and biodiversity
collapse, and are seeking to align purchasing habits with these concerns.
Achieving cost competitiveness was the central challenge of the supply chain development work. For a
social enterprise like Serendipalm, generating well-paid, secure employment for local, low-skilled women was a
critical indicator of success. Yet to expand, the business needed to increase productivity. As described,
significant improvements were made through changes to business systems, infrastructure and management,
but the final evaluation of the work also indicated that mechanisation would be required to reduce unit costs
further. Serendipalm is in a somewhat unique position as its parent company commits to buying a significant
proportion of output but, at the same time, ensures that other buyers have first refusal; this is part of its
strategy to catalyse and grow market demand and supply of Fair Trade organic palm oil. The strategy has
37
generated dividends, with several large Fair Trade buyers from continental Europe now sourcing from
Serendipalm. Whilst the market for Fair Trade palm oil is niche, it is growing; several large cosmetic brands
have expressed an interest in the ingredient as consumer pressure and media exposés continue to highlight the
deforestation caused by large plantations. The extent to which the Fair Trade model of smallholder production
and high-intensity labour can expand beyond pioneers such as Serendipalm depends partly on whether
consumers are willing to put their money where their mouth is and accept higher prices, especially within
highly competitive market segments such as packaged food.
References
OPHI (2018). Global MPI country briefing 2018: Ghana. Retrieved from: www.ophi.org.uk [accessed 21st January 2019].
Palm Done Right (2018). Palm oil 101. Retrieved from: https://www.palmdoneright.com/en/palm-101/ [accessed 6th
February 2019].
The Independent (2018). The reasons why palm oil is so controversial. Retrieved from: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/palm-oil-health-impact-environment-animals-deforestation-heart-a8505521.html.
UNDP (2018). Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical update. Retrieved from: http://hdr.undp.org/en/
composite/HDI [accessed 6th February 2019].
WWF (2019). 8 things to know about palm oil. Retrieved from: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-
oil [accessed 18th November 2019].
38
Bioleft: open-source seeds for low-input farming systems
Almendra Cremaschi is an agronomist and doctoral student at CENIT. She works on transitions towards
more sustainable agri-food systems, especially with participatory methodologies.
Patrick van Zwanenberg is a researcher at CENIT with a background in environmental sciences. He works
on the politics of science and innovation, especially in relation to issues of sustainability.
Abstract
This article describes Bioleft, an ‘open source’, highly collaborative seed breeding initiative,
in order to encourage reflection on potential synergies with fair trade ideas and practices.
Bioleft aims to develop and redistribute collective agency over seed breeding, as a
response to the emergence of an oligopolistic seed industry. It is experimenting with novel
approaches to seed innovation that increase the diversity of crop varieties, in order to
support agricultural practices that are ignored by mainstream seed firms, particularly small-
scale family farming and more ecologically and socially sustainable agricultural practices.
More generally it is experimenting with new forms of social and productive organization
based on norms of sharing and solidarity.
Keywords: Bioleft; Open-source seeds; Collaborative innovation
Introduction
Experimentation with radically open and highly collaborative ways of producing new knowledge and material
objects can be found everywhere; from farm machinery to open scientific hardware to community based
‘maker-spaces’ (Quilley et al, 2016; Baden et al, 2015). What is distinctive about such initiatives is that they
support a way of working based on a combination of the free circulation of knowledge, unencumbered by
property rights and other restrictions, and extensive collaboration on a shared activity or on a shared
conception of a problem, especially by including people that fall outside the boundaries of organisations or of
established communities of practitioners (van Zwanenberg et al, 2017). This approach to production has been
spurred on by the availability of networked digital infrastructure, and especially by the idea, first developed by
the free/libre software movement, of ‘hacking’ existing intellectual property law to provide a legal basis for
creating protected ‘knowledge commons’ (Weber, 2004).
Many motivations underpin such initiatives, but the most prominent are aspirations to support more
democratic forms of production; to address problems that are ill-served by conventional markets and state
institutions; to widen access to socially useful technology; to demonstrate that there are viable, alternative
ways of organising production, relative to those prevalent within incumbent market structures; and, more
generally, to promote norms of solidarity and sharing (Benkler, 2006). There is much in common here with the
underlying values and aims of the fair trade movement, but rather intriguingly, there has so far been little in the
way of interaction between these two movements.
In what follows we outline one example of the surge of recent experimentation with open and collaborative
forms of production, called Bioleft, which we have been closely involved with developing in Argentina. Bioleft is
an initiative to create an ‘open-source’, networked approach to seed breeding that supports the particular
production needs of small farmers, and those working within other low-input agricultural systems at various
scales, such as agroecological farmers.
39
The Conventional Framework for Producing and Selling Seeds

