The Marketing of Cambodia: De Facto Organics and De Jure Trade
Maylee Thavat, Australian National University
A key aspect of the ‘make poverty history’ campaign is the demand for trade justice. Poor people, we are told, can trade their way out of poverty if only the rigged rules of international trade are changed to reflect the interests of the poor. As a result a number of fair trade and often, organic NGO projects have been established which aim to construct new trade links between Third World producers and First World consumers. These projects claim trade fairly and in partnership with Third World producers while at the same time stimulating First World consumer awareness of trade injustice. Such projects represent an attempt to satisfy the elusive triple bottom line of social, environmental and financial sustainability. This paper will tell the story of transnational NGO attempts to construct a fair trade, organic rice marketing chain stretching from ‘organic’ rice farmers in Pursat, Cambodia, to fair trade organic rice buyers in North America. It will examine how such imposed cosmopolitan ideals of social and environmental responsibility worked to transform the cultivation patterns of de facto organic subsistence oriented farmers, and present ethnographic details as to the negotiations surrounding the construction of the new ‘sustainable’ trade link - who was involved and who benefited. It will reveal that claims to greater trade justice through the construction of fairer, pro-poor trade are far more problematic than the simplistic narrative presented to First World consumers, and usually involve unsustainable and imposed ideals, regulations and trade networks.
