Can we shop our way to a better world?

When you buy a cup of coffee for €2, the farmer gets 3-4 cents for the coffee in that cup. If you buy a cup of organic and fair trade coffee, you may have to cough-up €2.50 and the farmer will get 4-5 cents. The farmer’s income will increase by an impressive 20-25 percent. Looking at it from another perspective, it seems that you will need to spend 50 cents to increase the farmer’s income by 1 or 2 cents. This example throws up the question whether the market mechanism is efficient in transforming consumers’ willingness to pay for direct or indirect benefits of a product.

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) such as fair trade, organic, and eco-labels have emerged as part of a number of converging – and associated – trends such as:

- emphasizing the market and consumer choice as important tools to accomplish ethical, economic, environmental or social goals;

- facilitating government de-regulation, which leaves more self-regulation to the industries;

- holding those that bring products to the market place accountable for the quality of the products, a responsibility that extends to the suppliers of the products, and their suppliers in turn;

- introducing a stiff global competition which makes differentiation in the market place an essential survival strategy to escape ‘commodity hell’;

- organizing production into so-called value chains where each link is taken care of by independent companies that are under the constant threat of being exchanged, constantly competing with others.


Let me expand a bit on this last point.

In the movie The Godfather, Vito Corleone, the mafia boss played by Marlon Brando, is asked by his godson Jonny Fontane to help secure a film role that will boost his fading career. The head of the film studio has previously refused to give Fontane the part. The Godfather tells Johnny, "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." One morning the studio director wakes up to find the head of his expensive racehorse on his bed. Fontane is subsequently given the part.

This is basically what the chain leaders, i.e. supermarkets or corporations, have done; given suppliers an offer they can't refuse – follow the standard. Suppliers in the chain, all the way to the farmers, and sometimes even the suppliers to the farmers, should follow the standards developed by the chain leaders. In many cases, the standards also shift the costs away from the chain leader to the suppliers. In order to enforce compliance, suppliers have to use verification mechanisms, normally private certification bodies, authorized by the chain leaders or auditors from the chain leader.

At a point in time, NGOs realized that consumer activism could be a tool to accomplish goals. This first took shape as boycott, that is refusal to buy products from companies because of their behavior. When companies tried to get away from their responsibilities by outsourcing, NGOs pointed out that those chain leaders had responsibilities for the whole chain. In some cases, this led to the NGOs initiating sustainability schemes, either in partnership with an industry or alone.

We don’t have VSS for social conditions for labour in Scandinavia – but there is a Food Justice Certified scheme developed in the USA now. Why? Because it is needed in the USA but not in Scandinavia (at least not in the same way as in the USA). VSS has emerged in the space between that well regulated by the markets and by the governments respectively. If we view their existence as a result of “policy failure” or “market failure”, it means that if the markets and governments did their job properly they would not be needed at all.

The example of the coffee cup shows that the market mechanism is not a particularly efficient tool for accomplishing non-market goals. Let me give a few more examples.

VSS is often presented as an option for small-scale farmers, but they are oversold in this regard. In general, only a small proportion of the farms will be able to participate in the new value chains. The sustainability schemes constitute one factor among many discriminating small producers, be it farmers or food processors. Farmers with more resources are able to capitalize more on the opportunities. The processes of certification also, almost inevitably, favor the rich over the poor, both in developed or developing countries.

I started an organic farm in 1977 in Sweden. From 1985 onwards, organic farms have been certified to voluntary standards. The number of organic farms in Sweden has grown from a few hundred in the early eighties to nearly 12,000. The market share has gone from 0 to 4-5 percent. Around 17 percent of arable land is organic. So this is a real success story. However, growth has slowed down despite the fact that a totally overwhelming majority of the population says that they want to eat organic food. Also, many farmers go organic mainly because of the compensation for environmental services that they get from the European Union and the government and not because of market demand. Looking at the bigger picture, the growth of the organic sector has done nothing to curb the rapid decline of farming in the country. The number of farms has halved in the same time that the organic market has developed.

Most VSS in the agriculture sector have regulations that production can't be approved if it is established on land that until recently was rainforest. If certified production becomes important, however, the net effect will be that the certified producers will buy existing land and other producers will continue to exploit the forest frontier with the money they get from selling land to the certified ones. This process has been ascertained in Brazil, where soya production – now certified as forest-friendly – push cattle ranchers to the forest zone. In reality, the impact of these standards is almost zero on deforestation, compared to government regulation. They do make consumers feel good, though.

They also are problematic to apply in situations caused by the sum of individual actions: for e.g. it is almost impossible to ascertain whether one farmer uses groundwater sustainably; it is the sum of water used by all farmers in the catchment area that will determine whether it is used sustainably or not. VSS in management of commons has existed for millennia, e.g. in the management of fisheries, forests, irrigation or pastures. But the modern sustainability schemes are based on the market and individual companies, which is contrary to the foundations of the long standing method of management of the commons.

When discussing the impact of a certain standard, it is often contrasted against a worst case scenario. The producers that first go for a VSS are, to a very large extent, those that have production already close to compliance, which is why there are many organic smallholders producing coffee, but almost no organic flower producers in the market place. Meanwhile, proponents of the schemes mostly contrast their affiliated production with worst cases of non-certified production.

I tell this not to make the case that organic farming and other VSS have failed, but to make the case that using the market and consumer purchase to accomplish policy goals is often less efficient than government regulations, direct subsidies, ban etc.

In general, VSS is not particularly efficient in dealing with problems that are rooted in fundamental structures of society, the market and the economy. They do normally work well when they are about a simple substitution of a technology, e.g. chlorine-free paper or CFC-free fridges. But things like that can – and should – be accomplished by mandatory regulations.

Ultimately, whether VSS delivers or not may be a sub-set of the bigger question, “Can we shop our way to a better world?” While I do think that we should buy organic and other products that are a better choice here and now – and to pay a bit more for them –I also firmly believe that this will only have small effects.

In State of the World 2013, Annie Leonard (the person making the excellent video Story of Stuff) points out that the focus on sustainable consumption “distracts us from identifying and demanding change from the real drivers of environmental decline…. Describing today’s environmental problems and solutions as individual issues also has a disempowering effect, leaving people feeling that their greatest power lies in perfecting their daily choices.” I couldn’t agree more. 