Mainstream seed firms and markets focus overwhelmingly on developing seed varieties for, and selling them
to, farmers working in intensive, high-input agricultural production systems (Fess et al, 2011). Those markets
do not adequately cater for most of the world’s farmers. This situation has been exacerbated by a collapse in
the diversity of seed breeders over the last four decades, as hundreds of national and regional seed firms that
used to either develop their own seed varieties, or that commercialised varieties produced by the public
sector, have been bought up by a handful of global agrochemical firms (Howard, 2015). At the same time,
public sector seed provision has declined everywhere (Tripp and Louwaars, 1997). This rapid, unprecedented
restructuring of the seed sector has been driven by the emergence of new genomics technologies, and
especially by the worldwide imposition and diffusion of strict intellectual property rights (IPRs) over seed
material (Schenkelaars et al, 2011). Just three giant firms now dominate global seed R&D and commercial
seed markets.
The business models adopted by the global chemical/seed firms, which strict IPRs enable, mean that
breeding efforts become focused on a limited range of crop species and seed varieties for very large
commercial markets and commercially significant production constraints (Fulton and Giannakas, 2001). Other
less commercially important production constraints, minor corps, marginal agroecological environments,
‘niche’ markets, such as for agroecological production, and the needs of small farmers everywhere are
increasingly neglected (Falcon and Fowler, 2002). This is likely to result in an acceleration in the decline of crop
diversity, unsuitable seed varieties (for many farmers), a much narrower variety of agricultural systems and
practices that the seed sector is able to support, and the loss of domestic technological capabilities in many
countries, as domestic firms are purchased. Strict IPRs also allow large firms to ‘lock up’ good quality
germplasm, preventing smaller firms, public sector breeders or farmers from using protected seed varieties as
a basis for further breeding and adaptation. By using patents or patent-like restrictions, such as private
material transfer agreements, a firm can exclusively appropriate the efforts of generations of plant breeders
and farmers with the addition of just one incremental change to a seed variety, a possibility seen as both unfair
and ominous for the future of seed innovation (Piesse and Thirtle, 2010). Many commentators, as well as
people involved in agricultural production, are deeply concerned about the long-term impact of these
developments, and how they ultimately impede the emergence of more sustainable and just food systems
(IPBES-Food, 2016).
Bioleft
In Argentina, in response to these trends, a group of plant breeders, farming organisations and researchers
have created an open-source, collaborative seed breeding initiative called Bioleft, which addresses some of the
challenges posed by an oligopolistic seed sector. Bioleft supports the diffusion and development of knowledge
and seed varieties, free from restrictive intellectual property, that are suitable for diverse agricultural practices,
particularly small-scale farming and other low-input forms of agriculture at various scales.
The initiative involves both institutional and technical tools. The former are legal clauses for exchanging
seed material, based on open-source principles, much like the Creative Commons licenses used by writers and
artists. The clauses grant a recipient of seed material the right to use that material for most or any purposes, in
particular for breeding and the development of new plant varieties. Importantly, a condition of the clause is
that any further transfers of that material, including any new seeds bred using, and therefore containing, the
original material, must contain the same clause. This is critical. It means that all progeny of material released or
transferred with a Bioleft license will become part of the same ‘protected commons’, available to all on the
condition that they agree to always share.
The second tool is a web-based platform for enabling and recording transfers of Bioleft seed material, and
for supporting a process of collaborative seed improvement between plant breeders and farmers. In Argentina,
public sector breeders often develop potentially useful new varieties, but they have no way to deliver those
40
varieties to small producers in the many instances in which markets are too small to be viable for private seed
firms. The platform is, therefore, intended to support the diffusion of new open-source seeds. It also supports a
process whereby farmers test new seed varieties on their farms, providing information to breeders about seed
performance in different agroecological settings and, in collaboration with breeders and other farmers, to
select seeds from the best performing plants for further distributed replanting and selection. In effect, the
platform enables multiple trials without the seed breeder needing to possess an extensive field-testing
infrastructure – a resource that only very large seed companies possess.
We are currently trialling Bioleft within three different farmer–breeder networks, beginning the process of
collaborative selection of: a) novel, open-pollinated maize varieties with organic producers; b) new, salt-
tolerant fodder crops with agroecological producers and small subsistence family farmers; and c) ‘recovered’
