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Fair Trade Decoded
A florists' guide to fair trade flowers |
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Written by Amanda Ryder
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A florists’ guide to fair trade flowers
You can sip on fair trade coffee, dribble and kick fair
trade sport balls and now send your loved ones fair trade flowers. With
the number of fair trade products being offered increasing, it’s clear
consumers are becoming more concerned with the story behind the
products.
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Workers at a Fairtrade Flower Production farm in Hoja Verde in Cayambe, Ecuador, prepare the land for sowing. Photo courtesy of TransFair Canada
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But what does fair trade even mean? As a broad term, fair trade is used to describe trade that works to improve market access and working conditions for producers in developing countries. Although the concept was not developed as an environmental movement, fair trade can also encourage sound environmental practices. It’s an idea that actually began in the 1950s to reduce the amount of money going to the middleman and to channel these funds back to the grower.
Fair trade incorporates fair pricing into the product so farms can use the money to pay workers a living wage, improve working conditions and use environmentally friendly practices. Fair trade made headlines in the ’90s when fair trade coffee came into existence. The fair trade brew began to help producers in developing countries who weren’t receiving a fair cut of the coffee they produced. The majority of coffee we buy in North America comes from coffee producers who are paid 54 cents for a pound of beans. That means the farmer receives 11 cents from every dollar coffee-drinkers spend. Fair trade producers receive 28 cents for every dollar. This extra money gives farmers a stable income and the money can also be invested in schools or health facilities in the community.
Similar to the coffee market, the same labour problems we’re historically prevalent in the flower industry. In the U.S., more than 60 per cent of imported flowers come from places like Colombia and Ecuador and the numbers are similar in Canada. Our standards require these flowers to be bug free, but unlike fruit and vegetables, flowers are never tested for chemical residue when they arrive in Canada. Producers in South America are forced to use pesticides in order to avoid infestation and to compete with growers in China and Africa. Workers in these places are exposed to pesticides banned by the World Health Organization, forced to work long hours and grossly underpaid. In order to ensure products are being produced in fair conditions, certification labels were developed. Each label comes up with a list of standards that the farms must meet. These can be labour standards that include fair wages and limitations on child labour or rules on pesticide use and farming practices. The second part of certification is auditing. An independent auditing group goes to each farm to ensure that the farm is following these standards. Once the farm passes, they become certified. In order to maintain the certification, the producer is often subjected to annual or random audits.
In Canada, there are several labels from the U.S., Europe and South America certifying fair flowers in the marketplace. Each certify based on their own values and operate in different ways. Some labels place an emphasis on green practices and pesticide use while others focus on social working conditions. So what’s a retail florist to do?
Part of the confusion behind fair trade flowers is the growing list of terms used to describe the practice of fair trade. Even the term “fair trade” is problematic. When capitalized, Fair Trade describes flowers certified specifically by TransFair Canada, one of the certification labels. When lowercased the term describes the actual fair trade practice. Throw in terms like “organic”, “sustainable”, “green”, “ethical trading” and “socially responsible” and there’s plenty of material to send a florist running the opposite way. But if you’re keen to include certified flowers in your shop, the key is to sit down and look at the values behind the labels, the cost of each label and the logistics of getting the product to your shop (see labels, right).
Suzanne McKean-Makin of McKean’s Flowers Ltd. in New Glascow, N.S., says the process of bringing fair trade flowers into her business took about six months. McKean-Makin says she and her husband Tom, who both own the shop, made the decision to convert to fair trade products after reading up on the movement.
“As we learned more about fair trade, we liked what the ethics stood for,” she says. The switch wasn’t a money-making decision but was based on the fact that they wanted to set an example in the small community.
McKean’s Flowers Ltd. get their fair trade flowers from Sierra Eco, a brand developed by Sierra Flower Trading in Montreal. The Sierra Eco brand has been carrying fair trade flowers since 2000 and defines the flowers as such through their own process. The brand works in conjunction with both FlorVerde, a label run out of Colombia, and the Flower Labelling Program (FLP) from Germany. For a farm to become a member of the Sierra Eco brand, it must first meet the brand’s environmental standards. Once the standards are met, FlorVerde and FLP do the auditing and certification of the farms on behalf of Sierra Eco.
