Fairness on the Cocoa field : examining perceptions of fairness among fair trade cocoa farmers in Ghana

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Fairness on the Cocoa fi eld

Examining perceptions of fairness among

Fair Trade cocoa farmers in Ghana

Naam: Annika van Oostveen Studentnummer: 0579815

Masterscriptie in de afstudeerrichting Culturele Antropologie

Begeleider: Mattijs van de Port Tweede lezer: Marleen de Witte Derde lezer: Rachel Spronk

4 februari 2013

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Examining perceptions of fairness

among Fairtrade cocoa farmers in Ghana

Fairness on the Cocoa Field

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Fairness on the Cocoa fi eld

Examining perceptions of fairness among Fair Trade cocoa farmers in Ghana

Naam: Annika van Oostveen Studentnummer: 0579815

Masterscriptie in de afstudeerrichting Culturele Antropologie

Begeleider: Mattijs van de Port Tweede lezer: Marleen de Witte Derde lezer: Rachel Spronk

4 februari 2013 Annika.vanOostveen@gmail.com

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“Nontravelers and their potential contribution to globalization: given evidence of international efforts to produce globally astute farmers, it would seem imperative to investigate how farmers and farm workers who are not crossing national and international borders are engaging with such project”

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Acknowledgements

This thesis could not have been completed without the extraordinary openness of all my informants. Even though some of you I have only met once, I will take your life stories with me for the rest of my life.

Special thanks of course to my Ghanaian brother Adam Kofi , my gatekeeper and trans-lator in Ghana. And I would like to thank Pilus and his family for having me in their home during my stay in Ntobroso. I am thankful for Agro Eco, Willem-Albert Toose in particular, for offering me a place to conduct my fi eldwork and helping me whenever I needed it. Many thanks also to Kwame Osei and Samuel Apana. And Kodjo Senah, thank you for having me in your offi ce in Accra. I am also very grateful for Sander, Elke, Milan and Noor for accepting me in their home in Accra, offering me a safe place to charge in between. And Myriam Grilliot – my Ghanaian sister - without you my time in Ghana would not have been the same. Medaasi!

I would like to thank my supervisor: Mattijs van de Port, for his overall support and advice during the entire process of my research. Even though we sometimes were both out of the Netherlands, via e-mail I could always count on him. I also would like to thank Marleen de Witte and Rachel Spronk for reading and commenting on my thesis. The writ-ing of this thesis could not have been completed without all those little and sometimes a bit too long coffee breaks at the University of Amsterdam. Thanks to all whom I shared my frustrations with during these hours. Nettah Yoeli-Rimmer, thank you for the fi nal corrections of my writings and Arjen Boekholt from Tony Chocolonely, thank you for inviting me into the world of your chocolate. Bert, thank you for the amazing cover. And Kaj Beetstra, thanks for your effective pep talks. And last but not least, special thanks to my parents, Christine, Bert, Jaap and Martha, who were there to support me at all times.

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Abstract

Initiatives like Fairtrade place an emphasis on unequal relations and seek to create oppor-tunities for producers involved in the global market of food production. Fairtrade’s dis-course frames fairness as a universal notion, yet no research has focused on the question of what these notions of fairness genuinely mean, and to what extent notions of fairness are comparable on a global scale. Starting in my own supermarket in Amsterdam, I traced the Fair Trade chocolate bar back to the bean, growing on the cocoa trees in Ntobroso, a small cocoa community in Ghana. The community members seem to relate themselves to fi ve interdependent moral communities: the family, the other farmers, the chiefs, nearby towns and perceived outsiders. In the case of Ntobroso the latter are primarily Chinese gold miners. Perceptions of fairness, embedded in institutional, public and embodied spheres of morality, are revealed, through interviews with cocoa farmers, to imply not cheating, promise keeping and sharing. Fairness, however, seems to be appropriated to fi t one’s own interest. Although a moral of truth telling and promise keeping is adhered to in principle, in practice, in daily activities, in relation to money and in relation to outsiders, these moral domains become open to interpretation. The attitude of the farmers towards the Chinese gold miners demonstrates the importance of promise keeping for a fair and sustainable relationship with those actors from outside their own moral community. This understanding can be of great value for other actors from outside, like Fairtrade itself.

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Introduction

The daily visit through the supermarket seems nowadays to be a multi-layered experi-ence. It no longer consists only of the search for a set of edible for yourself, your friends and family; it is much more than that. By choosing products, which are in abundance and neatly displayed in a maze of aisles, people at the same time take a stand. What does it say about a person to buy beef that is from a cow that had cattle-forage without antibiotics, a lot of space to graze and cow friends to play with? More importantly, what does this pur-chased piece of beef say about the purchase of a similar piece that was produced industri-ally, with less care for the animal but is about half the price? And how do green teabags that are produced in a sustainable way compare to those that are not produced with an awareness of biodiversity? And not to be forgotten is the fruit section, with its controver-sial bananas, questionable mangoes and obscure pineapples. Every product has a story of its own – sometimes written explicitly on the wrapping - that through purchase becomes part of the representation of the consumers’ world view and disposition. Quality labels like Fairtrade seem to seize their chance in this storytelling era, with narratives from the other side of the globe to convince consumers to buy their products1. “Don’t we all want

to make the world a fair place?”, is what the smiling farmer on your just purchased bar of chocolate seems to ask.

The quality label of Fairtrade originates in the wake of World War II as an alterna-tive way to exchange goods and has become increasingly signifi cant since the 1990s. Gradually the movement penetrated public opinion, the media, political institutions and even the ‘conventional’ market sector (Beji-Becheur et al. 2008 : 44). Fairtrade’s drive for poverty alleviation and sustainable development is grounded on two basic visions. First, the initiative operates in the market, providing a working model for international trade that makes a difference for the producers and consumers engaging in it. Secondly Fairtrade places itself against the market, serving as a challenge to the current dominant economic model of global trade (Goodman 2004 : 74). An example of Fairtrade’s ef-forts to empower small-scale producers is its organizing of producers into independent cooperatives. This uniting of the producers should strengthen their position on the world market (Le Mare 2007 : 70).

In the fi rst half of 2012 the consumption of Fairtrade products in the Netherlands in-creased by 47% compared to 2011. Approximately half of all Dutch households buy the

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label2_{. Just recently Max Havelaar, the Dutch branch of Fairtrade, came into disrepute}

in the media. The accusations stated that African cocoa farmers gain absolutely nothing from their engagement with Max Havelaar. The extra money paid by consumers presum-ably never reaches the farmer and in addition, despite their engagement with Fairtrade, many of the farmers were ignorant of the name Fairtrade.3 The essential question in the

discussion was how fair Max Havelaar and the label of Fairtrade actually is. The credibil-ity of the initiative has been the subject of many studies. For instance, Ruben et al. (2009) conducted a long-term impact study on Fairtrade bananas and coffee cooperatives in Peru and Costa Rica and concluded that the direct income effects for producers remain fairly modest (Ruben et al. 2009 : 786). Tiffen (2002) describes the remaining disconnectedness between consumers and producers for the case of cocoa in Ghana and questions the infl u-ence of supply chain management work on unequal power relations in the global market (Tiffen 2002 : 394). The issue raised however, seems to expand the problems associated with Fairtrade implementation and the disputable outcomes of Fairtrade consumption. The central question that needs to be asked is, what is in fact meant by fairness in the fi rst place?