tomato varieties with small, peri-urban farmers and with producers belonging to a biodynamic farming
organisation.
Commercial seed firms largely ignore the needs of these kinds of producers. Small family farmers usually
have no choice if they need to purchase seeds but to buy varieties that have been bred for large commercial
production, and that only work well with a package of external inputs and irrigation. Likewise, producers in
‘niche’ markets, such as agroecological farming, cannot find suitable seeds and so have to try and breed them
informally within their own networks. By linking producers who are marginal to mainstream seed innovation
processes with the high-level scientific capabilities of plant breeders, we seek to link existing dispersed
breeding capabilities, create new ones and help meet the very substantial unmet demand for appropriate
germplasm.
Groups of plant breeders and farmers in a number of other countries are also exploring how ‘open-source’
principles can be used to create a protected commons in germplasm, for example in the USA, Germany, Austria
and India (Kotschi and Horneburg, 2018; Luby et al, 2015). We are part of that emerging network, although our
initiative is a-typical in that it is also supporting collaborative breeding of such germplasm. Another difference
is that most other initiatives that have developed open-source seed initiatives envisage no restrictions at all on
what recipients can do with open-source seed material. By contrast, one of our licenses allows restrictions on
who is allowed to multiply seed (i.e. the reproduction of that seed for resale). This is because we are keen to
encourage small seed firms to participate in the initiative, and to encourage the formation of new small seed
firms. Small firms sometimes want the exclusive right to multiply seed, even where they accept that no
restrictions should be placed on the circulation of germplasm as a basis for further breeding, and that farmers
can save and reuse their own seed, and/or share it with other farmers on a non-commercial basis.
‘Recovered’ Tomatoes
An illustration of what open-source seed material looks like can be found within the ‘recovered’ tomatoes
project run by the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires (FAUBA), of which Bioleft is a partner.
Tomatoes originated in the Andean region but there are now only a small handful of varieties of commercially
available tomatoes in Argentina. They are all hybrid, which means that the seeds cannot be saved and
replanted, and they are sold as germinated seedlings, which are expensive. They are also relatively tasteless
because varieties that are high-yielding and do not bruise easily in transport and storage have been
commercialised, over and above other traits.
FAUBA collected over 160 ‘forgotten’ varieties of tomato that used to be grown in Argentina in the first
two-thirds of the twentieth century but that have now disappeared from use. In most cases, the researchers
could only obtain specimens from seed banks located abroad. FAUBA multiplied the recovered varieties and
then organised public tasting sessions at its monthly agroecological farmers market, held on the faculty’s
campus in the middle of Buenos Aires. These were used to select the most popular varieties in terms of taste,
texture and smell. FAUBA is now offering packets of seeds from those selected varieties to anyone, and these
will be transferred with a contract containing a Bioleft clause.
41
The contract asks growers to return double the quantity of seeds that they have been given to plant. This
will enable university agronomists to maintain populations of the tomato varieties, ensuring that they can be
distributed, for free or at marginal cost, to anyone who wants to grow them in the future. The Bioleft clause will
also mean that all those tomato varieties (and any new, improved varieties based on the recovered seed
material) become part of a ‘protected commons’, thus assuring the future, unhindered circulation of that
material for further adaptation and breeding. Some producers will also be recording information about the
performance of the new seeds on Bioleft’s digital platform, and later selecting fruit from the best performing
plants for a process of collaborative seed improvement.
With this particular initiative, there has been substantial demand for tomato seeds from a range of small-
scale producers, agricultural co-ops, farmers’ movements and public sector experimental stations, as well as
from several hundred home/urban gardeners. The reasons why people might want those seeds no doubt vary
but might include their negligible cost, the fact that they are traditional, more flavoursome varieties, and the
‘open-source’ ideology and practice underpinning their production and future reproduction. If improved varieties
are eventually developed through Bioleft that are adapted for low input agriculture (e.g. with good pest/disease
resistance and/or with yields approaching the commercial hybrid versions), we might expect increased demand.
This is key because the longer-term ambition with this kind of collaborative breeding initiative is not just to
provide a product that is well adapted for, and accessible to, small-scale farmers and for other producers who
work in low-input agricultural systems, but rather to increase the viability and profitability of those sectors, and
enable them to expand and become more competitive with mainstream agricultural practices.
Challenges and Synergies

