What does fair food mean right now in the U.S.?
I think that America - or at least the things that I got to see - hasn't yet spoken that clearly about fair food. There are three parts: organic, fair trade and local. I think that fair food and local are from the same line of thinking. Speaking about Fair Trade is speaking about trade between countries, or domestically, or an alternative market. Fair food, local food, comes from a way of thinking about what isn't fair - for example, if food comes from far away – maybe it doesn't have to come that far, or we can know the producers and know they definitely benefit. This is what distinguishes fair food... but fair food is still a big issue, we've got fair trade, organic and local food, all together, and maybe this is fair food.
Fair Trade and Fair Trade Organizations speak about trade, but not fair food. Fair food means more than Fair Trade; it is a bigger issue. First, consumers know the Fair Trade label, they know the organic label, and local, you know where it comes from, but organizations who work on these issues, they don't speak that much about fair food. But it is an issue they are starting to talk about more, same as our work here, we've talked about Fair Trade, but the biggest issue is the fairness of food, we've got consumers and producers, but we've also got laborers, management, but Fair Trade speaks only about farmers and producers. Fair food is more than this; there is more energy to this. We didn't speak about this that much. USFT [United Students for Fair Trade] spoke about fairness in trade, but not too much about fair food.
But the food crisis, this is an important issue to people in America, they are very interested in the prices that farmers are receiving, for example, maybe they want to know how cooperatives are doing, what their price situation is like, they don't know all the information about the market…
But USFT didn't talk about prices, USFT sought to create understanding among students - how do they understand Fair Trade, not trying solve the problems of farmers.
So maybe the students don't yet fully understand the meaning of Fair Trade?
The main idea was to give information to students about Fair Trade. On the tour, it wasn't clear to me that USFT was interested in this. They work on creating a relationship between students and understanding Fair Trade. There were producers groups from Rwanda, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Thailand that have problems with fair trade, but USFT didn’t give us an opportunity to speak about these. (Below, P Nok exchanges with USFT students about "making connections" in the trade system)
Returning to local food and this way of thinking, a lot of people are thinking, local food means regional food. For example, in January, we don’t have to eat bananas from Ecuador; it isn’t something we can plant here, so we shouldn't eat bananas from Ecuador. Maybe you couldn't eat the food in South Carolina ["soul food"], but that food is local. Do you agree with this?Consumers need to work on 2 issues - support local food and support food from outside their area. Local food, maybe it’s not a lot, so you need to have food from outside come in, but here you need to use Fair Trade. I had Allyn check where the rice we ate came from - it was from California and came to South Carolina, but it came from a big farm that uses Mexican laborers - but Thai rice or Indian rice, there is an opportunity for it to come to South Carolina and connect with local food, it isn't something they don't have locally, but its fair food.
Ok, so you might decide to eat only foods that are grown locally, but this is hard, and maybe 30% is from outside your area, so you need to decide between fair food that is international and un-fair food that is domestic. Maybe the Fair Trade rice is from pretty far away, but you need to decide between these two options. I spoke about this at most events. With bananas, you don't have bananas in South Carolina, you might think, where else do we have bananas? In a lot of places…but where are they fair? Then they can support this option.
Thinking about local food as food that is the basis for our food culture...
America doesn't have a food culture – I concluded this with Shin, Stephanie and Amanda.
Really?
We talked about it, why do Americans eat Indian food, eat vegetarian, eat everything and eat it easily? Eat everything! We exchanged about this and decided that America doesn't have a food culture in terms of the flavor of foods, the culture about food. Thailand or Asia, has a culture about food production - its not like, Americans eat bread, so this is America's food culture, its not like that, culture is about the process of production and community connected to culture, more than what you eat, more than the flavors or food.
But about ENGAGE, what is the network like right now? Members of ENGAGE are working locally, in a lot of areas - is this good? Do you like this? Or, do you feel like the work of ENGAGE is reaching its goals?