Fairtrade is considered to be ‘fair’. Not fairer in comparison to other producers of chocolate, but fair in itself. The quality label does not consider the anthropological truism that notions of fairness differ from place to place. In their narrative of fairness, ‘fair’ is a universal category, equally understood by all. This assumption is in fact highly questiona-ble. Drawing from personal experience of actors involved with Fairtrade, Le Mare (2007) proposes the creation of a meta-narrative of shared meanings and values (Le Mare 2007 : 69). Within this same narrative, though, the meanings attributed to Fairtrade can be highly variable and even inconsistent, as illustrated by the discussions concerning Fairtrade’s credibility in the Dutch media. The question arises as to what extent fairness is adopted universally on a global scale? Is the development of an idea of fairness not intrinsically linked to socio-cultural background and consequentially culturally relative? And if fair-ness is not a global concept, what are the implications for an initiative like Fairtrade?

The anthropological literature does not provide many studies that focus on the notion of fairness. Concerning global trade and value systems, Appadurai’s (1986) work - illus-trative for the representation of global chains of exchange - introduces the term regimes of

value, claiming that certain values attributed to exchange in one context do not

automati-cally apply in another (Appadurai 1986 : 15). This confl icts with Le Mare’s (2007) idea

2 De Volkskrant 17.11.2012 ‘Fairtrade chocola blijkt niet zo eerlijk’ – Jonathan

Witteman

3 De Volkskrant 16.11.2012 ‘Helpt Max Havelaar cacaoboer echt aan een beter

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of a Fairtrade meta-narrative, based upon globally shared attitudes of all involved actors towards the initiative (Le Mare 2007 : 69). This incoherence asks for further investigation and corresponds to Tsings (2000) objection to accepting the autonomy of global processes (Tsing 2000 : 348). Fairtrade might be regarded a solid global process when in fact it in-creasingly appears to be more of a puzzle of confl icting hopes, ideas and expectations.

Within the limits of this research only a fragment of the Fairtrade narrative can be examined, therefore I will focus primarily on the notion of fairness within one Fairtrade chain, within one particular community. For its obvious link with the Netherlands, the cocoa-chocolate chain that starts in Ghana – whence the majority of cocoa is exported to Amsterdam - will serve as the starting point of this study (Laven 2010 : 25). For a period of three months I conducted research among cocoa farmers living in the community of Ntobroso,4 who are since 2010 in the process of becoming Fairtrade certifi ed.

Fairness can be classifi ed as a moral value, introducing the theme of morality. Much of the anthropological literature regarding morality focuses primarily on the moral position of the anthropologist in the fi eld and the ethical considerations that must prevent anthro-pologists from making judgemental claims about their subjects (D’Andrade 1995 ; Edel & Edel 2000). For the arrangement of my fi eld, Zigon’s (2008) work proves extremely useful as it provides an anthropological framework to organize the different spheres of morality for a particular setting (Zigon 2008 : 161 - 166). His three spheres of morality – the institutional, the public and the embodied sphere – will be used as a tool to put to-gether the moral domains of value concerning fairness in particular within the community of Ntobroso. However, the community of Ntobroso is far from isolated and is subject to infl uences from outside, confl icting with or reinforcing their own moral boundaries. In addition to Zigon’s spheres of morality, the concept of the moral community thus seems pivotal in this research.

Nowadays the popular concept of community is within the discipline of anthropology in greater degree represented with transnational communities, that no longer consist of social relations that come to expression within a specifi c shared location, but are part of a shift to the notion of symbolically demarcated categories of identity (Amid & Rapport 2002 : 17). However, in the case of Ntobroso - with a signifi cant emphasis on local family and trading relations actually taking place in and with the community - I would like to use the ethnography of Pitt-Rivers (1971). His writings about the Spanish pueblo Alcalá de la Sierra in terms of a moral community and his model of analysis prove helpful for my

4 Ntobroso is a cocoa community situated in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Nto-broso is surrounded by Aniamoa, Achiase, Butumuroso and Adobewura. These four com-munities are involved in the same project of receiving Fairtrade certifi cation.

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reconstruction of the moral community of Ntobroso, for its clear structure and the resem-blance with my fi eld. His central themes discussing community boundaries, the infl uence of wealth, age, sex and institutions on the relations between the community members and his emphasis on the role of outsiders in the community all emerged during my own fi eld-work (Pitt-Rivers 1971). Along with Pitt-Rivers, the eld-work of Lauderdale (1967) will be used to increase the understanding of deviance and moral boundary making (Lauderdale 1967). In Ntobroso, the presence of Chinese gold miners in the area is especially interest-ing for analysinterest-ing the concept of moral community and boundary makinterest-ing. The attitude of the villagers towards these actors who fall outside their own moral framework can be enlightening to understand their moral relations with other actors from outside. Actors like Fairtrade itself.

It is not my objective to justify or reject Fairtrade projects nor is it to analyse their benefi ts for consumers, producers, retailers or other actors involved with Fairtrade. I do hope that this research can add to the current debate on ethical consumption and put emphasis on the cultural relativity of some moral claims (Nicholls & Opal 2005 ; Fresco 2012) . The object of this study is to highlight one specifi c concept, fairness, within the narrative of Fairtrade, in one particular setting, the community of Ntobroso. Fairtrade is used because of the centrality on fairness within their narrative.5 The West-African

country of Ghana is particularly interesting because of its obvious cocoa links with the Netherlands, making it an accessible and safe area for a Dutch researcher.

As a result of acquired contacts during the preparation of my fi eldwork, Agro Eco6 gave

me the opportunity to live in Ntobroso. Ntobroso is one of the communities they assist in receiving Organic and Fairtrade certifi cation. In order to collect my data and to be able to reconstruct notions of fairness in Ntobroso, I conducted both participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The fi rst allowed me to gain insight in multiple aspects of the life of a Ghanaian cocoa farmer. These include family relations, cocoa farming practices and leisure activities. The second gave the opportunity to go further into detail on the notions of fairness as perceived by my informants and juxtapose my observations. The content in this thesis is based on very short-lived research and conducted by a fi rst-time researcher on the basis of trial and error. Therefore, this thesis must be regarded mainly as a fi rst design for other researchers who wish to further explore the notions of fairness in the discourse of Fairtrade from an anthropological perspective.

5 This instead of the quality labels like UTZ and Rainforest Alliance that focus more on biodiversity and sustainability.

6 Agro Eco, part of the Louis Bolk Institute, is a Dutch founded international con-sultancy company in sustainable agriculture, nutrition and health that operate in Europe, North America and Africa. (http://www.louisbolk.org/)

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In the fi rst chapter I will outline my theoretical framework. Chapter two contains the

used research methods and my refl ection on them. The third chapter discusses cocoa pro-duction in Ghana, Fairtrade implementation and gold mining in Ntobroso. In chapter four I discuss Zigon’s fi rst sphere of morality, the institutional. Chapter fi ve is on the public discourse of morality. Chapter six analyses the different moral communities that exist in Ntobroso and connect them with the three moral spheres of Zigon (2008) and fi nally, chapter eight will give my conclusions.

