Is Bigger Better? The Small Farm Imaginary and Fair Trade Banana Production in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

Fair Trade is a certification system designed to create social change in production and consumption patterns, primarily in agricultural products, by shaping what happens on the production end of the supply chain through a certification and regulatory system. Previous research on Fair Trade investigated the workings and benefits of Fair Trade production models, with little attention paid to how the Fair Trade model might fail to meet its objectives. Research on Fair Trade would suggest that if inequality and exploitation exist in the Fair Trade supply chain, it would be experienced by the most marginalized actors, such as the temporary workers hired by smallhold farmers, who are frequently invisible in the Fair Trade literature and documents on banana production in the Caribbean. Through a global ethnography of the organic and Fair Trade banana supply chain in the Dominican Republic, this research reveals how Fair Trade as a “spatial fix” for capital and a “small farm imaginary” work to marginalize a particular class of workers. It also reveals the unseen sociality of Fair Trade standards in the systemic and structural assumptions in the small farm production model that Fair Trade promotes. The study finds that smallhold workers are essential to sustaining the market for Fair Trade bananas in a form of functional dualism between smallholders and plantations. In a counterintuitive outcome of the workings of Fair Trade, workers might be better off in the medium-scale plantation model unique to the Dominican Republic.

公平贸易是设计用来创造以农产品为主的生产及消费模式中的社会变革的认证系统, 其透过认证和规范系统, 形塑供应链生产端的境况。过去对公平贸易的研究, 探讨公平贸易生产模型的运作与效益, 却鲜少关注公平贸易模型如何可能无法达成其所允诺的目标。公平贸易的研究主张, 若不均和剥削存在于公平贸易供应链之中, 那麽多数的边缘化行动者, 诸如小型农场僱用的临时劳工, 便是经历上述不均与剥削的人, 而这些人在公平贸易的文献与加勒比香蕉生产的纪录中, 经常是受到忽视的。本研究对多明尼加共和国的有机及公平贸易香蕉供应链进行全球民族志研究, 以此揭露公平贸易如何作为资本的 “空间修补,” 以及 “小型农场的想像” 如何边缘化特定的工人阶级。本文同时揭露在公平贸易所提倡的小型农场生产模式的系统及结构预设中, 公平贸易标准不被看见的社会性。本研究发现, 小型农场工人, 是在小农和大型农场的双重功能形式中, 维持公平贸易香蕉市场的关键。与直觉的公平贸易功能相反的结果是, 工人在多明尼加共和国拥有的独特中型规模之农场模型中, 或许会获得更佳的处境。

El Comercio Justo es un sistema de certificación diseñado con el propósito de crear cambio social en los patrones de producción y consumo, especialmente de productos agrícolas, configurando lo que ocurre en la producción al final de la cadena der suministros por medio de un sistema de certificación t y regulación. Los estudios anteriores sobre Comercio Justo investigaron el desempeño y beneficios de los modelos de producción en esta estrategia comercial, con muy poca atención prestada a la forma como el modelo del Comercio Justo podría fallar en alcanzar sus objetivos. La investigación sobre Comercio Justo podría sugerir que si en la cadena de suministro orientada bajo estas características hubiere desigualdad y explotación, sus efectos los experimentarían los actores más marginados, tales como los trabajadores temporales empleados por granjeros de escala limitada, a menudo soslayados tanto en la literatura sobre Comercio Justo como en documentos relacionados con la producción de banano en el Caribe. A partir de una etnografía global de la cadena de suministro de banano de cultivo orgánico en esta modalidad comercial en la República Dominicana, esta investigación revela la operación del Comercio Justo a manera de un “reparador espacial” para el capital y un trabajo “imaginario de finca pequeña” para marginar una clase particular de trabajadores. Revela también la oculta sociabilidad de los estándares del Comercio Justo en los supuestos sistémicos y estructurados del modelo de producción de granja pequeña que este tipo de comercio promueve. El estudio pone en evidencia que los trabajadores de las unidades de explotación a escala pequeña son esenciales para sostener el mercado de banano tipo Comercio Justo a través de un dualismo funcional entre pequeños propietarios y plantaciones. Una evaluación del funcionamiento del Comercio Justo podría generar un resultado contradictorio, de suerte que los trabajadores podrían salir mejor librados en el modelo de la plantación de escala media típico de la República Dominicana.

Key Words:

• banana production
• Dominican Republic
• Fair Trade
• labor
• small farms

关键词:

• 香蕉生产
• 多明尼加共和国
• 公平贸易
• 劳动
• 小型农场

Palabras clave:

• producción de banano
• República Dominicana
• Comercio Justo
• trabajo
• granjas pequeñas

Notes

Of course, this analysis begs the question of whether and how the Dominican (or any) state has anything to say about labor arrangements within its territory, when labor in this supply chain appears to be governed primarily by supranational entities (Raynolds 2004). Relatedly, there is no Dominican certifier in this supply chain.

Shreck (2002), however, found that one of the multinational exporters in the Fair Trade banana industry in the Dominican Republic held a tremendous amount of power over price and the availability of the social premium.

The timing of the development of Fair Trade (mid- to late 1990s) in Europe is particularly interesting, given the U.S./EU trade war over banana market share in the same time frame. Now that the dispute has been “resolved” in 2012, the European market is dominated by Fair Trade bananas, which are almost exclusively cultivated by African–Caribbean–Pacific countries.

Besky (2008), however, found that the landless poor fared worse on Fair Trade plantations than those on non–Fair Trade plantations in India. Stringent labor standards encoded in Indian labor law as well as other regulatory mechanisms, such as tea auctions, disrupt the neoliberalization of tea production for export.

Harvey's explication of the spatial fix as a movement of capital from developed to developing world contexts for the appropriation of surplus is especially apt in the Dominican Republic. The logistics, exporting, and all of the large plantations are owned and operated by expatriates from Europe. The development of infrastructure to promote and develop the fair trade industry in the Dominican Republic is largely a project of developed world capital. Further underscoring the cultural dimensions of this project, more than one expatriate articulated some form of the sentiment that “Dominicans are not capable” of managing the supply chain.

There is really no reason to believe that nonwaged, family labor is anywhere near “fair” (see, e.g., Raynolds 2002). As such, the association between small farms, family labor, and fair treatment of workers is highly problematic in its own right.

A smallhold farm is defined by Fair Trade standards as a farm less than 60 ha but in the study all of the small farms were no more than 20 ha. Any farm over 60 ha is considered by FLO to be a “hired-labor organization” and is excluded from membership in the banana associations.

My collaborator on other parts of this project, Andrew Murphy, conducted research on the perceptions and motivations of Fair Trade and organic consumers in the UK.

At the time of the research, 300 to 400 pesos was equivalent to about US $10. The Dominican Republic, however, is experiencing rapid inflation, attributed to the 2009 implementation of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement by many. A loaf of bread or a liter of milk cost about US $1–2 at the time of the research and prices were continuing to rise, as wages were continuing to decline in value.

The legal status of workers was not directly asked about, to avoid compromising informants.

Thrips are insects that lay eggs in the banana flower, thereby delaying development of the bunch and leaving discolorations on the bananas.