Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
South-North trade through producer empowerment and poverty alleviation, while
ethical trade normally refers to minimum labour standards (and occasionally envir-
onmental standards) within an existing trade model (Barrientos and Dolan, 2006).
While undoubtedly offering some benefits - mainly in terms of creating legit-
imacy for environmentally and socially sensitive production of nihe market food
exports from the South - these alternative food networks have also been widely
criticized for reproducing the values and priorities of Northern consumers, policy-
makers, supermarkets, governments and others, thus undermining the quality con-
structions of diverse producers and products (see Blowfield and Dolan, 2008; Dolan,
2010). Muh of this literature posits producers in the South as less powerful than
other actors embedded in global food supply hains. hese inequitable relations are
constructed and maintained through certification systems.
his hapter presents a more nuanced view of these power relationships. To do
this, we frame certification systems as sites of constant negotiation and resistance
through whih Southern actors are able to take up new subject positions in light of
their engagement. Drawing on the experiences of two distinct groups of smallhold-
er producers engaged in South-North horticultural trade - ethical/fair trade Frenh
bean producers in Kenya and organic/fair trade pineapple producers in Uganda -
this paper explores the capacity of smallholder farmers to renegotiate trade relations
in ways that represent their interests, and the place that certification systems might
play in this. We focus on the cases of 'Kenya-GAP' and 'Ugo-Cert'; two sites where
producers and/or their national organizations have engaged in processes of resist-
ance and negotiation with regulatory and accreditation systems in order to have
their local interests recognized. We argue that while these case studies reveal a will-
ingness on the part of some regulators and civil society to expand the scope of organ-
ic, fair and ethical standards, for structural and cultural reasons, smallholders them-
selves have oten remained removed from these negotiations. Our researh also re-
veals, however, that some alternative spaces for African smallholder resistance exist
- demonstrated in a diversity of strategies and activities associated with non-export
food systems - but that these are systematically excluded from transnational food
network governance.
Organic, fair and ethical trade for African smallholder farmers
In response to the growing global demand for food produced 'ethically' from Africa,
smallholder involvement in export horticultural trade has increased dramatically