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1. Theoretical Framework

1.1. Fairtrade’s Moral Economy

Initiatives like Fairtrade7 put emphasis on unequal trading relations and opportunities in

their challenge of the norms of global capitalism. Their objective to improve the position of small scale producers is linked to the idea of progress (McNeill 1999 : 59). The quality label of Fairtrade – depicturing a black fi gure with a raised arm on a blue and green back-ground - is found on an abundance of food products certifi ed by FLO.8 With an emphasis

on notions of transparency, equality and fairness they try to build a network to reconnect consumers in the global North with producers in the global South. One of Fairtrade’s intentions is to create a sentiment of shared solidarity, a narrative of shared needs and goals by consumers and producers (Le Mare 2008 : 1924). Slogans like “Trade not Aid” and “Make It Happen, Choose Fairtrade” must inform consumers of the disadvantaged position of producers in our global world – both who are concerned and those that are still unaware of it. Fairtrade wants to make a difference and is in urgent need of your help.

Every product, taking as an example a chocolate bar, follows a track: starting with the growing of the bean, the packaging of the beans and their transfer from the hands of purchasing clerks, exporters, importers and retailers all the way in the hands of consum-ers, who buy the bar in their supermarket. This track of steps is called the value chain (Laven 2010 : 30). The concept of value chain implicates that with every step some form of value is added, transforming the product in stages. These additions are mainly of ma-terial nature, like sugar and milk changing cocoa butter into chocolate. Yet these values could also be regarded as moral values. Initiatives like Fairtrade in particular address the moral values entwined with global supply chains and strive for a change in the power relations along them. According to Fairtrade, economy is not just material, but simultane-ously moral. Goodman (2004) refl ects on what he defi nes as Fairtrade’s moral economy (Goodman 2004 : 893).

Fair trade’s moral economy is written on the commodities traffi cked from one part of the globe to another, connecting these places in a novel economy of semiology. In other words, the commoditization of fair trade facilitates a material and discursive

7 In this thesis I use the term Fairtrade to refer to the offi cial organisation and its local implementation practices. If I refer to the movement, I include followers that are not offi cially involved with Fairtrade.

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‘‘scale jump’’ (Glassman, 2001) that in effect, stitches consumers to the very places and livelihood struggles of production via embedded ethical, political, and discursive networks (Goodman 2004 : 893).

The notion of this moral economy represents the two-sidedness of Fairtrade’s body of thought. For one thing, Fairtrade’s interference in the global market consists of economic measures like providing a premium for producers on top of the purchasing price. On the other hand, they address a moral obligation of consumers and institutions operating in this global market to buy decently produced products for a decent price (Goodman 2004 : 894).

Obviously, what Fairtrade ‘is’ depends on whether someone speaks from the point of view of a consumer, a producer or a representative of the organisation itself. Neverthe-less, recurrent in all these domains seems to be the presumption of a universalistic notion of fairness. And despite extensive literature on Fairtrade - the majority consisting of ei-ther impact studies, addressing developmental goals and shortcomings of local Fairtrade implementation (Le Mare 2008 ; Murray et al. 2006 ; Ruben 2008) or studies focusing on ethical consumption from a consumers perspective (Barnett et al. 2005 ; Goodman 2004 ; Raynolds 2000) – the analysis of the construction of the notion of fairness itself remains, apart from some exceptions, neglected.

Maseland and de Vaal (2002) have acknowledged the rather vague defi nition of fair-ness and examined how ‘fair’ Fairtrade is by drawing a comparison between different economic models of trade. In this respect they consider trade to as fair when it comes to the advantage of the least well-of in society (Maseland & de Vaal 2002 : 268). Yet they fail to put fairness into a broader perspective and place it beyond the scope of econom-ics (Ibid : 253). Beji-Becheur (2008) aims at the reconstruction of fairness among actors involved with Fairtrade, taking a Laotian farmers’ cooperative as a reference point. Fair-ness is according to Beji-Becheur articulated during discussions between the farmers and can be defi ned as the belief that others will fulfi l their obligations and as having faith in another person despite uncertain conditions of the future (Beji-Becheur 2008 : 50 - 51). Both authors address the relativity of fairness constructions in relation to Fairtrade, but from an economical perspective, that limits the extent of their analysis. Hence, I propose an anthropological perspective on notions of fairness with which I hope to add to this discussion of the defi nition of fairness within the discourse of Fairtrade.

1.2. Worldwide Reciprocity

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The purchased chocolate bar represents your own pleasure and the future of the cocoa farmer and his family who smile at you from the wrapping of your bar. The meaning of exchange on a global scale is by Appadurai (1986) analysed from a cultural-material perspective. According to him, all things that are desired contain a certain exchange value. Exchanged products not only cross borders but transgress distinctive cultural value systems that Appadurai calls regimes of value (Appadurai 1986 : 15).

I therefore prefer to use the term regimes of value, which does not imply that every act of commodity exchange presupposes a complete cultural sharing of assumptions, but rather that the degree of value coherence may be highly variable from situation to situation, and from commodity to commodity (Appadurai 1986 : 15).

Appadurai’s emphasis on exchange value refers not to the transformation of the physi-cal object itself – which is obviously the case in the supply chain where cocoa beans become chocolate bars - but moreover to social and cultural value constructions that are intertwined with the exchange of objects on global scale. He suggests that values used to characterise exchange worldwide are mutually inconsistent. Taking Fairtrade as a starting point, this suggests that a value system created in one context does not automatically ap-ply to another context. Then to what extent is the context of fairness in which the cocoa beans are sold comparable to the domain of fairness that surrounds the consumer that buys the chocolate bar?

In Appadurai’s perspective objects become endowed with values that accumulate throughout their course of existence. This is problematic, as objects do not contain distinc-tive values until they become part of a certain context. Besides, Graeber (2001) objects to Appadurai’s tendency to attribute the power to negotiate social relations mainly to elites who wish to control consumption (Graeber 2001 : 32). This is exactly what movements striving for more fair trade want to change. Nevertheless, Appadurai (1986) highlights an important matter, stating that patterns of value do not travel alongside the objects of exchange without complications. Likewise, despite Fairtrade’s emphasis on notions of fairness in the context of global trade relations, we cannot assume these notions identical for all actors along the production chain.

Within anthropological literature, exchange is usually translated into reciprocity. This general term refers to the forging of social relations through the act of exchange (Gu-deman 2001 : 81). Worldwide reciprocity is accentuated by movements like Fairtrade who emphasise shared economical and moral responsibilities as part of a moral economy (Goodman 2004 : 849). It seems problematic, however, to assume that the connections be-tween consumer and producer are based on similar principles. Benson and Fischer (2007)

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portray how a broccoli farmer from Guatemala looks after economic stability for his family while the American woman buying the broccoli aspires to a healthy lifestyle (Ben-son & Fischer 2007). This strengthens Appadurai’s argument that worldwide relations of exchange operate independently of the motivations of those who engage in the exchange. Naturally, Fairtrade acknowledges the difference in desires among their adherents, but by designating global exchange relations as ‘fair’ without fi rst examining the social and cultural constructions behind this moral concept sacrifi ces part of their reliability.