Maybe ENGAGE has been working for the past 5 years, speaking about Fair Trade and organic farming. It’s the same here in Surin, for the past 10 years, but now we're speaking more about local food and fair food. ENGAGE still talks about Fair Trade and organic farming and isn't yet talking about fair food that much. I talked to Cash about this a lot, we met with PCUN [Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste] and other people in Portland - they eat food from farms that use 5,000 Mexican laborers. Cash understands Fair Trade and organic farming already, but she needs to connect with PCUN also. Help tell other people - maybe you don’t need to buy Fair Trade and organic food, but people need to know that food comes from farms that abuse Mexican laborers and ask themselves: will I buy this food? (Below, P Nok with a PCUN leader)
This is about food justice, right? Mexican laborers can work on these farms, but they need to earn fair wages.PCUN is campaigning about the rights of laborers on these farms. Cash needs to connect with PCUN to strengthen the movement for fair food. Fair Trade - we've focused on producers and consumers, who are students. Yes, we've got farmers, but we've also got laborers. So before food reaches the hands of consumers, it's connected to a lot of issues. I want to suggest to ENGAGE, which has worked with farmers and students - not consumers, not a "consumer movement,” it’s working to connecting farmers with students - but this isn't enough, we should be working with laborers. Is that confusing?
If you asked ENGAGE - this is the success, to establish a network - like [Thai] NGOs in local areas throughout the U.S. - maybe we don't know how many people's ways of thinking we've changed, but we know that our experiences in Thailand changed our thinking and we’ve continued working for social change.
Right, students change their way of thinking and work for change in America. But for those who you speak with on tours, have you checked if you've changed their way of thinking? The process of changing other people's thinking needs to be organized - not just putting together tours - I don't know if this is really the perfect way of organizing. First, about tours, how much success have you had? Where is the connection to your work? When P Yae went on a tour with ENGAGE, how many universities did he speak with? University-by-university, have you checked where you've been successful? I spoke with 5 or 6 universities, I want to ask them: what's changed? Allyn's work is really good, working about food. I'm happy about this; I think he's successful. (Below, P Nok with Allyn Steele, students and members of the Glendale, South Carolina community)
His group is small, but they're definitely going to keep working. And this is connected to your tour as well.
This is a success. But other places - what's going on there? With Cash, how's it going? (Below, Cash and P Nok with Eric Scott and students from the Pangaea Project, which visited SFS in July)
If you went to San Francisco for 2 days and maybe one day, beside a speaking event at a university event, you sat and talked with Ellen, Beth, Alisa, Amanda and maybe 2 or 3 more people in the area and talked, exchanged - would it be beneficial?
You'd need to answer this: what does the movement need in San Francisco? I don't need to just go look at sustainable agriculture in the U.S.; I already did this in Japan. But it’s also a speaking tour, so when I speak it needs to help the movement in the local area. This has been the way of thinking for the 5 tours we've done. How do these experiences help the movement, locally? But, speakers on these tours are one part of the movement, it's really ENGAGE's movement. Once we're done with our speaking, those who are there, locally, what will they do next? It's not just drama, performance - we don't know if people like it or not - How do people benefit?
There should be a way to gather information from people in each area and know what their work is focusing on and how can we help their work? Where can we increase their work? I'm like a supplement to their work, not the basis. The people who are doing real work, they are the basis. It's like the seminar we hosted about climate change, we invited researchers and academics to speak - they spoke and then they moved on - but the people who kept working we're SFS staff and villagers. I want to explain that I'm like the academic at our climate change seminar, the people who keep working are ENGAGErs in that local area, whether its with NGOs or students, it doesn't matter.
If we don't work locally, why go?
I feel like, at Hidden Villa - we had just an hour and a half - and Amanda worked really hard and Hidden Villa hosted us well. But Amanda gave them a donation for the tour, and that's not a problem, but I didn't see the relationship between Hidden Villa and ENGAGE. When CIEE students come to Surin, they see the relationship between SFS and villagers. We work hard to show our relationship with villagers, show how we work with villagers. If you tell me that some students don't see the relationship, it's a problem.
But it's their problem, not ours. They look at SFS and think, what do they actually do? How do they do development? These students don't change their way of thinking about development. SFS "officers" are really facilitators, not an officer who comes and spends money, does projects in the village. Villagers are doing this themselves.
This is the commitment of NGOs, though for some NGOs, their image for their work is clear, but villagers have no role. We've learned from our experiences that villagers are the basis of our work. That you mention some students don't realize that SFS work with villagers is troubling to me.
Maybe after they visit SFS, they'll understand. But when they come to Surin, it's their first experience in Thailand and they don't understand how Thai NGOs work.
Back to the tour - This year, last year, SFS has been campaigning about local food a lot more. The campaign is SFS, the Alternative Agriculture Network [AAN], all the NGOs and villagers all together. The same is happening in the U.S. with local food. But maybe it’s also a situation where there already were local products in the market, but they weren't yet labeled as such. The movement has made supermarkets designate local products; this is one kind of movement. I think a lot of people are focusing on this kind of movement.