First published 26 April 2013

Organic agriculture should be adapted to the location - not to EU rules

The recent proposal by the European Union scraps the possibilities to import organic products produced under rules equivalence to the EU rules. Instead, the new rules will insist on total compliance. That is a stupid approach to organic farming, which essentially should be well adapted to the location of the production, rather than to the conditions in the market where it is sold. Below I post a message from IFOAM about it. Read more: The Commission's legislative proposal & the Annexes.

The revision of the import section of the EU organic regulation proposed by the Commission imposes absolute compliance by developing countries and inhibits European consumers’ choice of organic products.

On 24 March 2014, the EU Commission released a proposal for a complete overhaul of the EU organic regulation. Regarding imports, the proposal foresees to replace the approach of equivalence with requirements of absolute compliance with all details of the EU regulation. ‘Equivalence’, under which organic products currently enter the EU, determines that imported products must comply with equally reliable organic standards, but accepts that the details of the standards may vary to account for different local conditions. Absolute compliance does not consider regional specificities, which invites absurd situations affecting imports into the EU: Under proposed rules requiring full farm conversion, an African organic mango farmer who feeds household waste to a pig on his/ her farm or buys a non-organic young goat for milk production may, under the new rules, no longer be able to export his/ her produce to the EU as this would not comply with the foreseen regulation.

European organic agriculture associations represented by IFOAM EU condemn this initiative. Referring to the revision of the regulation, BÖLW, the umbrella organization of producers, processors and traders of organic food in Germany, cautions: “The EU Commission wants to strengthen organic in Europe, yet it creates new hurdles.”

The concern demonstrated previously by the EU Commission in ensuring European consumers’ access to a wide range of organic products, including non-EU products like coffee or cocoa, seems to have been discarded. The Commission had made significant progress in implementing the recommendations of the International Task Force on Harmonization and Equivalence in Organic Agriculture, lead by IFOAM, the United Nations Food (FAO) and Agriculture Organization, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The shift towards compliance is a step backwards in the efforts to include developing country producers in value chains. This change goes against the recommendations of the International Task Force and the spirit of the international Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.

The current proposal exempts but a few highly developed countries from full compliance and is, according to Markus Arbenz, IFOAM Executive Director, “a backward approach, imposing EU rule, even where it makes no sense. And absurd situations will inevitably lead to non-compliance.”
Criticism to the new legislative proposal by the international organic sector and by some Member States went unheeded, and in a surprise move the Commission has now decided to push through the proposal in a more urgent revision to the current organic regulation.

The move from equivalence to compliance will strangle:

• European consumers’ access to affordable and trustworthy organic products, particularly tropical products;
• European organic processors’ access to imported organic ingredients;
• Developing Countries’ ability to grow their organic sector to meet the demand of European consumers.

The compliance approach the Commission is proposing will harm the entire organic sector, from producers to consumers, inside and outside of the EU. Member States are urgently called upon to voice their objections and put a stop to this proposal.

More information about the organic regulation review and the positions of IFOAM EU can be found here. For press inquiries, please contact Joelle Katto-Andrighetto, IFOAM Value Chain Manager: j.katto@ifoam.org

Ethics for sale?

Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, opened a store in Baltimore 1836 which sold only goods obtained by labor from free people. This is an early example of ethical marketing which continued up to the end of slavery in the United States in 1865.

Ethical marketing based on voluntary standards and certification has spread in a rapid pace the last decades, as a result of converging - and interacting – trends. Most notably,
- a trend towards emphasizing the market and consumer choice as important tools to accomplish ethical, economic, environmental or social goals;
- a trend of government de-regulation, which leaves more self-regulation to the industries; and
- stiff global competition which makes differentiation in the market place an essential survival strategy to escape ‘commodity hell’;

When you buy a cup of coffee for €2 the farmer gets 3-4 cents for the coffee in that cup. If you buy a cup of organic and fair trade coffee you are likely to have to cough-up €2.50 - and the farmer will get 4-5 cents. The farmer’s income will increase, perhaps with impressive 20-25 percent. Looking from another perspective, however, you spend 50 cents to increase the farmer’s income with 1 or 2 cents. This example begs the question if the market mechanism is efficient in transforming consumers’ willingness to pay for direct or indirect benefits of a product to an increase in income for producers.

We don’t have voluntary standards for social conditions for labor in Scandinavia – but there is a Food Justice Certified scheme developed in the United States now. Why? Because it is needed in the United States but not in Scandinavia. These systems mainly emerge in the space between what is well regulated by markets and by governments respectively. Whether they are results of “policy failures” or “market failures” or if they should be seen as permanent institutions is a topic for debate – a debate that is kept here.

Some sector wide commodity schemes, such as the Roundtables on sustainable Palm oil, soya and biofuels have the ambition of being “floor standards”, that is de facto a license to make business. The impact of such standards on trade is substantial. And if they are de facto compulsory, one can of course ask if they should not be subject of regulation and thereby follow the same lines of accountability both nationally and internationally. Many, in particular developing countries, see these voluntary standards as barriers to trade.

In most cases they are dictated by the strong actors in the market place. The most notable example of that is the GLOBAL GAP standard, where supermarkets dictate standards which effectively exclude millions of smallholders from the market place. The same supermarkets which market fair trade products intended to help smallholders.

In Sweden, like in most countries, governments say that it is consumer choice that will determine if farms will farm organically or not. But governments could prohibit, or impose prohibitive fees, on chemical pesticides if they so wished. They could ban factory farming, it they so wished, and if we demand that as citizens.

There are some 100,000 chemicals in use. Certainly, I didn’t make any conscious choice if my computer should be soaked in this or that flame retardant or which chemicals are in my new sofa. To have to select “environmentally friendly” products means that the government authorizes the sale of products that are harmful for the environment. I don’t think it should be a matter of consumer choice if there is Bisphenol A or not in our food.

My conclusion after working with this for some thirty years is that the market mechanism is not efficient in dealing with problems that are rooted in fundamental structures of society, the market itself and the economy. Which is why the buying of fair trade coffee never will end poverty. This was also realized by those fighting against slavery in the United States. The market for products from free labor didn’t abolish slavery. It was political action, and even a Civil War, that led to the abolition of slavery.

Our acts as consumers and our acts as citizens can be linked, and one can bear the seeds for the other one. For instance:
-For a while ethical consumers boycotted eggs from layers in cages, until there was a public ban.
-For a while environmental activists refused to buy refrigerators with CFC, or Freon, as it was called. Then governments agreed to phase it out with the Montreal protocol 1 January 1989.
-There were massive consumer and academic boycotts of South Africa for the apartheid policy. These lasted twenty years until most Western countries agreed to international sanctions.