1.3. Morality of Fairness

Uncovering the moral construction of fairness in the debate of Fairtrade is relevant as shared understanding and meanings for those people involved lead to more unity in their approaches in achieving fairer trade (Le Mare 2007 : 70). The manifestations of Fair-trade, as Le Mare (2007) points out, “are based on shared meanings and values, a

meta-narrative constructed through the personal experience of producers, consumers, and staff of trading organisations” (Ibid : 69). Nevertheless, she stresses the different meanings

that are ascribed to Fairtrade by consumers, importing companies, producers and selling companies because of implicit and explicit social and cultural norms that structure the societies they are part of. Most probably, the building blocks of a morality of fairness that drive the buying practices of consumers have different proportions compared to the construction of fairness supported by producers at the beginning of the chain. These are the building blocks that require further examination.

Fairness can be regarded as an elusive concept as it overlaps with other normative principles such as justice, equality, honesty and truth telling. In addition, whether some-thing is considered fair or not is based on an inherent conviction (Suranovic 2000 : 283). To be able to structure a construction of a moral value like fairness within social and cul-tural context, Zigon’s (2008) spheres of morality prove exceptionally useful (Zigon 2008 : 162). He opts for an anthropological approach in which totalizing and deterministic concepts like culture no longer hold position resulting to put “everyday acts and

prac-tices of persons in a context that does not need to reference outside itself for determining structures” (Ibid: 162). With his framework, he positions himself against the

Durkheim-ian legacy that regards morality as congruent with what he defi nes as society. Zigon states that morality must be seen as something that is always in motion (Ibid : 134).

Zigon’s framework consists of three spheres of morality, (1) institutional, (2) public discourse and (3) embodied dispositions, which interrelate and bring about a multi-lay-ered construction of morality. The three spheres are used to structure my analysis. Before proceeding to the description of the spheres, I would like to clarify the focus of this thesis.

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The chain of Fairtrade chocolate – going from bean to bar - consists of multiple distinct stages. The spheres of morality most probably affect every single stage but not in the same manner. Despite my ambitions to analyse the interaction of fairness and the moral spheres for all the stages of the production chain, within the limits of this research I have decided to focus only on the community of Ntobroso, the location where the beans are produced. This naturally limits my capacity to compare notions of fairness between the different stages as I originally intended. This comparison might be an interesting focus for future research.

To start with, the disentanglement of the three moral spheres, as put forward by Zigon, might not be experienced as such by those who are actually living the spheres. The con-struction is used in this case solely as a tool to get an overview of interacting forces that possibly inform behaviour referring to morality. In the fi rst sphere, institutions are char-acterized as those formal and non-formal social organizations that wield a certain amount of power over individuals. These institutions position themselves as bearers and securers of the rightness of a particular kind of morality. Examples of institutions are governments, organized religions, village elder councils and international organizations like the IMF (Zigon 2008 : 162).

Despite the fact of the plurality of institutional moralities within all societies and that persons do not always precisely adhere to one or any of these institutional moralities, the infl uence that institutional moralities have on individual persons is clearly real and substantial (Zigon 2008 : 163).

In the particular case of Ntobroso, the main institutional organs wielding power are the Ghanaian government, the institution of the Christian church, the educational system and the village elder council that in Ghana is called chieftaincy. Their moral beliefs and its infl uence on the inhabitants of Ntobroso will be discussed in chapter four.

The public discourse of morality, Zigon’s the second sphere, is in constant dialogue with this institutional sphere, alternating between mutual subversion and authorization. This discourse consists of moral beliefs that are publically articulated. These are not di-rectly articulated as such by an institution. They can however be similar. As an example Zigon mentions the media, arts, literature, stories and everyday articulated beliefs and opinions (Zigon 2008 : 163). In Ntobroso, the presence of media – mainly radio and tel-evision –will be discussed in chapter fi ve. More specifi cally the use of proverbs will be analysed in relation to morality.

Finally, the third sphere of morality can be regarded as a disposition that “…is simply

done. Morality as embodied is one’s everyday way of being in the world”. This unrefl

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public discourse (Ibid : 165). Rappaports (1999) work on the performance of liturgical rit-uals could elucidate the difference between the public and embodied sphere of morality of Zigon. Rappaport discerns between participating and believing in rituals, proposing that the fi rst represents the acceptance of the moral imperative the ritual represents, whereas the second is confi ned to the inner and private conviction of the participant himself (Rap-paport 1999 : 118). This act of participation can be regarded as the public acceptance of the moral order. It reinforces the moral order directly by creating accountability in case of deviant behaviour. But this public acceptance is by no means coercive for changing inner beliefs so these can remain deviant from the presented norm (Ibid : 122).

Returning to Zigon, morality can thus be addressed through public acts - like public articulations of stories in the community reinforcing the public discourse and its bounda-ries - but is also experienced in a very private embodied manner that does not necessarily conform to the public moral order. “It is the visible, explicit, public act of acceptance, and

not the invisible, ambiguous, private sentiment, which is socially and morally binding”

(Rappaport 1999 : 122 ; Zigon 2008 : 163). This binding element can be illustrated with Lauderdale’s (1976) essay on boundary making and moral deviance. He argues that in order to maintain the moral order of a social system, those who perform morally deviant behavior are put outside the moral boundaries of the system. This reaffi rms the boundar-ies of the moral system and increases in-group solidarity (Lauderdale 1976 : 662). The community of Ntobroso could be regarded as such a social system with moral boundaries. In this thesis I take fairness as a reference point for imagining the different moral bound-aries that together construct the moral community of Ntobroso. In the next paragraph I will discuss the term community.

“Community in contemporary anthropological writing appears defi ned an as emotion-ally charged category of social relations, decoupled from an actual local base of inter-action now relying on globalization and transnational connections” (Amid & Rapport

2002 : 17). Yet the community of Ntobroso is not so decoupled from a location; in fact their connection is established exactly through their town and cocoa farms. It would be too simplistic to regard the community of Ntobroso as one homogenous whole without internal individual variation. Rather the community consists of multiple alliances - such as between family members or those between farmers - and all these little communities have their own relation with the three proposed moral spheres of Zigon. Therefore, I will classify between different moral communities within Ntobroso that I will discuss in chapter six. In similar fashion, Pitt-Rivers (1971) has written a beautiful ethnography on a pueblo in Andalusia. He defi nes the boundaries of the community, analyses the inter-nal and exterinter-nal relations differentiating among other things between status, sex, wealth, friendship and outsiders (PittRivers 1971). Certainly, this community in Spain is signifi

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-cantly different from a cocoa community in Ghana. Nonetheless, his extensive analyses of the relations existent in and towards the pueblo are a useful guide in addition to Zigon’s spheres of morality to structuring my analysis. In chapter six, I will give a description of how the three spheres of morality interact and try to defi ne the moral boundaries in the different communities in Ntobroso.

In summary, Fairtrade’s moral economy addresses worldwide perceived reciprocity between producers and consumers and puts emphasis on moral concepts like fairness as important argument in ethical decision making to work towards fair trading relationships (Appadurai 1986 ; Goodman 2004 ; Le Mare 2007). The construction of the moral value of fairness itself seems however underexposed and needs further examination, hopefully resulting in more effective cooperation in Fairtrade’s initiatives and raise consumers awareness. Moreover, it might add to the discussions of the universality of morality. Zigon’s (2008) framework of the institutional, public and embodied spheres of morality will in this research be used as an effective tool to work towards a solid description of a morality of fairness experienced within the local context of the cocoa community Ntobroso in Ghana (Zigon 2008 : 165). In addition, the moral community of Ntobroso will be examined in more detail using Pitt-Rivers (1971) structural set up of his ethnography in Andalusia. The work of Rappaport (1999) and Lauderdale (1989) will be used to analyse the process of moral boundary making and the social intercourse with deviance in Ntobroso. In the next chapter, I will outline my research methods, successes and setbacks.