The lessons that you gained from the tour, from your experiences - how will you use them in your work? You've already said that the tour had benefits for you, but specifically, what information or experiences will you use here in Surin?
The first thing, I've realized its really important for me, and our work here, to use the phrase "fair food" more. Fair Trade is about rice, but fair food is more. The way Americans eat - they eat too much and then waste it. I was at the airport with Amanda, and they didn't have a small portion, only big portions and we couldn't eat all of it. We couldn't take it on the plane because the plane company wouldn't let us. We really didn't want to throw it away, so I put it what was left on the top of a garbage can. Then a black woman, who was a janitor at the airport, she walked up and asked, “Why are you putting the food here like this? I answered, “I can't throw it away because there’s so much left over.” Then she replied, "Do you know there are people outside of the airport that don’t have money to buy food? But the airport company exploits them, won't let them have the food. People who work at the airport want to take it home, but they aren't allowed to.” They have to throw away what they can't eat. This isn't fair, and there isn't an alternative. They only have large portions: we don't have a choice. The food companies need to earn a certain amount of money per portion. This American consumption problem is already in Thailand. (Below, beef and poultry at the food cooperative in North Carolina)
I think that Fair Trade is something we have to do, but fair food is something we have to talk about more. But, Bennett, you have to understand, we can't just change people's habits tomorrow, right? Maybe you have issues with 7-11 or Styrofoam packaging, but the truth is that you have to give people the opportunity to change. Our work regarding fair food with consumers, we can't just tell them, "don't do this, don't do that," it won't create any new participation. If we give them information, and explain, “the way that things are isn't fair, but this is what we need to do” - I gained this from my experience in America. I met with PCUN - this changed my way of thinking about these issues – it’s a situation where Americans are getting food through Mexican laborers. This doesn't come from my experiences in Thailand - this comes from America. Do people know about the problems Mexican laborers experience? This is the kind of experience that raised my understanding of fair food. (Below, peppers at the Portland farmers' market)
The second thing, it made the image of my work clearer. I saw the farmers' market in Portland, the cooperative in North Carolina; these experiences supplement my work here. Learning about work with college students, I gained new experience there. I've never spoken with students directly like this before, so as an NGO, this was a very new experience. Maybe I'll start thinking more about how we can work with students here. But they are only in school for four years, and this isn't a lot of time.Speaking with producers and FLO [Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International], this made the noise of the unfairness in Fair Trade louder: I saw that, in the countries that came to USFT [Rwanda, Costa Rica, Nicaragua], they are interested in Fair Trade, but they don't understand Fair Trade. It’s the same in Thailand, a lot of groups get certified Fair Trade, but they don't understand, what does Fair Trade mean? This generated one problem I have with USFT - regarding these issues USFT isn't doing anything. (Below, P Nok with another producer at the USFT Convergence)
I'm going to write a letter to FLO about these issues. We have the right to tell FLO where things aren't fair. Producers tell students about the problems they encounter, but students don't tell FLO. I asked students, “Are you going to tell FLO?” They responded by asking producers, “Can students be on the FLO committee?” This isn't possible! They asked the producers from these four countries, “Can you suggest to FLO that students be on the committee?” This isn't possible! Is this really possible? Can students be on the FLO committee?It’s not possible. But they don't need to be on the committee, they can examine things themselves.
They can examine things and continue to work with FLO. ENGAGE got 80 names of students to tell FLO that they need to solve these issues with producers. I suggested in the last part of the conference: these four countries, they all experience the same problems - Rice fund is fine, we know that we can consult with FLO if we have issues, and we can make our own choices. If Alter Eco isn't fair, we can tell them [Alter Eco], we have more power than producers in these four countries – but these other countries [Rwanda, Costa Rica, Nicaragua], they don't know where to go, and they just told students, “Fair Trade is bad, Fair Trade is bad!” I told them, “This doesn't solve any problems!” This was an experience that brought us [producers] together and realized we need to help each other to solve issues in the Fair Trade system. Together we are going to write a letter to FLO.
I’m looking forward to helping with this letter. Thanks for your time, P’ Nok!
No problem, I hope my words will be of use to ENGAGE.
P Nok with ENGAGErs at the USFT ConvergenceTo see more photos from the tour, check out: the engage.national flikr photo set
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