Clearly this is not an either-or discussion. Most people, including myself, don’t want a nanny state where the government tells us in detail what to do, what to buy or not buy. It is also not a question about the market or the state only. There are many more, non market and non-state, ways of organizing our life and our food. The most apparent is of course to produce the food yourself. But new initiatives such as community supported agriculture are also based on non-market relations, even if they use some of the tools of the market, such as money.

In my view, it is a good thing to make educated and ethical consumer choices. It is not only a good thing - it is our responsibility. But in many cases it makes more sense to have those choices made politically. It is mainly the not so important things and matters for which there is a lot of disagreement that are best left to the market.

Telling consumers that they will change the world or eradicate poverty by shopping is to deceive them.

(notes for my introductory talk at the panel Ethics for sale which was part of the 11th EURsafe conference, The Ethics of Consumption: The Citizen, The Market, and The Law)

Are voluntary standards efficient tools for changing the world?

When you buy a cup of coffee for €2 the farmer gets 3-4 cents for the coffee in that cup. If you buy a cup of organic and fair trade coffee you are likely to have to cough-up €2.50 - and the farmer will get 4-5 cents. This example shed some light on three circumstances.

1. How little share of the economic value in today’s food chains that is constituted of the raw materials.

2. How little share agriculture has in the GDP of the rich countries - often just a few percent

3. That the market mechanism may not be particularly efficient in transforming consumers willingness to pay for direct or indirect services or values in a product to an increase in income for producers.

Hear a presentation I made at the recent Biofach fair in Nürnberg.

Standard makers and standard takers

In the movie the Godfather, Vito Corleone, the mafia boss (Godfather) played by Marlon Brando, is asked by his godson Jonny Fontane to help to secure a film role that will boost his fading career. The head of the film studio, has previously refused to give Fontane the part. The Godfather tells Johnny:

"I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."

The studio head later wakes to find the head of his expensive racehorse in his bed. Fontane is subsequently given the part.

Standards are necessary tools for the globalized market, based on unlimited competition between exchangeable economic units, be it companies or individuals.  Production is increasingly organized in so called value chains. And what the chain leaders have done is to give suppliers an offer they can't refuse –follow the standard. Suppliers in the chain, all the way to the farmers, and sometimes even the suppliers to the farmers, should follow the standards developed by the chain leaders. In many cases the standards also shift the costs away from the chain leader to the suppliers. I order to enforce compliance, suppliers have to use the verification mechanisms, normally private certification bodies, authorized by the chain leaders or auditors from the chain leader. 

Far to seldom do we ask questions about power when discussing standards. 

Read more in my review of the book Standards, recipes for reality.  

Quality management is a management fad elevated to divinity

Every second shipment was delayed and the invoices were never correct. Those were the experiences I had as a client of one freight-company in Sweden in the late 1980s. What was special with this company? They were pioneers in the implementation of an ISO 9000 certified quality management system. 

When I first implemented a quality management system some 23 years ago, it was new and fresh, and seemed like a good idea. I mean, who could possibly oppose a focus on quality, and approaching quality in a systematic way through a management system? The approach really suited my personality of an introvert system designer. Just write down how things should be done; do; check that it is working and revise if it isn’t; then repeat the cycle. However, over the years I have grown more and more cynical about the use of such systems, and in particular how the belief in them is like a dogma that can’t be questioned.

What is a QMS

There are many definitions of quality management systems (QMS). It can be ‘A set of coordinated activities to direct and control an organisation in order to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its performance’. Alternatively, it can be “A system by which an organisation aims to reduce and eventually eliminate nonconformance to specifications, standards, and customer expectations in the most cost effective and efficient manner.’  The latter is at least a bit more modest about what a QMS can deliver, or should deliver.

In my view, the time is overdue to challenge this management idea, to expose it as just another fad, loaded with jargon and promoted by a hoard of consultants (including myself), certification bodies and accreditation bodies who earn their living from it. My objections to it are based on two different issues; on the one hand it is based on some erroneous principles or assumptions and on the other hand, even if it were useful, the positive effects are not big enough to justify the energy spent. What I am discussing here is quality management as a management principle. Clearly, I have no objections to quality, how could I? After all, quality is anything you define. I also have no objections to ‘management systems’, how could I? All organisations are managed according to one or the other system, documented or not, good or bad. But those who have spent weeks writing manuals and training staff etc know what I am talking about, the quality management system (QMS).     

Proudly certified!

The main standard for quality management is the ISO 9000 standards. ISO 9000 was first published in 1987.  It was based on the BS 5750 series of standards from the British Standards Institute. However, its history can be traced back some twenty years earlier to a US Department of Defense standard in 1959, which was aimed at ensuring bombs go off at the target and not in the hangars or in the factory – a laudable effort (not for the targets, though). The concept of the ISO 9000 has spread into a wide range of other standards, such as the ISO 14000 series for environmental management, the ISO 22000 for food quality management and the ISO 65 for certification bodies and ISO 17011 for accreditation bodies.

Despite its rapid uptake in various industries quality management is not a proven method. Agreed, there are many reports and statement from quality managers, and consultants and certification bodies about how good quality management is. However, very little peer-reviewed research has been conducted that evaluates whether the system delivers what it promises to do, that is, consistent quality. And there has been even less work done to prove that it delivers general management benefits, which proponents claim most often. One study in Australia and New Zealand did look at the effect of ISO 9000.¹ The central finding of the project was that ‘on average ISO 9000 certification has little or no explanatory power of organisational performance.[1] Another study reports that ‘However, surprisingly no significant difference is found with respect to defective part production and manufacturing cost between the two groups [those who had a QMS and those that hadn’t].’[2]

We are told to put quality first, but what does that really mean? Is quality more important than following the law? How does it relate to workers’ safety, the environment or, the most obvious factor in organisations, profit? The quality management culture is based on the fact that there are special quality manuals and a special quality system. But organisations are not managed by these kinds of manuals, and controllers and financial departments work with a different logic. Where does that really leave quality management? Instead of acknowledging the contradictions and different interests in an organisation, QMS proponents spread the illusion that the QMS is the most important part of the management system, which is at best delusional.   

