(Un)Certified promises. An exploration to the ambivalences and inequalities in the infrastructures of sustainable coffee in Colombia.(Or Who and how does the work in Sustainability?Standards and coffee production in Colombia)

DERLY SANCHEZ VARGAS

ORGANISATION, WORK AND TECHNOLGY DEPARTMENT

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

UNITED KINGDOM

Coffee crisis, commodity markets and global capitalism

ICO Monthly averages: January 1990-April 2011.

Consumers and producers, International Coffee Organisation

World Coffee demand 1970-2010 (FAO)

Standards/certifications/…labelsWhat’s behind?

Sustainable coffees/ Sustainability standards in the coffee sector (REYNOLDS, ET AL: 2005)

“Are voluntary, usually third party-assessed, norms and standards relating to environmental, social, ethical and food safety issues, adopted by companies to demonstrate the performance of their organizations or products in specific areas” (Wiki: Sustainability standards and certifications)

In Coffee Sector: International Initiatives: Governance arrangements – including the actors involved in creating and

enforcing standards, the character of regulatory mechanisms, and their production and marketing strategies

Regulatory frameworks: are defined by their specific standards – including the depth of social and ecological concern, the rigor of their standards, and the inclusion of trade and price specifications – which determine whether certification works to hold the bar, avoiding the erosion of social and environmental conditions, or to raise the bar, improving social and environmental standards;

Certification efforts: are distinguished by their market coverage and growth potential.

How do standards work?

Sustainable programmes

Protected objects

Standards Incentives label

Fairtrade CertifiedFLO International

Work (Small

communities and workers). The main

goal is to assure better working

conditions for small

farmer and workers through better

prices

A wide set of standards in

relation to prices: from social to environmental

requirements.

Fair (Minimum)

Price. Additional

premium for social investment in

communities.

Organic certificationThe International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements,

Promoting organic

agriculture as production system

that sustains the

health of soils, ecosystems and

people.

Organic standards are

sets of requirements applicable to organic

operators (including

farmers, processors, and traders). Operators who

want to sell their products as organic must, in many

cases, comply with at

least one organic standard, and be verified

against this standard.

"Average price

differentials of USD

$0.255¢ (+/-) per

pound are paid to producers."

Rainforest AllianceCertified

Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN)

Maintain

biodiversity in the production areas,

while at the same time striving for

sustainable living

conditions for farmers, plantation

workers and the local population.

1. Management System

2. Ecosystem Conservation

3. Wildlife Protection 4. Water Conservation

5. Working Conditions

6. Occupational Health 7. Community Relations

8. Integrated Crop Management

9. Soil Conservation

10. Integrated Waste management

The Rainforest

Alliance offers no minimum or

guaranteed price. However, certified

farmers receive an

extra 10 to 60 cents above the

market price for a pound of green

coffee beans.

SMBC “Bird friendly”Shade-grown coffee

certification program

Promoting Coffee

grown in the shade

of tree canopies that is

economically,

environmentally and socio-culturally

viable. It provides a habitat for a

number of species,

including not only migratory birds but

also orchids, insects, mammals

1. Canopy height: At least

12 meters 2. Foliage

cover: At least 40% 3. Diversity of woody

species.

4. Total floristic diversity. 5. Structural diversity.

Organic

certification as a

condition for BF certification.

Certification

applicable to estate farms and

cooperatives. Inspection done at

same time as

organic inspection, but

only every three years.

• Mostly NGOs and networks of NGOs

• Third party certifications• Encode sustainability principle into

code of conduct• Voluntary• Mostly pay by the producer• Performed by auditing

Methods Assemblages to Study SustainabilityStandards

HOW? Documents: Standards as written

objects. (distributed materials of standards: Versions, languages and interpretation guides, lists, audit check lists, reports).

Ethnographic moments: Following ISEA ALIANCE Organisation

(Global Conferences, Community Days, specialised webinars).

Training courses (Standards-setting ISEAL Training Course,

London 2014) Audit Training Course (SAN Norm/

Rainforest). Bogotá 2014.

Coffee Farm visits (Certified, soon-to-be audited and non-certified farms).

• Postcolonial/Feminist TechnoscienceSensibilities:

• “Tracing” Standards: Local (universalities) (Timmermans and Berg, 2010) and ‘global’ connections (Tsing, 2005).

• How enactments of Sustainability in different localities (documents, farms, auditing arr).

• The social as relational effect of Sustainability Standards.

• Politics of Standards (Global-South connections).

• Sustainability Standards Invisible Infrastructures (Bowker and Leigh Start 2009) of Sustainability.

• Sociomaterial orderings of Sustainability Standards

• Who does the work? Much work among the labor of producing coffee: Audit, NGO’s Standard Setters.

• Mobil/Political categories: cases that do not fit or are difficult to standardised. International Living wage.

