Cross-Border Innovation in South–North Fair Trade Supply Chains: The Opportunities and Problems of Integrating Fair Trade Governance into Northern Public Procurement

Abstract

Fair trade is a means of governing South–North supply chains to increase the benefits of international trade integration for poor southern producers of agricultural and handicraft goods. Although the approach itself is arguably innovative in comparison with commercially orientated supply chains, many consider that its formalization within third-party, Fairtrade International certification, has facilitated a process of conventionalization. Furthermore, Fairtrade certification is considered to dominate producer and consumer attention; and therefore marginalize other more innovative and radical fair trade approaches, making differentiation increasingly difficult. The chapter investigates one aspect of this narrative by elucidating the effects of the Fairtrade Towns scheme: a promotional program viewed to be precipitating “Fairtrade absolutism” within the wider movement. Focusing on the devolved region of Scotland, evidence for this process is uncovered and the implications for Southern producers highlighted through a parallel case study of the National Smallholder Farmers Association in Malawi. Here it is found that the costs of certification and their geographic restriction are actively isolating some producers; which combined with “Fairtrade absolutism” in consumer countries undermines the principle of fairer access to northern export markets. The final section however, connects the producer and consumer cases, by reporting on an innovative fairly traded supply chain constructed between Malawian rice farmers and Scottish schools. Overall, the chapter highlights the continued potential for innovation within the fair trade movement, and suggests that such opportunities will emerge where supply chain actors are more proactively embedded in wider understandings of development and trade justice.