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2. Methodology

2.1. Research Methods

During the preparation of my fi eldwork, I became increasingly occupied with my own interpretation of fairness. What I considered a ‘fair’ decision seemed to depend on the particular situation, the actors involved and the consequences afterwards. More remark-able was the realization that my attempts to ‘do the right thing’ seem to be based on inner convictions that are not at all easy to make explicit. These experiences of a non-conscious urge - that apparently infl uenced my own notion of fairness - made me aware of the wide range and nature of the concept of fairness and the diffi culty to unearth the moral frames that guide my actions. Subsequently, answering my research question asks for appropriate research methods that would be able to encompass this diversity. My research question is formulated as follows: What notions of fairness are present among Ghanaian cocoa

farmers in cooperation with Fairtrade and what ought to be implications of these notions for the implementation of Fairtrade?

In order to collect my data I prepared to perform both participant observation and con-duct semi-structured interviews. Participant observation would provide me with practical information about cocoa farming, Fairtrade implementation and would give me the op-portunity to learn about the ordinary life of a Ghanaian cocoa farmer. In this way I could put their notions of fairness into context. The semi-structured interviews would allow me to discuss fairness in more detail and juxtapose the sayings of my informants with my observations. For my semi-structured interviews I made a collection of themes related to fairness that would serve as reference points during conversations. The themes included

fairness, justice, equality, truth, faith, lying and cheating. Before formulating more

spe-cifi c questions and conducting interviews, I planned some research time to get familiar with my fi eld and to make the questions fi t the perception of my informants.

My fi rst objective after arrival was to gain access to my fi eld. Before departing for Ghana I had arranged for some Dutch contacts in the cocoa sector, leading me to Agro Eco.9 They provided me with the opportunity to live in Ntobroso (pronounced

Entobro-so), a small cocoa community with 1500 inhabitants in the Ashanti region. This town, approximately sixty kilometres west of Kumasi, is under the auspice of Agro Eco in order to get Fairtrade certifi cation in addition to their already attained Organic certifi cation.

9 Agro Eco, part of the Louis Bolk Institute, is a Dutch founded international con-sultancy company in sustainable agriculture, nutrition and health that operate in Europe, North America and Africa. (http://www.louisbolk.org/)

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The entire Ntobroso project consists of four more communities: Achiase, Aniamoa, Bu-tumuroso and Adobewura. I conducted my fi eldwork among all these communities, but took residence in Ntobroso. During the time of my research Agro Eco had an intern from France, Myriam, with whom I lived together in Ntobroso. We shared a small room in the household of the (extended) family of Pilus Mensah, one of the cocoa farmers involved with the implementation of Fairtrade. He became one of my main gatekeepers. Especially in the beginning of our stay we needed help from Pilus and his family to learn how to cook on fi re and wash our clothes by hand but as time passed we became more independ-ent. The house – constructed around a large tree - was centrally located on the main road, beside a borehole where inhabitants would collect water, and one of the towns’ churches. Living under the same roof with a Ghanaian cocoa farming family gave me direct access to information about the relation between family members cooking habits, leisure time activities and cocoa farming practices. In addition, the daily evening walk that Myriam and I made offered the community members a chance to get familiar with us and would always result in many informal talks.

Thanks to the efforts of Agro Eco I received very easy access to my fi eld and inform-ants. This was especially because Adam Kofi , Agro Eco’s local supervisor of the Ntobro-so project, arranged for me and Myriam to have interviews, attend Fairtrade training and make fi eld visits to cocoa farms. Besides his role as gatekeeper, Adam translated Twi, the local language spoken by my informants, to English and vice versa. I conducted a total of twenty-fi ve individual semi-structured interviews. The conversations were recorded in order to get complete narratives. Besides individual semi-structured interviews I arranged for a total of fi ve group discussions, with the objective of getting insight into shared issues in the community. It also gave me the opportunity to instantly meet multiple farmers that would become more familiar with me. This might increase their willingness to agree to an individual interview later on.

2.2. Refl ection

The cooperation with Agro Eco, Adam, Pilus and his family and the willingness of my informants to talk to me was extraordinary. They let me into their homes, shared their food, taught me about cocoa farming and talked to me openly about the successes and setbacks they encountered in daily life. Mine and Myriam’s presence in Ntobroso did not go by unnoticed. Instead of only making a daily fi eld visit as other (non-Ghanaian) del-egates from Agro Eco had done before, we were the fi rst ‘white people’ to actually live in the community. Probably as a result of my cooperation with Agro Eco and Adam, many informants referred to me as ‘Organic’ and asked me for advice to tackle issues related to

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farming. I presume they attributed me with knowledge and authority on (organic) cocoa production. This was obviously not the case as upon arrival in Ghana I knew practically nothing about the processes involved with cocoa. Therefore I repeatedly explained my position as a Masters student conducting research for my university in order to maintain an honest relationship between me and my informants. The time of three months I had to conduct this research was little and limited the amount of data I was able to collect. Apart from this time element, there were other challenges during my fi eldwork that I would like to refl ect on in this paragraph.

One major obstacle had to do with translation. The remoteness of Ntobroso made it practically impossible for me to get a translator that was not in some way involved in the Agro Eco project. I was aware that Adam was hired by Agro Eco, but Adams overall criti-cal attitude to issues in Ghana convinced me that he acted from his best intentions. The language spoken by my informants cannot be translated exactly into English resulting in a loss of nuance and perhaps even, on some occasions, in a complete reinterpretation of the words spoken. Translation during group discussions proved complicated with just one translator for many voices. To intercept the risk of losing precious data I decided to go back to the recordings and transcribe all that was being said, including conversations in Twi, together with Adam back in Accra.

Another infl uence on the amount and quality of my data was the fact that many of my informants gave very short responses. This forced me to really squeeze the relevant in-formation out of my data in order to answer my research question. Even after rephrasing questions multiple times, conversations like the following were not uncommon. The fi rst fragment is from a conversation with a female farmer in Achiase. The second is with a female farmer from Aniamoa.

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A: So how would she explain fairness to a child?

X: She says that she would teach the child that anything that involves cheating is not fair. You don’t cheat someone, that is fair.

A: And anything else?

X: No, that is it.

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A: So if somebody would tell you a lie, could you see it in their face?

X: She says that for lying, she does not know. When you tell the truth it is straight, you don’t make any mistakes, but when somebody is lying, the mistakes will come. So that is what they know.

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A: What kind of mistakes does she mean?

X: In the story. Yes.