The starting point in the development of a quality system is, almost exclusively, the standard itself, and all the issues required by the standard. This is in itself a very bad starting point. ‘Planners of quality systems, guided by ISO 9000, start with a view of how the world should be as framed by the Standard. Understanding how an organisation works, rather than how someone thinks it should, is a far better place from which to start a change of any kind’ says British management consultant, John Seddon.

QMSs are based on a view that people perform better when told what to do, rather than when they are given freedom and motivation. They exaggerate the use of written instructions at the expense of social interaction and continuous problem solving. This degrades people to automata, a development that risks the quality in their work and ultimately the performance of the organisation.

Even good systems take considerable time and energy to implement. Consequently their implementation competes for resources and attention, resulting in less energy and attention orientated to other (real) problems within the organisation. In addition, QMSs discriminate against small firms as they are more costly to implement while the potential benefit is even less than in a big firm.

While a well functioning QMS might be good for operations, they are often badly designed and implemented, and thus are likely to do more harm than good. An organisation with shelves full of files telling people what to do and how to do it, with a workforce that disregards the policies, is worse off than a company with very few policies, which are vigorously enforced and promoted, and grounded in the organisation’s culture. Many organisations implement a QMS because they ‘have to’ – as a result of demands from the clients or from other outside parties – and not because they see the value of them. Again a very bad starting point for good implementation.

And finally, there are the audits of quality management systems. The actual quality of the product or service is not included in an audit or assessment. Auditors look into systems, procedures and organisational structures, and very little at implementation. Increasingly, audits look at ‘meta-systems’, that is the systems used to develop and maintain the system, for instance, internal audits. Here it follows the footsteps of financial audits, which also has gone from checking the actual books, stocks and assets to auditing the system. This has been well analysed, and criticised, by Michael Power in the book Rituals of Verification. Power says that most effort is actually spent on making the systems auditable, and not on making them reliable.

In the organic sector, where I have a lot of first hand experience all from farming to accreditation of certification bodies, conformity assessment has moved towards focusing on ‘auditable performance’. Quality management is enforced all along the food chain, from the accreditor to the farms; every level expects the next level to implement a QMS. QMS in accreditation demands QMS in certification, which in turn demands QMS on farms. On the farm level this is not as yet formulated in demands for fully fledged QMS, but the tendency to enforce QMS style demands on farms and even more on food processors is clear. Real control is rarely made – this was pointed out in a recent report by the European Court of audits of the EU control systems, and it was pointed out by the Swedish Food Authority some years ago. It is clear that audits don’t address, detect or prevent fraud to any larger extent. When blatant mistakes are made – if the mistake is even detected – the “corrective action” is mostly to insist on more quality management policies or written procedures, which are actually counterproductive.

In certain situations a QMS can be useful, even very useful, for organisations, but that does not imply a QMS is good for all organisations. Nor does it suggest that a functioning QMS contributes to the integrity of the system in general. Instead they should be seen as one of many tools organisations use to manage themselves and the service they offer; a tool that suits some much better than others because all organisations differ in size, culture, resources and stability.

Footnotes:

1. The Business Value of Quality Management Systems Certification. Evidence from Australia and New Zealand,  Samson, D. Terziovski, M. Dow, D. Journal of Operations Management Vol. 15, No. 1, 1997, pp. 1-18

2. The impact of ISO 9000 quality management systems on manufacturing, Tufan Koc, Journal of Materials Processing Technology Volume 186, Issues 1–3, 7 May 2007, Pages 207–213

Swedish article about the quality management craze:
Update: 22 January, I have another article about quality management published in Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish).

Standards as tools for power

Standards are not innocent technical specifications, but tools of power and dominance. Standards and the conformity assessment linked to them are a vital components of the neo-liberal project. Review of Standards: Recipes for Reality by Lawrence Busch, The MIT Press, 408 pages.

We hear the news every day about the price of oil expressed in dollars per barrel. The standard barrel of crude oil is 42 US gallons (34.9723 imp gal; 158.9873 L). This measurement originated in the early Pennsylvania oil fields. Oil has not actually been shipped in barrels since the introduction of oil tankers, but the 42-US-gallon size is still used as a unit for measurement. Interestingly enough, the ”standard oil drum” that you see in use is a 55-US-gallon barrel! The two sizes of oil drums represent some of the millions of standards that shape the society we live in. Almost all products and services we are exposed to are subject to one or, mostly, many standards. A life without standards is almost incomprehensible today. Just think about how to conduct simple trade without standards. There would be no agreed measures (scales), no clear quality standards, no agreed value reference (currency), and there would be no standard terms of trade etc. We would be back to the situation of two unrelated civilizations have their first encounter. Standards, and their cousin norms, give us predictability in an otherwise rather chaotic world.

Within most professions, there are heated debates about the standards to apply, and people spend a lot of time arguing over them, write them and revise them. But very few actually think about standards as a social institution, their governance and how they can be used in the interest of some groups against others. In the excellent book Standards: Recipes for Reality, Lawrence Busch, Professor at Michigan State University, makes us aware of how standards shape our lives every day. More importantly, he puts standards in a wider economic, social and political context.

Busch questions many of the claims normally related to standards. For example, in the language of ISO and others, standards are developed based on consensus. Busch argue that consensus is not at all a salient feature of standards. It is rather that they are taken for granted or forced upon people that ensure that people conform to them. The organic sectors shows ample evidence of this. Even more striking is how certain proprietary technical standards can dominate markets, e.g. Microsoft Windows and its associated programs. Even governments yields to their powers in many cases.

For a frequent traveler like me it is a normal hassle to carry adapters. For some reasons sockets developed differently in different countries, and today we sit with huge assets built with one type of socket in each country. It is an example of “path dependence”, i.e. that we follow a certain path, not because it is the best one, but it is the one we choose in an early stage, and the cost to go back and start all over is simply too big. On the larger scale, the automobile transportation system is a another example of path dependence, where all those within the system have an interest to continue developing it, despite the fact that neither the car itself nor the combustion engines use to propel them, are the best transport solution for cities of today. So while we have thousands of car models to chose from, and each model has hundreds of variations, many people can’t chose whether they want a car or not. This situation is what the priest and sociologist Ivan Illich called “radical monopolies”. Unfortunately, second-best solutions are likely to remain in the future as a result of path dependency, says Mr Busch. 

