Fair Trade Rooibos Tea: Connecting South African Producers and American Consumer Markets

February 6th, 2010

Geoforum This article analyses the recent growth and configuration of Fair Trade networks connecting South African Rooibos tea producers with American consumer markets. Fair Trade’s growth in the Rooibos tea sector engages key national policy concerns related to black empowerment, land reform and sustainable development. This study identifies the key variations in Fair Trade buyers and their purchasing arrangements which shape the opportunities for small-scale black South African tea producers.

Key Findings

In support of previous research, the findings demonstrate that buyers driver supplier relations but do so in different ways, depending on their structure and how they work with NGOs and government agencies.

Resources accessed through Fair Trade networks may be used to increase small farmers’ control over value-added activities, in this example, through co-operative owned post-harvest processing facilities and a packaging plant.
As such, upgrading production techniques may represent a critical avenue for farmers to better their conditions.
In addition to the economic returns from upgrading, the authors argue that extending producer control from field to shelf-ready product represents a key form of empowerment, strengthening producer capacity and bargaining power in international markets.
Small-scale Rooibos producer gains are being threatened by rising competition in Fair Trade markets from large estates with questionable social justice credentials.
There is mounting evidence to suggest that some of the share-equity schemes used by these competitors are not significantly improving black worker ownership or control of rural enterprises.
Rooibos co-operatives are able to actively represent themselves via websites, in media forums and through a new Trust Organic Small Farmers Alliance (TOSFA) seal, thus helping them to retain some control over symbolic as well as material production.
At the same time, market-driven Rooibos distributors pursue conventional sourcing strategies, purchasing bulk tea through export brokers that is produced mostly on large South African estates.
In these cases, Fair Trade networks do not fundamentally transform international relations, but largely reproduce traditional inequalities which concentrate control and profits in the hands of American buyers and allied South African exporters.
While the findings of this study echo concerns raised in previous studies that Fair Trade mainstreaming is working to undermine the movements’ transformative potential, the case of small-scale Fair Trade Rooibos networks suggests that more radical Fair Trade ventures animated by strong social and place-based commitments are being devised.
For Fair Trade to maintain its transformative potential these more radical initiatives must open up opportunities for producers to integrate up the commodity circuit, shortening the distance between producers and consumers.