Putting Bioleft into working practice and expanding and replicating it involves many challenges. We need to
demonstrate that the process of networked collaboration in seed breeding works and is advantageous, relative
to what a university department, for instance, might do on its own. In the domain of free/open-source
software, networked collaboration in the absence of property rights has famously produced superior, more
diverse and more reliable software then conventional software firms are able to achieve. Companies like
Amazon choose to run their servers on open-source software because it is more reliable than proprietary
alternatives, not because it is free. The implications of adapting this model to other domains of production are
intriguing, but open-source software is a virtual product, which means that it is only contributors’ knowledge
and labour time that needs to be gifted, and it is co-produced by communities who are very comfortable with
networked digital infrastructure. The more material domain of seeds, where capital and land, as well as labour
time, are needed to produce and distribute seeds, and the different social and cultural settings of, say, farmers,
mean that the success of open-source software is unlikely to be straightforward to replicate.
We have, so far, been able to establish the kernel of an alternative seed innovation system, in part by taking
advantage of gaps in existing infrastructure (e.g. public sector breeders with sufficient autonomy to allocate
time and resources to a collaborative breeding initiative) and on the basis of small grant income, but it would
be desirable to put Bioleft on a self-financing basis and to establish it as a social enterprise. This is one issue
where we might learn from the fair trade movement.
Finally, in terms of synergies with the fair trade movement, open and collaborative production initiatives,
such as Bioleft, are ultimately seeking to develop new capabilities, on the part of individuals, firms and
organisations that are politically and economically marginal to mainstream innovation processes – a
redistribution of power and agency in innovation – as well as new forms of social and productive organisation
based on ideas of sharing and solidarity. There would appear to be considerable overlap with the values and
aims of the fair trade movement, and so potential for collaboration and mutual learning. One way to start
might be with the products that open-source seed creates. There is no reason why the marketing of produce
developed on the basis of ‘open-source’ seeds should not be labeled and marketed as such, and linked with
other forms of certification and labeling that seek to promote more socially just and environmentally
sustainable forms of agricultural production.
42
References
Baden, T., Chagas, A. M., Gage, G., Marzullo, T., Prieto-Godino, L. L. and Euler, T. (2015). Open Labware: 3-D printing your
own lab equipment. PLoS Biology, 13(3).
Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven (CT) and
London: Yale University Press.
Falcon, W. and Fowler, C. (2002). Carving up the commons: emergence of a new international regime for germplasm
development and transfer. Food Policy, 27, 197–222.
Fess, T.L., Kotcon, J.B. and Benedito, V.A. (2011). Crop breeding for low input agriculture: a sustainable response to feed a
growing world population. Sustainability, 3, 1742–1772.
Fulton, M. and Giannakas, K. (2001). Agricultural biotechnology and industry structure. AgBioForum, 4(2), 137–151.
Howard, P.H. (2015). Intellectual property and consolidation in the seed industry. Crop Science, 55, 2489–2495.
IPES-Food (2016). From uniformity to diversity: A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological
systems. International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. http://www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/
UniformityToDiversity_FULL.pdf.
Kotschi, J. and Horneburg, B. (2018). The Open Source Seed Licence: A novel approach to safeguarding access to plant
germplasm. PLoS Biology, 16(10): e3000023.
Luby, C.H., Kloppenburg, J., Michaels, T.E. and Goldman, I.L. (2015). Enhancing freedom to operate for plant breeders and
farmers through open source plant breeding. Crop Science, 55, 2581–2488.
Piesse, C. and Thirtle, C. (2010). Agricultural R&D, technology and productivity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society B, 365, 3035–3047.
Quilley, S., Hawreliak, J. and Kish, K. (2016). Finding an alternative route: Towards open, eco-cyclical, and distributed
production. Journal of Peer Production, 9.
Schenkelaars, P., de Vriend, H. and Kalaitzandonakes, N. (2011). Drivers of consolidation in the seed industry and its
consequences for innovation. Report for COGEM (Commissie Genetische Modificatie). Wageningen (NL): Schenkelaars
Biotechnology Consultancy.
Tripp, R. and Louwaars, N. (1997). Seed regulation: Choices on the road to reform. Food Policy, 22, 433–446.
Van Zwanenberg, P., Fressoli, M., Arza, V., Smith, A. and Marin, A. (2017). Open and collaborative developments, STEPS
Working Paper 98, Brighton: STEPS Centre.
Weber, S. (2004). The success of open source. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
43