Busch calls the combination of standards, certification and accreditation for the tripartite standards regime (TSR) and sees the TSR emerging as an alternative mode of governance for most aspects of social life. He is rather critical towards the TSR and claim among others that audits often do violence to the subject of certification. This is particularly the case when the audits are weakly related to the real purpose of the standards; when audits take away attention from other important but difficult to measure aspects, when the audits follow an approach of ”mechanical objectivity” which relieves the certification body from responsibility or when audits intrude into the subjects pursuance of whatever goals they have. It seems to me that all those four points apply to how organic certification is mastered. The problem, and the violence done, is exacerbated when standards are written into law, says Busch. Busch concurs with the Michael Power in his book The Audit Society that one main requirement of the TRS is that organizations subject to certification are forced to reorganize their work to be more easily auditable, but that such a reorganization to satisfy the auditors may backfire, and risk to confuse predictability with trustworthiness.

He sees the standards movement of the last century as part of the industrialisation concept, linked to the division of labour, economies of scale and to the whole organization of the factories. The same standardization enables global markets and unlimited competition. Through standardization in transportation, such as containerization, improved communications etc., the competition is now also truly global in many markets. The container itself, once it was standardised in 1965, determined shapes of the ships but also of pallets, boxes and of goods to fit into the standardized boxes. This competition in turn drives the ”technological treadmill”. I can’t raise the price (as the quality is fixed) which means that I have to lower costs of production, e.g. by using chemical fertilizers or by using more efficient machinery.

As a counter-reaction to this development, there has been a drive last decade to use standards for differentiation. Organic standards and certification is one of the most prominent examples of such differentiation. Classic standardization leads producers down the path of ”commodity hell”. It has cleared the market from unique products, made to order or in a one-by-one production process and transformed it to ”same” products. With the new standards differentiation, we get a market where we can ”chose between hundreds of different, but equally standardized – varieties of ketchup, automobiles or airline tickets”. But Busch also notes that ”their (the differentiating standards) value as such is diminished as their numbers increase”. Busch explores how this contradiction came into being.

He sees the rapid increase in use of standards coinciding with the neo-liberal project, with less central planning and retreating states. He sees an inherent conflict in that managers of companies on the one hand want less regulation on the other hand are afraid of the vacuum created by the retreating state. The total free market situations favoured in most liberal economic theories have been abolished by the companies themselves through the development of closely knitted supply-chains which in turn are a pre-condition for lean management, outsourcing and other modern trends. To make all participants in a supply-chain subject to standards and certification means they are tied together and the market is less free, and therefore predictable. ”No large firm can afford to subject itself to the instabilities and risks associated with the free market”. In this way, the Tripartite Standards Regime becomes a new model for governance. The lead firm or lead firms in the supply-chains or value-chains will mostly impose their standards on others. The standards themselves often also distribute burden and costs unevenly in the value-chain. Busch mentions GlobalGAP as such an example, where small farmers are not able to carry the substantial direct and indirect costs involved . He also discusses how NGOs have turned to certifications and supply chains in attempts to advance their goals, instead of lobbying increasingly powerless governments.

Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power–that they often serve to empower some and disempower others; ”in our modern world standards are arguably the most important manifestation of power relations”. He points to the dual character of the English word “ruler” as a manifestation of this, on the one hand, it is someone who rules, on the other hand a measuring device. Busch gives examples from colonial times of how schools in the British colonies taught medieval British history, but didn’t include the history of the countries where the books were used. The imposition of Western standards for private property in conflict with customary ownership systems is another example.

Also today, standards are tools of power and domination, but now in the hands of companies. By means of standard, conflicts are seemingly resolved or at least transferred from a political domain into a technical, technocratic domain. The claimed “voluntary” nature of standards also adds to the perception that the use of the standard is just an economic choice which is made in the market place. In this way, standards are stealthily becoming weapons for power and blurs power relationships. Because of the perceived technical nature of the standards, the standards governance model (the TPR) falls short of ethics, justice and democracy. In a recent article, Can Fairy Tales Come True Mr Busch writes: 

The TSR is a new and ubiquitous form of governance that, although supported by the state, is fundamentally responsible only to itself and not to any democratically elected legislative body. Hence, while it can do good, it can just as easily do harm, with little or no democratic oversight.

 That standards are power tools is shown by the many social movement that are formed around standards such as the women’s suffrage movement, anti-apartheid movement, labour movement and lately gay rights movement. Many of these movements want rights to be extended to their constituency, instead of being limited to just some group, e.g. the right of marriage to be limited to heterosexual couples.

The privatization of public services requires further standardization as services that before were just provided (say schools and electric utilities)  now have to be purchased in the market place, and therefore made comparable, i.e. standardized. This development transforms all sorts of habitual action into decisions where we are forced to make rational choices. To this can be added the stress of the market place where we are supposed to decide whether we want, for example, fair trade or organic products. The increase in choices by the differentiation in the market as well as by privatization of former public services may not be very democratic according to Busch, all the choices and decisions to be made are time consuming and require skill-”skills that the middle class might have, the upper class can buy, the lower class is rarely able to pursue and the ”underclass” cannot pursue at all.”

“Standards” is a book to read for those professionally engaged in the tripartite regime of standards, certification and accreditation. It will pose some hard questions, and give some ideas for improvements. While the tone is critical, Busch makes no attempt to trash standards as a whole:  "Thus, the challenge is not to eliminate standards, to return to some mythical past during which standards were of trivial importance, Instead [...] to ensure that seemingly benign standards do not lead to gross injustices." Before embarking on making a standard, we should ask the central question: Is standards the most appropriate form of governance in this particular situation? There are laws, regulations, statutes, customs, norms and habit that could perhaps be a better alternative. He makes a list of qualities –standards for standards if you so wish - that he believe standards should have such as subsidiarity; use of precaution; do minimal violence; make actionable standards; encourage participation in standard setting; and review standards frequently. 

Read and enjoy.  

Other reviews of this book: 
Wall street Journal
Galveston daily news 
 

Paticipatory Guarantee Systems - a nice governance model

In 2004, when I was the President of the International Organic Agriculture Movement, IFOAM, I had the pleasure to be instrumental in the first global meeting for the furthering of what is called Participatory Guarantee Systems for organic markets. Those systems developed primarily in Latin America as alternatives to the third party certification model, which has dominated the organic market place since the mid eighties. I have myself been very active in building up this third party certification model, e.g. as the founder of KRAV in Sweden and founding president of the International Organic Accreditation Services, IOAS. Because of that, I also knew its weaknesses and shortcomings....