Another challenge, on a more personal side, were the limited facilities present in Nto-broso. Regular power cuts limited the usage of my electronic devices like my laptop. The different hygiene conditions, the unvaried food, the hot climate and very regular insect bites took their toll on my health. The very basic bathroom facilities were located a couple of hundred meters into the forest. Besides sharing my small room with Myriam, I lacked overall privacy, as my appearance always led to greetings, questions and even marriage proposals. The fact that I was a young woman made building a relationship with some of the male informants diffi cult and forced me sometimes to keep my distance. Another aspect that characterizes the relationship between me and my informants relates to the different level of welfare. Not unusually my informants would ask me for money, my camera or my cell phone. From the beginning of my stay I made clear that I would not provide them with money or input for their farms. I did bring a little gift to every inter-view, like bread or fruit, to thank them for their cooperation. For Adam and Pilus Myriam and I brought some presents from Kumasi, like fl ashlights and rice.

By choosing to use Zigon’s framework of morality as a tool to set up this thesis, I forced myself to be able to defi ne, research and interpret a wide range of different moral domains within the community of Ntobroso – much more than in fact is doable in the limited time frame of this research. The limited time I had and the challenges of transla-tion and living make the extent of my data collectransla-tion and my analysis limited, but where data are lacking I have sought resources in secondary literature by other anthropologists who have worked in the region. This research must in this light be regarded as only a fi rst step into the fi eld of Fairtrade and fairness from an anthropological perspective. In the next chapter I will discuss briefl y cocoa production in Ghana and in further detail local implementation of Fairtrade, taking Ntobroso as a starting point. I will also discuss the impact of gold mining practices in the area of Ntobroso.

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3. Cocoa production in Ghana

The cocoa sector in Ghana is considered the economic backbone of the country as it makes the highest contribution to the Gross Domest Product. Almost one third of the population depends on cocoa for their livelihood (Tiffen et al. 2002 : 8; Wayo Seini 2002 : 2 in Laven 2010 : 24). Ghana is typical as it is the only cocoa producing country in the region that has just partially liberalized the sector: the government still has signifi cant infl uence. The constitutional body, COCOBOD, sets the annual price of cocoa and the Quality Control Division (QCD) monitors the quality of the beans before export. This means that no cocoa bean leaves the country legally without fi rst being seen and proc-essed by the state’s control bodies. The interference of the state gives the cocoa sector in Ghana a political edge (Laven 2010 : 82).

In the beginning of 1993 private Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) were intro-duced to compete with the state-owned Private Buying Company (PBC). At the beginning of this year about twenty fi ve Licenced Buying Companies had registered and obtained permission to buy cocoa (Ibid : 82). The Licenced Buying Company that buys cocoa beans from the farmers explored in this study is Armajaro Ghana Ltd.10 They hire

Pur-chasing Clerks (PC), cocoa farmers from the region, that buy the cocoa beans from the farmers and have the responsibility, given by the Quality Control Division, to check the quality of the beans on site. On a weekly basis they get a specifi c amount of money from the Licenced Buying Company to redistribute among the farmers selling him their beans. Purchasing Clerks mostly live in the community where they purchase the beans (Ibid : 141). But the actual growing, harvesting and drying of the beans takes place before the intervention of PCs and LBCs in small cocoa communities scattered around Ghana’s rural areas and it is there, in one of these communities, that my fi eldwork started.

10 Throughout this thesis I will refer to Armajaro Ghana Ltd. exclusively as Arma-jaro

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3.1. Fairtrade in Ntobroso

Butumuroso, 10th of July, 2012

Fairtrade training

Eight men and nine woman sit on light blue and red coloured plastic armchairs in the shade of big tree. It is around ten in the morning but the sun is already burning. All the woman have a bright coloured piece of cloth knotted around their heads. It appears that their hair underneath is cut short. It is quiet. One woman breastfeeds her baby. A man aged forty and with a moustache is wearing glasses. He is the only one. He has a notebook on his lap with the printed words “Ghana Soccer”. A man in a pink shirt next to him also has a notebook. One of them just explained in plain English that yesterday an old man died so some young guys could not attend the training. Because they are preparing the tomb.

“I just asked two of them to come and stand in front of the group“, Samuel translates for me. He is employed by Agro Eco to give the fi rst Fairtrade training. “To make it practical”, he underlines nodding fi rmly with his head. He holds his hands in front of his stomach, his fi ngers entwined. I feel a bit funny sitting in front of this group of farmers with my notebook and pen observing. I am excited to be present, but feel a bit of an intruder. I decide to just smile with devotion and look, as I am, interested.

Samuel takes two volunteers from the crowd, a man and a woman. Both of them stand with their arms behind their back, peaking at their toes, wobbling them in their fl ip-fl ops. The man is attributed the role of tomato trader for this exercise and the woman that of cocoa trader. Samuel asks what the difference is between the two trades. Fingers rise in the air and one man slowly stands up. His knees stay a bit bended. For me incomprehensible the man answers in Twi. “Right!” Samuel exclaims with excitement. I raise my eyebrows. “Yes, he says cocoa has a fi xed price and tomatoes do not. This is the difference between them. Buying cocoa is standardized. So when you sell, the money will come”. After a correct answer follows a congratulatory gesture when all clap their hands fi ve times after which they spread their fi ngers towards the one giving the right answer.

Samuel proceeds with his story - in the meantime letting the two volunteers go back to their seats -asking what in their perception is the connotation of a fair price and if they are selling their own cocoa for a fair price. They seem to agree that cocoa gets a fairer

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price than tomatoes because the price is fi xed. Samuel walks to his chair and grasps a folder that he then holds in the air. The folder shows the different labels of certifi cation: UTZ, Organic, Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade. Samuel asks one woman to repeat the benefi ts resulting from Fairtrade certifi cation. The woman stands up and repeats: a stable and fair price and the establishment of an association.

One hour has passed and two male farmers have now left the group. I am not sure if they will return. Perhaps they are having a look at the preparation of the tomb. What strikes me is the calm attitude many of the farmers have. The corners of their mouths and their shoulders hang down, some with one leg stretched in front of them while their hands are situated, folded, on their laps. Samuel walks back and forth in front of the group, puts a hand on someone’s shoulders, every now and then looking at me. He talks in a slow pace. Compared to other conversations I overheard in Twi, this sounds almost lazy. In the middle of the unfamiliar sounds of their local language I suddenly hear democracy, transparency and participation. I try to detect their reaction. The man with the glasses I later come to know as Abraham writes in his notebook and the others sit and listen. Samuel corrects the idea that being Fairtrade certifi ed equals receiving credit from the government. A woman in the end asks a question about her children, whether they can never help her on the farm anymore because of the standard against child labour. Samuel explains, fi rst in Twi to her and after in English to me, that this depends on the age of the child, the amount of time he of she spends on the farm and the volume of the work. If the child is younger than fi fteen, they are not allowed to work on the farm during school time and outside school time no longer than a couple of hours.

After the training I ask a woman with blue and yellow cloth why she wants to be a Fairtrade farmer, Abraham translates for me. “Because of poverty. So she knows that Fairtrade is concerning with good living for the people. So if you join it , you will get help from Fairtrade against your poverty” Samuel has to leave now to go back to Kumasi. I can give him a call if I have more questions.