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Journal of Fair Trade

Journal of the Fair Trade Society,

Action ≈ Learning ≈ Theory ≈ Justice

Volume 2 • Issue 1 • June 2020

Atypical Fair Trade Collection – Part 1

Produced and distributed by

Typesetting by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK

ISSN 2513-9525 (print)

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced,

Action ≈ Learning ≈ Theory ≈ Justice

FAIR TRADE SOCIETY CO-ORDINATOR

ABOUT THE PLUTO EDUCATIONAL TRUST

Fair Trade Futures

The ‘burden’ of traceability in gold supply chains 22

Bioleft: open-source seeds for low-input farming systems 39

Pauline Tiffen, George Williams and Patrick Van Zwanenberg

Righting Wrongs, Deliberative Collaborations

Broader Visions, Moving Away from the Core

New Concepts Needed

Peres Were, Julie Madeley and Mädchen Munsell

Mädchen Munsell is a Communications Intern for Competa CodePamoja in the Netherlands.

Conventional Fair Trade

Fair Trade Software

Barclays Bank of Kenya (now renamed Absa Group)

Current Developments and Challenges

Keywords: livre équitable; International Alliance of Independent Publishers; francophone

Distant production and the ‘normalisation of the North’

27 Ducourneau, C. (2017). La Fabrique des classiques africains. Paris: CNRS Editions.

35 Varul, pp. 662–663; emphasis in the original.

39 See Quinqueton, T. (2007). L’Autre Mondialisation de l’Édition. Esprit, 5, 46–53.

The challenges associated with responsible sourcing

Generating a supply of responsibly mined gold

Accessing responsibly mined gold

The cost of maintaining physical segregation across the supply chain

Responding to challenges and the future of Fairtrade gold

Refiner Manufacturer Jewellery

Physical traceability Documentary traceability

Sylvia Kay, Martin Jelsma and David Bewley-Taylor1

Keywords: cannabis; sustainable development; human rights; market strategy; co-

First order principles of Fair Trade cannabis8

A strategic compact for Fair Trade cannabis

•• Restrictions on foreign acquisitions of local licensed companies.

Growing consumer demand for sustainable cannabis

Future challenges and opportunities for Fair Trade cannabis

Keywords: palm oil; Ghana; smallholders; Fairtrade; Fair Trade; SME

Table 1 Multi-dimensional poverty in selected regions, Ghana

Urban 0.053 12.8 41.6 2.6

Rural 0.208 44.7 46.6 16.4

Greater Accra 0.044 10.7 41.4 1.6

Central region 0.132 29.5 44.6 9.1

Eastern region 0.118 26.7 44.2 7.9

Volta region 0.136 30.8 44.1 8.7

Almendra Cremaschi and Patrick van Zwanenberg

Keywords: Bioleft; Open-source seeds; Collaborative innovation

The Conventional Framework for Producing and Selling Seeds

Challenges and Synergies

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