The workshop was hosted by one of the pioneers, Ecovida.

Presently Ecovida encompasses 180 municipalities and approximately 2,400 families of farmers (around 12,000 persons) organized in 270 groups, associations and cooperatives. They also include 30 NGOs and 10 ecological consumers’ cooperatives as well as several professionals’ partnerships and supporting organizations. All kinds of agriculture products are cultivated and sold by the Ecovida members, for example vegetables, cereals, fruits, juice, fruit-jelly, honey, milk, eggs and meat. In 2003 the sales amount was 13 750 000 USD; 27 % of the sales was to free markets, 20 % for export, 19 % to the institutional market and 34 % for other markets like supermarkets, shops, agro industries etc.You can access more information (in Portuguese) about the Ecovida network on http://www.ecovida.org.br/

I was sick in malaria and spend all the time in a hospital in Porto Alegre instead of participating in the workshop. Nevertheless, or perhaps as a result of my absence(!), the workshop was a great success. And from then on PGS has developed a lot.
IFOAM defines PGS like this:

Participatory Guarantee Systems are locally focused quality assurance systems. They certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange

PGS has got a lot of positive attention lately, and it has been recognised as a relevant and legal method for guaranteeing organic products in several Latin American countries as well as in India.There are several reasons for this: one is cost and bureaucracy involved in the traditional certification. But even more important is the ownership of the process and the results. To undergo impartial third party certification with its increasingly bureaucratic procedures, standardized globally, is a rather alienating process. The first organic certification bodies where either farmer organizations or established by associations working closely with farmers, also taking on a promotional and educational role. With the introduction of adherence to the ISO 65 norm, government regulation and internal professionalization of the service, the distance between the certification body and the "subject of certification" has grown tremendously. Organic farmers today always refer to certifers as "them", never as "us".

While there are some strong sides in a third party certification system it also has a lot of weaknesses. The PGS system also has it strong and weak sides. As things stand now, third party certification is the model preferred for the anonymous mass-market, especially when distance between producers and consumers are big and PGS is the choice for direct marketing situations.

For me the thing that makes PGS most interesting is that it is based on a different paradigm and a participatory model of governance. As such it merits attention not only as a method of guarantee of organic quality. The notion that we create credibility by having supposedly "independent" organizations doing "objective" and "impartial" assessment is at best just one way of creating credibility or at worst an illusion.

The PGS models certainly are not perfect. Also, it lies in their nature that they are different and not globally standardized. Some of them may be defunct, some of them may be inefficient or ineffective. But the idea behind them is sound and could be a building block also for strengthening local democracy and building new types of institutions.

P.S. IFOAM has a lot of valuable resources for Participatory Guarantee Systems. 

Trash Sustainability indicators

I was in a rather bad mood the other night and wrote something to a group of people, of which I am a member, about "A best practice reference document that addresses organic principles and practices in the broader context of global human society and its sustainability" Read more on http://www.ifoam.org/growing_organic/Best_Practice_Program/index.php

In the work to develop the document there is the idea to develop indicators for sustainability. I wrote the following:

The more I think about it the more I question the need for indicators in that SOAAN document.

As a project manager I work a lot with indicators. I think they work reasonably well as a tool for simple projects (like organise a conference in Lusaka, set up an information centre). Already in more complex project settings they are of much less value for project management. For reporting on development they are ok, but not for GUIDING development.

In general, I don't think most farmer are interested in complex set of indicators, They might be it in a benchmarking exercise with farmers in their own area, but benchmarking against a global standard is not so interesting - and also not really relevant. I have worked in all continents of the world in almost 100 countries and while some things are strikingly similar allover the place - many things are very different, and what is relevant in one place is of little relevance in another.

For me it is hard to understand all this energy that is put into indicators, indexes, metrics. The producers don't care. The market place doesn't care. LCA is a prime example of this. It is all interesting for researchers, but it is totally irrelevant in real life. No consumer base their shopping decision on LCA, no companies design their products based on LCA (well perhaps some have tried but they are probably bankrupt by now). And in the end the selection and weighing of indicators is purely subjective. What they do is to transform subjective values into seemingly objective measures....

NO successful entrepreneurs or innovator works based on systematic indicators (they do mostly have their own homespun indicators/rules of the thumb) or things like that. They hardly make business plans or have a budget. WHY are we so obsessed with this?

WHAT WE NEED MUCH MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IS INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT!

I know that some of the reason is that people feel some kind of need to PROVE that organic is BEST or MORE SUSTAINABLE than other things. But why are we so obsessed with that? Industrial farming or GMO don't spread because they argue that they are more sustainable, alternatives also don't succeed or fail depending on how they score in idealistic measurements, and governments CERTAINLY don't chose sides based on a set of indicators. It is a very small group of people that keep this discussion alive.

In society in general, we have accepted that even if we respect science and scientists they are not necessarily the best managers of development. Instead we let incompetent democratically elected politicians decide. A technocratic world of social engineering is not what people WANT.

And as much as I am critical of laissez-faire liberalism, it certainly has a point in objecting to too much central control and planning. In the same way I object to the idea that our clever group should sit and develop all those nice indicators.

Make a good document, let indicators be developed site specific, for different purposes, with different sets, by those who think they need them - don't try to enforce them globally. A guidance document for how to make indicators could also be an output - and when I think about it, that should be the starting point even if you want the document should have it....

Best
Gunnar

One of the members of the group sent the link to this very interesting presentation by Frederick Kaufman.

What does sustainable really mean in an unsustainable economy?

There is renewed interest in sustainability issues, ahead of ‘Rio +20’, the follow up to the UN Environment conference of Rio 1992. What has been called ‘sustainable development’ for the last twenty years is now often referred to as the ‘Green Economy’. As before, one of the tools for its promotion are markets for ‘sustainable products’. And of these, organic products are one of the most prominent examples. Certainly, there has been a tremendous increase in the market for various sustainability schemes, such as organic and fair trade schemes, as well as others like the Rainforest Alliance, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), etc. In the most developed market segments some of these schemes are taking significant market shares. There is a tendency for  people to assume that sustainability standards represent something new, but that is not true.