Following living wage: calculation, auditing and work

• The ‘social’ impact of certification schemes

• Standards as tools of governance: regulation and legitimacy

• Infrastructures, category making and the organisation of standards

• Standards: inclusion, exclusions and monsters

ILO 001 Hours of WorkILO 100 Equal Remuneration ConventionILO 102 Social Security (Minimum Standards)ILO 105 Abolition of Forced LabourILO 110 Plantations ConventionILO 111 Discrimination (Employment and Occupation)ILO 121 Employment Injury BenefitsILO 130 Medical Care and Sickness BenefitsILO 135 Workers' RepresentativesILO 138 Minimum Age ConventionILO 141 Rural Workers' Organisations ConventionILO 143 Migrant WorkersILO 155 Occupational Safety and HealthILO 164 Health Protection and Medical Care (Seafarers)ILO 169 Indigenous and Tribal PeoplesILO 181 Private Employment AgenciesILO 182 Worst Forms of Child Labour ConventionILO 183 Maternity ProtectionILO 184 Safety and Health in AgricultureILO 29 Domestic Workers ConventionILO 77 Medical Examination of Young Persons (Industry)ILO 78 Medical Examination of Children and Young Persons for Fitness for

Employment in Non-Industrial Occupations ILO 87 Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to OrganiseILO 95 Convention concerning the Protection of WagesILO 97 Migration for Employment ConventionILO 98 Right to Organise and Collective BargainingILO R102

Welfare Facilities Recommendation, 1956 (No. 102)

ILO R115

Workers' Housing Recommendation, 1961 (No. 115)

ILO R164

Occupational Safety and Health Recommendation, 1981 (No. 164)

ILO R193

Promotion of Cooperatives Recommendation, 2002 (No. 193)

ILOR143

Workers' Representatives Recommendation, 1971 (No. 143)

ILO 001 Hours of WorkILO 100 Equal Remuneration ConventionILO 102 Social Security (Minimum Standards)ILO 105 Abolition of Forced LabourILO 110 Plantations ConventionILO 111 Discrimination (Employment and Occupation)ILO 121 Employment Injury BenefitsILO 130 Medical Care and Sickness BenefitsILO 135 Workers' RepresentativesILO 138 Minimum Age ConventionILO 141 Rural Workers' Organisations ConventionILO 143 Migrant WorkersILO 155 Occupational Safety and HealthILO 164 Health Protection and Medical Care (Seafarers)ILO 169 Indigenous and Tribal PeoplesILO 181 Private Employment AgenciesILO 182 Worst Forms of Child Labour ConventionILO 183 Maternity ProtectionILO 184 Safety and Health in AgricultureILO 29 Domestic Workers ConventionILO 77 Medical Examination of Young Persons (Industry)

Sustainability Standards connections to ILO Conventions

Watch out! Your standard is not the result you see. ISEAL, Standard Setting training course. London, 2014.

The first assumption that does not seem to work is the classification of smallholders and agricultural coffee workers.

As an ISEAL representative notes:

“We look to what the worker should be earning. With the farmer we can use something akin with this idea, a concept of what a household needs to

earn to see alike, a poverty line basically. And then you have to figure out what is the farmer earning and so on. We can do that but separately not us

part of this evaluation”.

Similarly, a SAN/RA representative acknowledged that coffee pickers have sessional jobs, and that the enforcement of this definition

and category of Living Wage would depend on the certification system. Such acknowledgment however seems vague or at least avoid

specificity.

‘We (SAN Alliance) define workers with the same rights, temporary workers should be pay proportionally according to the living wage that is defined

for a normal worker’.

Interestingly, in this presentation standards setters acknowledged that category also embodies some morals difficult to

reduce into a category. Compromise with the process of standardisation seem to be linked to expect ‘realistic’

changes to an unequal arrangement:

(…) Some things are not included here because this is a normative concept of decency and of what would cost to live. But the recognition is that none

is able to pay this tomorrow everywhere… All are committed to using a wide range of strategies, appropriate to each of their respective standards

systems, to work towards the long term goal of improving wages and to involving brands, buyers, retails, and other relevant stakeholders in this

process

Despite this organisational effort to bring different standards setters to discussing living wage as a category core of social standards, this definition is mediated by different managerial and political aspects that such organisations entail of being part of the certification market.

Auditing training courses…

Rainforest Alliance audit training during group activity . Bogotá, Colombia, 2014

Instructor: The base for wage in Colombia is integral minimum wage. The SAN

norm mentions the payment of the minimum wage of the regional average. We

don’t use the regional mean because we have an established legal minimum

wage.

Trainee 2: Howmuch is to the present day?

Instructor: It’s around $20.300 (COP), (6.84 USD in November 2014) per 8 hours

(a workday). We [auditors] use these units because we can’t not measure

minimum legal monthly wage (per month). There is weekly payment,

sometimes even daily, or for half day. So, we have to take this figure to evaluate

wages. If we audit a company with permanent workers, they must to be paid the

legal wage. But if we go to a small farm we must to take into account the legal

figure of the “jornal” and the “daily wage.

Farm settings…

I

Concluding remarks• Despite their normative character sustainability standards have a limited impact in transforming the

materiality of the practices that they try to regulate.

• I consider that such limited agency is related with ‘the standard loop’. ‘The standard loop’ describes a

quality (or defect) of sustainability standards operation.

• In many circumstances, those in charge of keeping the standard alive pay more attention to the calibration

and measurement of the standard rather than to the ways in which they may re-configure farm ecologies.

Such limitation is related to the material boundaries of audit and certification systems.

• Rather than changing practices of work and production, sustainability standards are juxtaposed to them as

an additional infrastructure. Auditors, farmers and traders adapt their practices and expectations to this. The

production of coffee relies on informal economic practices and relations with work that exceed the

expectations of standardisation.

DERLY SÁNCHEZ VARGASD.SANCHEZVARGAS@LANCASTER.AC.UK