This is a rare exercise in idealism for me

My co-editor, Sam Clegg, will likely roll his eyes as he reads the bleeding-heart liberalism gush from my pen onto an editorial page once heralded (no pun intended!) as a bastion of right-wing thought. There might be a snide reference in the online comments section to the river of tears that will soak the tie-dye shirts and salt the free-range eggs and vegetarian-fed bacon of many a Madison liberal as they read this article over breakfast.

But that’s just the response you’ll have to get used to if you’re going to talk about fair trade.

Hence, when the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh decided last week to pledge its support for the fair trade movement and “provide as many fair trade products as possible,” it no doubt was aware that this fundamentally moral and ethical judgment would be countered with a cultural and political one.

Opponents might say it’s not so much that helping the poor is a bad thing, but that it’s so inappropriate for a university to take such a stance on, well … a political issue.

But that’s where the opponents are wrong. Fair trade is not about politics. It’s not about union bosses bullying politicians into voting for protectionism or Democratic candidates speaking vaguely about “tax loopholes” that are shipping American jobs overseas. It is not limited to a faction of campus hippies, whose academically fashionable positions on fair trade and cage-free chickens are merely fronts for their real goals of free love and stem-free cannabis.

The fair trade movement is about people taking small but meaningful action to push commerce in the right direction.

In short, the idea of fair trade is to promote higher standards for the treatment of the environment, workers and their communities. It can be accomplished by a unique business model in which the buyer — UW-Oshkosh in this case — establishes a direct relationship with the producers — whether they are coffee farmers in Nicaragua or sugar harvesters in Malawi. By cutting out the corporate “middlemen,” the buyer can offer a price to the producers that covers at least the costs of production and often results in additional income that the producers can invest in their communities.

Covers the cost of production? Isn’t that obvious? No, not in the case of most small farmers in developing countries. World market prices fluctuate because of a variety of different factors, and small farmers are the most vulnerable to the whims of free trade. As a result, millions in developing countries are in a state of perpetual debt, trying in vain each year to make up for the losses of the previous harvest. Often they cash in at a loss to a multinational corporations and go work for near-dirt wages for the plantations providing coffee for Starbucks and Caribou.

Fair trade seeks to work for the benefit of the producers as well as the consumers, often working with co-operatives in third-world communities who use the profits of their trade to invest in sustainable development for future generations. This means sending their kids to school instead of sweatshops. It means using farming methods that benefit the environment long-term instead of the slash-and-burn tactics that often define third-world cash crop harvesting.

Fair trade is not a stubborn defiance of globalization, it is a savvy exploitation of globalization for the benefit of those at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

Moreover, fair trade does not undermine the free market — it merely pushes it in a positive direction. The corny attempts Starbucks makes to convince us they are earth-friendly or worker-friendly are evidence of the effectiveness of the fair trade movement. What begins as a self-righteous hippy initiative benefiting a few farmers in Nicaragua can expand to a global trend of increased standards for workers and the environment.

What will the cost be to Oshkosh? We don’t quite know yet. But the argument that the plan will unfairly burden the students is hard to make when the only fair trade products currently available are several citrus fruits, grapes, coffee, sugar, chocolate and cotton. If fair trade indeed causes prices to rise slightly — which it often does not — students will not be starving as a result.

Dozens of European universities are already “fair trade approved,” using their purchasing power to empower some of the world’s poorest. UW-Oshkosh became the pioneer of the American movement last week. Hopefully, UW-Madison will follow suit.

Jack Craver ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in history.