Gandhi advocated the boycott of machine-made European clothing as it caused large-scale unemployment in India. He took to wearing hand-made cloth called Khadi  that was inexpensive and suitable for poor Indians. Most importantly, it showed Indians how to be self-reliant by a symbolic act. His arguments are similar to arguments used today of sustainability proponents. 

“Khadi is only seemingly expensive. I have pointed out that it is wrong to compare khadi with other cloth by comparing the prices of given lengths. The inexpensiveness of khadi consists in the revolution of one's taste. The wearing of khadi replaces the conventional idea of wearing clothes for ornament by that of wearing them for use. (Young India, 7-8-1924)”

There are still many issues associated with the schemes that need to be discussed. ‘Can you trust them?’ is one of the questions. On this matter ISEAL has worked hard to develop codes of good practice. And in the organic sector there are many layers of watchmen all watching each other over and above the constant criticism by competitors. Compared to other claims in the market  place, the credibility and integrity of sustainability schemes is generally high.

‘How sustainable is the production?’ is another increasingly common question. As the term  sustainable’ is often badly defined, or defined in hundreds of different ways, and everybody pays lip service to sustainability, it is very hard to respond to such a question. Even systematic and

standardised methods of measuring sustainability, like Life Cycle Analysis, are ultimately based   on subjective values and depend on how much weight is given to different parameters. The ultimate answers are not scientific but ideological.

‘Could the schemes be merged?’ is another common question. It is often the same clients that ask this question who are interested in the many facets of sustainability, and it is not so farfetched to believe that there could be benefits in merging them. But reality speaks a very different language, new  sustainability schemes emerge all the time. Those who call for schemes to merge do not really understand that the main role of a scheme is to be a marketing tool for differentiation.

Also, they don’t realise that consumers are different. For some environment is the most    important, for others personal health, fairness or animal welfare is more important. For the

ethical vegan it can hardly be acceptable to support a sustainability scheme that allows animal products; while anti-globalisation activists would probably not approve schemes built on free international trade.

Questions that are not asked often enough are:

• What is the role of a sustainability scheme in our world?

• To what extent can we rely on markets to shape our world?

• Under which conditions do they work and under which don’t they work?

• Will fair trade or organic schemes really change the bigger picture?

While Gandhi’s cloth was a forceful symbol for self-reliance, in the end not many Indians wear hand-spun cloth today. Perhaps buying organic products is more like a statement of how we want the world to be; a statement of what is good and sometimes even a statement of status, of being  hip.

Most of the sustainability schemes work purely as a marketing tool. Their need comes from the market place which relies on a pricing process that does not internalise social or environmental costs into the price of products. This means that some consumers foot the bill for what essentially   are market failures, while other consumers are free-riders – that is they get the benefits without contributing. What are the issues that are best dealt with by voluntary markets and what are best dealt with by regulation, or by a combination?

For example, in carbon offset trading the often-hyped voluntary markets (i.e. where a supplier claims to be carbon neutral by buying offsets) represents only around 10% of the total market value for carbon offsets, the rest is created by regulations. The organic sector in  Europe is as much driven by political endeavour as it is by the market, which results in measures such as direct subsidies, proclamation of areas dedicated for organic farming (nature reserves, water-protection areas) and public procurement. These issues should be discussed to a much greater extent within the ‘sustainability industry’, rather than the detail of a particular standard, or another layer of supervision

(leader in The Organic Standard, Issue 134)

Khadi means handspun and handwoven cloth. In 1918 Mahatma Gandhi started his movement for Khadi as relief programme for the poor masses living in India's villages. Spinning and weaving was elevated to an ideology for self-reliance and selfgovernment. Every village shall plant and harvest its own raw-materials for yarn, every woman and man shall engage in spinning and every village shall weave whatever is needed for its own use. Gandhi saw it as the end of dependency on foreign materials (symbolizing foreign rule) and thus giving a first lesson or real independence. Raw materials at that time were entirely exported to England and then re-imported as costly finished cloth, depriving the local population of work and profits on it. Gandhi also felt that in a county where manual labor was looked down upon, it was an occupation to bring high and low, rich and poor together, to show them the dignity of hand-labor. Thus Khadi is not mere a piece of cloth but a way of life. Readmore

Organic agriculture: time to look ahead

In a recent posting I explained that for a company, the added value of having a certified product is much less if certification is ‘normal’. And the same is true for consumers; we are more likely to buy a product based on a label if it is exclusive to the product rather than being the norm. The more products in the same category that carries the mark, the less interesting the mark becomes as a differentiating tool, and it will move from the front to the back of the product, before it ultimately disappears.   

What does all this matter? It matters a lot to the future of the model of a separate organic market, based on premium prices and a set of standards, conformity assessment and a label, which is the main development model for the organic sector. The sector spends a great deal of energy discussing minute details in the standards and control system, often with the illusion that there is one standard or one certain control measure that is “right”. But what is “right” must be seen in relationship to what the system is supposed to accomplish, who it serves, what are the parameters for success? Very few organisations engaged in the Organic Guarantee System have a clear vision of where they want to be ten years ahead: many are just stewards of a system developed thirty years ago with little reflection of where it is heading.

‘Development’ is mainly viewed in terms of increasing service delivery in certification. For instance, development might be considered to be offering other certifications or using a web based interface for certification bodies; making more standards for standard setters and addressing loopholes or sharpening enforcement for regulator. Nothing wrong with any of that, but what does this really accomplish? Those that feel alienated in the system have been more innovative, for instance, the development of the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) is a good example. Others just stand aside criticising, but often have neither a consistent alternative development model nor a consistent vision.

Through government regulations harmonisation has been forced onto the sector. Though, this harmonisation has had short-term benefits, by lowering costs, for all involved, it could, in the longer term, be a straight-jacket. Organic regulations have become the final ruler of what is right, instead of letting the consumers and markets chose what is right. The latter is a more evolutionary and less fundamentalist approach. Today already, some consumers and activist have left the organic fold, not – I believe – because the sector has betrayed its roots, but rather because it has no expressed vision to be enthused by.

The main point of this discussion is to stimulate a debate on what path the organic movement should take in the future. Initially, it needs to be decoupled from the daily discussions about regulations and requirements. Instead it should be based on the four principles of organic farming: the principle of health, care,ecology and fairness. Then, sometime in the future, this needs to result in practical tools for development, tools that will serve us as well, or better, than the certified organic model that has worked so well for thirty years.  