Most recently, Sierra Eco became involved with the development of the VeriFlora “Certified Sustainably Grown” label. The VeriFlora label was created in 2003 and began certifying farms in 2005. When a farm becomes certified, it receives the VeriFlora “Certified Sustainably Grown” label and this guarantees that the flowers or potted plants were grown using socially and environmentally responsible practices and grown for quality using methods like cold chain management. The emphasis is on good farming practices that will allow for flowers to be produced with as little impact on the environment as possible.
Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), a privately run and independent testing organization based in the United States, owns the right to the VeriFlora label and is the organization responsible for conducting independent audits of the farms. In the past, SCS has been involved with certification in both the forestry and fishing industries and helped to bring fair trade coffee into Starbucks.
In the last year, Sierra Eco has become a VeriFlora-certified handler capable of distributing flowers to Canadian wholesalers. Tom Leckman, CEO and president of Sierra Flower Trading, which oversees the Sierra Eco brand, says the VeriFlora certification process “involves everyone in the chain – from seed, we bring it all the way to the consumer.” When Sierra Eco helped to develop the label, Leckman says it wanted a “transparent standard that will apply to everyone.”
By the end of the year, Sierra Eco, which carries 30 per cent Veriflora-certified product, plans to deal only with VeriFlora and will stop using both FlorVerde and FLP to certify its fair trade flowers. Leckman says one reason for this is the fact that VeriFlora certifies based on social and environmental conditions and also sustainable practices. “VeriFlora is the only one addressing all of them.” When Sierra Eco makes the complete switch to VeriFlora-certified farms, Leckman says that although VeriFlora does not officially certify flowers as fair trade they will still be marketed as such by Sierra Eco because of the high standards behind VeriFlora.
Another big player providing a fair trade guarantee is TransFair Canada. TransFair is the only national, independent and non-profit organization to certify products with the Fair Trade Certification label. Florimex Vancouver Inc., a Vancouver-based wholesaler, was responsible for bringing TransFair Canada’s first shipment of Fair Trade roses to North America. Owners Jos and Regien van Berckel decided to become a TransFair licensee after they witnessed the working conditions on African flower farms. “They were determined to get the market to accept Fair Trade flowers,” says Steve Waines, sales representative at Florimex Vancouver Inc. The business is now a distributor of Fair Trade roses from Kenya and has been since November 2005. As a wholesaler, the Fair Trade roses only make up five to 10 per cent of Florimex Vancouver Inc.’s business because the market for fair trade is still being developed.
Waines says becoming a Fair Trade importer was an undertaking for the company because of the amount of paperwork involved. The Fair Trade program requires licensees to account for every penny. He says this transparency is one of the reasons the company selected TransFair for its fair trade needs. “Certified Fair Trade is the only label to give concrete proof of where the money has gone. All you have to do is ask for the information and you get it. For me that’s the big difference,” Waines says.
Rob Clarke, executive director of TransFair Canada, said he originally thought Fair Trade would catch on quickly in the Canadian market because of the number of flowers imported here. However, the progress hasn’t been as fast as he first thought. Clarke cites confusion between labels and the program as one possible reason. “Ours is the only program that certifies both ends of the process,” he said. TransFair belongs to the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO), an association for non-profit labels that defines the international Fair Trade Standards for these labels. Inspections, trade auditing and certification are carried out by FLOCert, the certification body of the FLO and this helps TransFair investigate the standards and money trail at both the farm level and the licensee level.
Currently, TransFair is available along the Western coast of Canada. Florimex Vancouver Inc. is limited to where it can ship so it deals primarily with the Lower Mainland in B.C. Waines says they want to expand their shipping area, but they are still looking at how they can do that while still maintaining to quality of the product.
Scott Graham, owner of Eco Flora in Toronto, would like to include Fair Trade Certified flowers in his shop, which carries fair trade and organic flowers, but is waiting until that particular program comes closer to home. “I have tried to get the Certified Fair Flowers but they are flown from Kenya to Vancouver and then they’d have to be flown here to Toronto. That’s a lot of jet fuel,” Graham says. He is now using VeriFlora flowers through Sierra Eco.
Through his experience in dealing with various labels, Graham says he’s learned to actually look into which farms his flowers are coming from. “The real trick is knowing the farm.” Graham sources the product back to the farm through the Internet as most farms have their own website. “The labels are important, but if you know the farm, you know what kind of product you’re getting.”
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