Notcafé
April 26, 2007 | Filed Under Rant
It seems Nescafé’s tagline is ‘It’s all about you”.
…but who is it really about?
Nestlé’s official policy on the global coffee trade is that “free trade” is “fair trade”, that reducing barriers to trade will mean lower prices for consumers and higher revenues for producers 1. As a result, there is only one Fair Trade Nescafé brand (Partner’s Blend), which in the UK is sold only at Tesco and Sainsbury’s 2.
But free trade can only have this effect if barriers are lowered in importing countries as well as exporting ones. If markets in the developing world are deregulated whilst import tarrifs remain in place in Europe and elsewhere, producers are placed under global market pressure without any legal or market protection.
So how much pressure are Nestlé putting on trade regulators in the developed world? They are keen to tell us how much they are doing in Africa 3, but how much are they doing in Europe and the US?
Do you know?
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Indeed. Nestlé won’t tell us what they’re ‘really’ doing (or not doing) in Africa. And furthermore, with western companies dominating seed, fertiliser, pesticide and plant machinery supply, which are needed to ensure good yields and productivity of crops, growers in developing countries are further constrained from participating equally in the global market. Today, about half the world’s population – 3.2 billion people – live in abject poverty. Roughly three-quarters of these poor people live in rural areas dependent upon agriculture. Developed countries must be prepared to grant greater access to their own markets to all countries, not just a select few, but market access barriers must be brought down everywhere. Is the world ready to create an open food system obeying the same kinds of rules that govern a more open industrial economy?