FAIR TRADE: Coffee and Chocolate with a Conscience

Written by Ann Loux, First Presbyterian Co-op Team Member and Volunteer about fair trade and her experience as a Fullbright Scholar in Cameroon during the mid 1990's

The other day in a Social Justice class at the University of Utah three students offered their opinions on US aid to Africa. "How long before the billions in aid to Africa have any effect whatsoever?" "How long before we can express our donor exhaustion with Africa?" "Isn't it about time the Africans began to solve their own problems?"

In the 1950's and 1960's many post-independence Africans lived well; universal education grew along with the middle classes. African nations sent thousands of their young people to be educated in the best universities around the world: in Britain, the United States, Russia and Germany. Politicians and future rulers studied economics; future educators earned PhD's in their specialties. All expenses were paid by the government, including room and board.

The Provost at the University of Buea in Cameroon, Central Africa, where I taught for a year as a Fulbright Scholar, was educated in Britain. The Assistant Provost held a PhD from the Indiana University. Two of my colleagues in the English Department had degrees from the Universities of Michigan and Ohio.

Where did the government of Cameroon find the resources to educate its best and brightest so brilliantly?

Cameroon is rich--like so many African nations--rich particularly in agricultural products. In the 1960's the world commodities market was good; prices for bananas, cocoa beans, and palm oil were excellent. And Cameroonians spent a good proportion of their profits on education. Every village proudly built its own school; soon the country enjoyed a literacy rate for both males and females of over 75%. Higher education in the new universities was open to both sexes: the University of Buea enrolled more than 50% female students.

On a visit with a friend to her family's village, I watched the harvest of palm nuts and cocoa beans. By then, the mid-nineties, farmers were scarcely making enough to transport their crops to market. Yet their greatest fear was of not being able to pay school fees and buy school uniforms for their children.

The harvesting of palm nuts and cocoa beans is arduous and demanding. Palm nuts grow yards up the palm tree. Young men climb to the top and lop off the sinewy branches with machetes. They then shoulder and carry down the heavy bunch of golden brown nuts. These huge bunches then have to be transported over execrable roads to pressing mills and the oil then transported from these mills in the interior to the coast for shipping to world markets. The relatively available taxis are able to handle few agricultural products in addition to the eight passengers they pack into these Toyota Corollas. Larger trucks, more difficult to hire and more problematic on muddy roads, involve still higher costs.

Cocoa beans are also gathered in the forest not far from the village. As with the pine nuts, everything is TOTALLY organic! Baskets of beans, picked individually like blueberries, are brought to the various front yards where they dry for days on palm frond mats raised about three feet off the ground. The dried beans, again the bulkiest form of the product, must be shipped to the coast in huge crocker sacks--each one requiring the trunk or "boot" of one Corolla.

All of the profits from these crops--minus of course the relatively huge costs of transportation--belong to the families who farm their tribal lands. The men, primarily, manage the cash crops, and the women feed their families with more perishable crops.

Now, back to the questions raised in that Social Justice class. How can we end Africa's eternal pleas for help? What about paying a fair price, maybe even a generous price, for the chocolate we joyously eat? How about paying good money for the most delicious bananas in the world? For rubber tapped from real trees? What about paying a fair price for the truck loads of hard woods Western companies harvest in African forests, a price which would include replacement costs?

If we paid our fair share for such luxuries, could we trust Africans to spend her just wages justly? On bare necessities even? Dare we go further and suggest subsidies for African products that roughly parallel our own cotton and milk subsidies?

Farmers in the villages of Cameroon are good stewards of their abundant land. But their profits were eaten up by the huge costs of transporation. Might we trust the Africans to build better roads if they received more money for their crops?

We can so easily pay the Fair Trade Price for the chocolate offered by our food cooperative. And a fair price for our most excellent coffee. Who knows, with time we might even be able to stop a war!