Eco labels: the more successful, the less value

 “The very traits — governance and inclusiveness — that make consensus-based standards so useful as credible mechanisms for collective action also pose challenges for businesses seeking to move quickly and to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. And like any tool, certification and labelling have limits — including limits to scale.” concludes a report from the consultancy Sustainability, 

33 years after the world’s first sustainability label (Germany’s Blue Angel) appeared, certifications and labels are now everywhere. The Ecolabel Index lists 426 certifications and labels in 25 industry sectors and 246 countries as of November 2011. Around two-thirds of these were developed in the last decade alone, and new schemes continue to arrive. And as our own research, the Organic Standard Directory shows that there are at least 124 organic standard, but probably many more, Nowadays it’s stating the obvious that consumers are confused by the sheer number of certifications and labels: according to the Natural Marketing Institute, 51% of American consumers think “there are too many green seals and certifications”; Only 42% of American consumers recognize Rainforest Alliance, 26% LEED and 19% Forest Stewardship Council, although 95% recognize Energy Star and 76% recognize USDA Certified Organic.

In the report “Signed, Sealed... Delivered? Behind Certifications and Beyond Labels”, the UK based consultancy Sustainability asks “Why certify or label?” The report, based on 85 interviews with businesses, standards-setters, certifiers and other expert observers as well as desk research places the question in the context of other ways available to businesses for improving or communicating sustainability impacts across the value chain.

The interviewed businesses expressed frustrations with the soundness of criteria (“based on perception or politics, not science”, “popular only because it was the first”), the level at which requirements are set (“too low — we can’t differentiate ourselves”), the fit for the business (“requires us to change our processes for no reason”), or the failure of the standard to adapt to new knowledge or processes (“hampers innovation”).

Committing to a single standard can limit sourcing flexibility in the case of raw materials standards. Agricultural certification illustrates this challenge emphatically. “At the moment, certification is the only process we have, but at some point we’ll have to jump to a completely different mechanism,” states Jan Kees Vis, global director of sustainable agriculture at Unilever. “We’re not going to certify every farmer in the world, we can’t create a roundtable for every raw material.” Another risk for businesses is that participation in a labelling schemer ties them to the reputation and viability of the standards-setting organization. The reports predicts that the model of a standard, certification and label on one coherent system carrying most of the message will fade. Sustainability believes that in the future sustainability certifications will be moved to the back-of-pack, metaphorically and literally. 

I do agree with this analysis.  I have been working with this sector for three decades, and while I still think there are many merits in eco labels and organic labels, I think it is increasingly apparent that there are many in-built limitations in what they can deliver. As I write in Garden Earth: "The attraction of an eco label, for businesses and consumers alike is to differentiate a product from other products that are without the label. But the more successful the label is the less value it has in a competitive market."

Related blog post in Garden Earth
Don't buy organic instead of changing the world - do it as part of changing the world
Sustainable coffee is increasing, but only 35% is sold as such.
How fair is fair?
What gives value to an eco label

 

 

Don't buy organic instead of changing the world - do it as part of changing the world

Are there really any benefits for the farmers in developing countries that engage in organic or fair trade schemes?

A recent literature review casts doubts on the merit of "sustainability" certification systems. It includes studies of Fairtrade, Organic, Rainforest Alliance and the Forest Stewardship council. The authors Allen Blackman and Jorge Rivera note that rather few studies have a rigorous control against non-certified production, which is needed to form a scientific basis for claims that certification is beneficial for producers.

The 11 rigorous studies provided very weak evidence for the hypothesis that sustainable certification has positive environmental, social, or economic effects at the producer level. Only four of the 11 provided evidence of such benefits (Table 3). Of these four, all tested for economic effects. In two of these four studies, both on coffee, the authors remark that the benefits are either idiosyncratic or inconsistent (Arnould et al. 2009; Bolwig et al. 2009). The results of the remaining seven rigorous studies (two studies of environmental effects and five of social and economic effects) did not show that certification benefits producers.

As the authors note "the hypothesis that certification benefits the environment or producers is limited. More evidence could be generated by incorporating rigorous, independent evaluation into the design and implementation of projects promoting certification."


One of the few studies that show economic benefits is the one of Bolwig and others, The economics of smallholder organic contract farming in tropical Africa. I was personally engaged in those projects studied, in the EPOPA programme. It was successful mainly because it was designed with the explicit purpose to be commercial and increase farmers income (and hopefully because it was well implemented).It spoke less about sustainability and smallholder empowerment than most similar programs, but generated more direct results in terms of increased income, and with low costs compared to many other projects.

It is worrying, however, that there is so little result coming out of so big efforts, even more troubling considering that the vast majority of all situations with certified smallholders are in to form of "projects" where substantial external funds are used to support them. As a matter of fact, I have yet to come across any small farmer project with sustainability certification which has not benefited external support; most of them are even established by external actors.To include even more rigorous evaluations and scientific monitoring of the projects, as suggested by the authors, will make the projects even more donor dependent and consultant dependent, and decrease the efficiency of the deployment of resources substantially.

I think the jury is still out regarding the direct and indirect benefits of the sustainability schemes. But what should be clear, even without more scientific studies, is that the economic benefits, and environmental benefits are limited. And that is not because the schemes are bad. There is simply no way such schemes can shift global economic relations fundamentally. Not even Fair trade, which has this as it's focus is more than a marginal adjustment of fundamental factors such as unjust trading relations and an ongoing exploitation of smallholders; limited access to resources and therewith associated low labor productivity; and inequality. As a matter of fact there is no particular evidence that fair trade farmers have any higher income than organic ones.

Note that this study is about farms in developing countries, there are numerous studies about farms in developed countries that show environmental benefits for organic farming. When it comes to economy it is a more complex picture. But clearly, organic farms in developed countries are exposed to the same commercial pressures as non-organic and respond in more or less the same way: more specialization, larger farms, more input buying etc., because that is the logic of the competitive market economy, whether you like it or not.



My suggestion is not that we should throw the sustainability schemes overboard, but that we should realise that they will not make the Big Difference which is needed to reach a fair(er) world. Go on and buy organic, but don't do it instead of changing the world, but as part of changing the world. 

Read also:

How Fair is Fair?

Guilt Free

What gives value to an ecolabel? 
Agriculture: How cheap energy (and capitalism) increased the gaps between rich and poor 
Traditions, Western Union, Churches and Taro 
Green Economy a win-win-win?