In 2007, under the auspice of the Agro Eco-Louis Bolk Institute (Agro Eco), the Ntobroso project was started intending to get both Organic and Fairtrade certifi ed cocoa produc-tion within three years. The project consists of fi ve communities: Ntobroso, Aniamoa, Butumuroso, Achiase and Adobewura, with a total of 1.500 hectares. The exact amount of registered farmers is unclear, but is approximately 300. The project is particularly in-teresting for this research as it only recently started with the conversion to Fairtrade. The

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objective is to gain a Fairtrade certifi cation at the end of 2012; they already have been Organic certifi ed.11

Implementation of Fairtrade is based on generic and more specifi c standards, as for instance the standards set up only for cocoa small farmers’ organization. Standards are set up by FLO, the worldwide standard setting and certifi cation organization. This is one of the main organizations that make up the entire Fairtrade movement. This movement consists of four main groups: fi rst are the producers in the South, second the buying or-ganizations and retailers both in the South and North, third are the umbrella oror-ganizations that FLO is part of and fourth are the more conventional organizations like supermarkets (Moore 2004 : 75).

The standards formulate the minimum requirements that small holders have to comply with from the moment they join Fairtrade and the process requirements against which the associations must demonstrate efforts towards achieving in order to also attain long-term improvement.12_{Due to the extensive nature of the standards not all requirements will be}

mentioned here.13_{Ruben et al. (2009) have formulated Fairtrade’s main principles as}

fol-lows:

The main principles behind the concept of fair trade are: (1) creating opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers; (2) transparency and accountability; (3) capacity building; (4) payment of a fair price; (5) gender equity; (6) better working conditions; and (7) environmental protection (Ruben et al. 2009 : 778).

This means in practice that producers sell their products at a pre-defi ned and guaranteed price. Another prominent aspect of Fairtrade is the payment of a premium. For cocoa, the premium is paid at the end of the major season, around September. The premium is paid to the producers cooperative and destined for community development purposes (Ruben et al. 2009 : 778). This is partially why farmers are obliged to establish an association. Moreover, the association should increase their carrying capacity and possible infl uence within their chain, point three of Ruben et al. The premium is divided into two: 50% for the individual farmers and 50% for the association to use for collective purposes like building schools or public toilets.

Agro Eco facilitates in building the structure within the community and on the cocoa farms necessary to get Fairtrade and Organic certifi cation. The fi rst step towards

certi-11 Ntobroso Organic Cocoa Report ; Third Year Report AgroEco, February 2012

12 Generic Fairtrade Standards for Cocoa for Small Farmers’ Organizations, FLO version 2007

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fi cation is for farmers to establish an association. This association, in Ntobroso called NTOFCOS,14 is led by an elected board comprised of a chairman, vice-chairman,

sec-retary, treasurer, fi nancial secsec-retary, premium and advisory committee and an organizer. To become a member a farmer must pay two cedis and an annual amount of ten cedis is restrained from his or her received premium.15 There should at least be a monthly meeting

of the board in one of the communities where issues can be discussed and possible solu-tions found. This board is also responsible for the appropriate use of the premium.16

Agro Eco arranges for one trained local supervisor per project. Adam Kofi , my trans-lator and gatekeeper, is the local supervisor for the whole Ntobroso project. He lives in a nearby town and makes regular visits to the fi eld. He is hired by Agro Eco and reports his fi ndings in a monthly staff meeting in Kumasi with supervisors on other comparable projects supported by Agro Eco in Ghana. In addition, all fi ve communities themselves select a Field Offi cer. He is responsible for the most direct implementation of Fairtrade, within the domain of the farmers. After the fi rst training by Samuel, he will give trainings in the Fairtrade standards to the farmers and is a point of mutual interest for questions concerning GAP17 in relation to Fairtrade or Organic standards. Additionally one

Docu-mentation Offi cer for all the communities is responsible for keeping records of the meet-ings, individual farmers and other papers of bureaucracy. In Ntobroso Pilus Mensah18 is

both Field Offi cer and Documentation Offi cer. The objective behind this structure is to have the farmers train and control each other in an atmosphere of mutual trust, instead of implementing the Fairtrade structure solely from the outside.

The Internal Control System (ICS), set up by Fairtrade itself, must prevent the occur-rence of non-conformance to the standards.19 The execution of the ICS is one of the

re-sponsibilities of the Field Offi cer. Every year he inspects all farms together with the land-owner based on a specifi c set of questions. After inspection, the Field Offi cer will give the landowner advice to improve or maintain the condition of his farm according to the Fairtrade standards. If the farm appears to have non-conformities, like the use of chemi-cals, the farmer is suspended from certifi cation for three years.20 Apart from the Fairtrade

standards involved with farming practices, certain regulations are set up to structure the

14 Ntobroso Organic Cocoa Farmers’ Cooperative Society 15 NTOFCOS Bye-Laws 2007 / ten cedis is around fi ve euro’s

17 Good Agricultural Practices

18 It is with his (extended) family that Myriam and I had a room.

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activity of the association. These rules include keeping records during meetings, having transparency of documentation and meetings with the board at least once a month.

The Fairtrade standards are only available in English, however, which can lead to ob-scurities. This is particularly true in communities like those of the Ntobroso project where the majority of its members only speak their local language Twi. Within Ntobroso, then, all information pertaining to Fairtrade is transmitted by word of mouth during the training sessions. Fairness as a moral construction seems to be underexposed or at least not part of the fi rst introduction course that I attended. Samuel told me he has diffi culties getting and keeping the farmers attention during the training sessions, so limits the material he can discuss in one session. This was also visible during another training that I attended that was only for the Field Offi cers.

The conception of Fairtrade among my informants proved to be limited.21 They were

aware of Fairtrade’s infl uence on the establishment of the association and their respon-sibility for the payment of premium, meant for communal benefi ts. They however were not able to explain more than these characteristics nor did they express a distinct opinion about Fairtrade in general. They seemed to be very unaware of the entire movement. To illustrate the contours of their knowledge about cocoa trading in general, my informants were even unaware where their beans would go to after sale in Ntobroso. This constrained the discussions I could have with my informants about Fairtrade. However, my inform-ants are not to be mistaken for individuals without an opinion. To the contrary, they had very strong opinions about for instance the activities of small-scale gold mining.

Small-scale mining is done in the area on legal grounds and mechanically. These ac-tivities are led primarily by Chinese who work and live in the area. In addition to this mining, there is the illegal search for gold, mostly done by hand, referred to as “galam-sey”. In the next paragraph I will exemplify the mining activities and their importance in answering my research question.

3.2. Galamsey

It is a surprising site in the area of Ntobroso, where green cultivation unexpectedly trans-forms into heaps of red sand with an occasional giant yellow coloured excavator on top. Small-scale mining activities in search of gold are gaining ground in Ghana, both literally and fi guratively speaking, with an irreversible impact on the environment, subsequently

21 This corresponds to the news articles in the Volkskrant of 17.11.12 by Jonathan Witteman

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infl uencing cocoa farming practices (Teschner 2012 : 307). Countless registered and un-registered people search for gold, specifi cally in the Ashanti area, known for its high concentration of mineral resources, resulting in a complex interdependent trade that is for many the hot topic of the day. The mining activities in Ntobroso prove interesting as there seems to be obscurity about what should be done about it or whether it should be done at all. The question that arises is over what moral framework regulates the practices involved with small-scale mining? Furthermore, the strong opinion of my informants about the Chinese and their mutual relation can shed light on a moral framework towards outsiders of the community. The Chinese can be taken as a new mode of ‘outside involve-ment’ in the community. This will be analysed in more detail in chapter six. Here I will limit myself to describing the practices of small-scale mining in Ntobroso.

“So you use axe and a pickers to dig a hole, so you remove the sand up and there will go and remove the gold inside, so that is the galamsey meaning.”

How does small scale mining work exactly? The answer is rather ambiguous. Teschner (2012) confi rms my experiences with the dichotomous character of small-scale mining during my research. Repeatedly asking questions never completely clarifi ed the legality nor the extent to which cocoa practices are liable to the mining practices and vice versa. First let me make a more clear distinction between small-scale mining and “galamsey”. Since 1989 small-scale mining is regulated by the Ghana Minerals Commission being the executive governmental organ (Amankwah & Anim-Sackey 2003 : 131). Roughly put, miners that obtained permission by the government, at the Minerals Commission, are called “small-scale miners”, the unregistered search for gold is called “galamsey”, by the inhabitants of Ntobroso also referred to as “to go gala” (Teschner 2012 : 309). Mineral rights in Ghana remain, constitutionally, the property of the state, despite the allotment of land through family relations. Plots can be bought from the Mineral Commission, after which a mining company can start mining. In the area of Ntobroso approximately fi ve sites were in use at the time of my presence. The exact timing of the activity, when it started or when it would stop, was never made clear to me.

One afternoon I had the chance to visit the mining site in between Ntobroso and Ani-amoa. I was accompanied by of one of the operators, a very welcoming man of small stature wearing a baseball cap. He turned out to be the chief of Achiase, another commu-nity that is part of the Ntobroso project. He gave me a tour around the site while explain-ing how he purchased land from the minexplain-ing offi ce in Bibiani. You pay an amount to the commission that will ascribe you a plot where you can start mining with your own set up company; as such he gave the example of ‘Annika Mining Company’. With this company you can hire the excavators to dig and wash the soil. He points to the left side of the site

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explaining this part belongs to the Ghanaians and the other part belongs to the Chinese. According to the chief the workers on the land come from all different communities in the area. When we say goodbye and I leave the site all covered in mud, he says once again that mining is really good business and I should consider starting a company myself. When I walk back from the site to Ntobroso where I stay, I cross multiple women that walk barefoot. Their legs I now recognize as they are covered in mud just like my own due to walking on the mining site. On their heads they carry big bowls, which I later fi nd out to be polished calabash. In addition they carry a shuffl e. These women most probably perform the illegal “galamsey”, by washing the soil with their hands after the legal small-scale miners, like the chief from Achiase, have fi nished. The organized nature of mining in the area becomes apparent if you visit a little square beside the main road in Ntobroso, where on a daily basis two jeeps pick up the labourers who work on the mining sites.22

Despite obscurity about the regulation of small-scale mining and “galamsey”, the ef-fects of digging the soil are obvious. The land that is used for mining cannot be used for farming practices, neither food crops nor cocoa, for at least the next fi fteen years. This is because of the removal of vegetation, but also because gold extraction is often through the use of toxic substances, further disrupting the ecosystem (Schueler et al 2011 : 529). Farmers also brought to my attention that the river Ofen running through Ntobroso regu-larly fl oods during the rainy season because of the digging that takes place near its shores and as a result weakens them. Another outcome is that in some areas the water becomes stagnant, attracting mosquitoes – with malaria being one of the main causes of deaths in rural Ghana – the perfect environment to breed. On the level of Fairtrade, small-scale mining and “galamsey” also has negative consequences. One informant explained when a farmer has no land he for sure will not attend a Fairtrade training. He would see no obvi-ous reason to. “Galamsey is not good here, because if you go galamsey, if you go every

day, you can’t go to your farm. Or to go to your cocoa farm, you can’t go there.” Cocoa

and “galamsey” seem to exclude on another, as the above remark illustrates. The reason why people nevertheless get involved with “galamsey” practices seems to be the, mostly small, profi t they get out of it. Growing cocoa leads to a stable income, but is more of a long-term project. On the contrary, “galamsey” mainly generates short-term profi t, lead-ing to quick money but not to a steady income.

Besides the Ghanaians, Chinese also involve themselves in the mining practices, al-ready explained by the chief during my visit on his mining site. On a daily basis jeeps with Chinese pass by in Ntobroso and the surrounding communities. The presence of the

22 There seem to be to shifts: one shift from 06:00 to 18:00 and one from 18:00 to 06:00.

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Chinese is to such an extent integrated, that all children scream “China” to every white skin coloured passer-by. They yet do not take residence in the community, but live in self-build wooden compounds far away. Another factor that increases separation from the community members is communication, as the Chinese do not seem to speak any other language than Chinese. The Chinese are in the area to search for gold. I have not been able to fi nd out what the gold gathered by the Chinese is destined for, nor was I able to recon-struct the way the Chinese obtain land for mining in Ghana. I assume they buy land from the Mineral Commission, as my informants explained they have permission from the government. Nevertheless the Chinese are victim of many accusations by the community members, for instance that they do not contribute to the community but only come to dig for gold for them to keep and afterwards leave, without recovering the devastated land.

Ntobroso is thus not only a community with a vibrant cocoa trade but is also character-ized by both legal and illegal small-scale mining activities, performed by both commu-nity members and actors from outside. Despite the destructive nature of mining on cocoa farming, people seem to involve themselves with the practices in order to earn some extra income. Earning extra money seems to be one of the main livelihood strategies for my informants. The involvement of my informants with Fairtrade seems to appeal to this strategy because Fairtrade guarantees a minimum price and pays an annual premium. However, the process of Fairtrade implementation is time-consuming and primarily in-fl uences my informants’ livelihood conditions in the long run. The force of attraction to involve themselves in “galamsey” seems to be based on short-term fi nancial gain. It provides them with quick cash that can instantly be used to pay for school fees or build a better house.

Coming back to the question of what moral framework regulates mining, it seems that in order to get their share my informants tolerate mining and “galamsey”, even though these activities destroy their cocoa farms. Performing illegal behaviour in their eyes seems subordinate to earning some extra money.23 However, their tolerance has limits, as

the Chinese are expected to have legal permission from the government in order to mine. The relation between the community and the Chinese and the moral construction of fair-ness will be analysed in more detail in chapter six.

23 According to Bloch & Parry (1989) money can be classifi ed as amoral and imper-sonal putting direct pressure on moral obligations of collective against individual gains. Moreover, “… any exchange is likely to be judged whether it is ‘equitable’ or ‘fair’ and

by defi nition those which are not are condemned when they occur within the boundaries of the moral community (Ibid : 5 ; 88).

Fairness on the Cocoa field : examining perceptions of fairness among fair trade cocoa farmers in Ghana

Fairness on the Cocoa fi eld

Examining perceptions of fairness

among Fairtrade cocoa farmers in Ghana

Fairness on the Cocoa Field

Fairness on the Cocoa fi eld

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Contents

Introduction

1. Theoretical Framework

1.1. Fairtrade’s Moral Economy

1.2. Worldwide Reciprocity

1.3. Morality of Fairness

2. Methodology

2.1. Research Methods

2.2. Refl ection

3. Cocoa production in Ghana

3.1. Fairtrade in Ntobroso

3.2. Galamsey