“In this Together” with Fair Trade Alliance Kerala
It’s been awhile since I’ve spoken to Tomy Mathew Vadakkancheril, Founder of Elements & Fair Trade Alliance Kerala (FTAK) to see how they’ve been doing these past few years.
The following is an excerpt from a larger conversation we were having about the history of FTAK, a cooperative formed in 2006 to sell organic and fair trade food products (cashew nuts, spices, tea, coffee, coconuts, and rice) to both domestic and export markets. I wanted to know why he and a group of innovative small-scale farmers in Kerala, India decided to form the cooperative; what they’ve learned from their sixteen years of experience; and how their strategies are evolving to meet the changing conditions of our time.
Before we delved into these larger questions, Tomy recounted a bit of what the farmers in Kerala have gone through these past six years. It’s a poignant story that deserves to be shared.
Left: Tomy Mathew speaking at an Equal Exchange event in Oregon in 2016. Right: Cashews growing on the tree.
A six-year saga
For us, it all started in 2016, with demonetization. Demonetization was when the government decided to pull back the currency from the market. That policy has impacted every bit of economic activity in the country. It particularly impacted farmers because the agrarian economy is cash-based, and farmers tend to be not at all digital. So suddenly, many farmers had no cash to buy seeds or inputs for their crops. That, of course, also set the economy back, at least by two or three percentage points on GDP growth in Kerala.
We were struggling with demonetization; I think that was in November 2016. In 2017, we sort of weathered through it in some manner. Then, in 2018 and 2019, we had two back-to-back floods which severely affected the farming terrains where we are from: the Western Ghats and the Hill Treks of Malabar. And then in 2020, COVID comes. So we are talking about a six year spell, where we went from demonetization, right into the floods in Kerala. (And these weren’t just floods, they were once in a century type of floods, landslips and landslides.) And then… to COVID.
And there we were; when we think things are slowly, sort of subsiding, stabilizing; well, then we have the Ukraine war. Whatever else, in terms of all of its international ramifications, the war is also seriously affecting our exports across the world. Because food inflation has gone up, and therefore fair trade or organic is not really an option anymore for lots of people. They just can't afford it. So, it has been a six-year saga, and we are hoping that things will in some manner stabilize; or that things will come back to some sort of semblance of normalcy… and, well, we’re waiting.
Flooding in Kerala.
We are still here
But through it all, I have to say, we are still here. We are still here, and the collective is still very robust. In fact, after a two-year hiatus when we didn't have the Seed Festival, this January, we are surely going to have the Seed Festival. It’s coming back. And we hope. We call it, Seeds Persist. Seeds Persist, despite all odds. And we hope. We will take baby steps towards things getting normal, getting stabilized. The collective remains as strong as ever, in fact, stronger against the adversities probably that we have faced through these six years of demonetization and floods and the pandemic.
That to me, at the end of the day, is what I think our staying power is about: to me, it is still our abiding, enduring value. And I say this also to all of the Alternative Trade Organizations that we deal with: what we need to prove now is that we can hold on; we can stay put; and we can weather this. After all, it's a once-in-a-lifetime type of phase that we have been through.
This is not a business cycle. This is not just a conflict in some part of the world, which has global ramifications. This is something that has been sort of accumulating into a structural crisis, of civilization. My own estimate is that nothing less than 30 million people probably perished in the pandemic. Now, that hasn't happened in our lifetime.
And if that's the type of reality that we went through, and we are still left to tell the story; I think that value itself is extremely important. I found it also particularly reassuring that everyone reached out to say, “we are in it together.” And it's not as if, you know, Fair Trade Alliance Kerala, or Elements’ plight was any worse than the situation facing, for instance, Liberation or Ethiquable, or CTM Altromercato, or Equal Exchange.
Harking back to solidarity
People were trying to hold pieces together; people were trying to see how they could weather this. And people were harking back, finally, to basic ideas of solidarity. Because you still had people, like, for example, Rink or Deepak, calling to say, “Look, can we have a call? Where are things going? Our sales are down, we may not be able to buy a cashew container, but we are very keen to know how things are; how are you figuring? And let's see if we can at least ship in one container.”
Now, this has been across the businesses that we deal with here. So that has been extremely reassuring; not because it has solved the problem, but because we know there are so many of us in it together. And looking out to each other, caring for each other. So that has been extremely reassuring through all of this. Of course the solidarity was very direct, for instance, during the floods; because that was something that affected us alone, and everyone reached out. But then when all of us were in it together, we really had to take notes from each other and make sure that all of us were holding on.
That’s roughly how we are, in the storm. I don’t think we’re actually out of the storm. You know, in some manner, the Solidarity Economy may not really be able to kick in at critical times. Maybe we really have to devise new tools and new ways of engagement to make sure it's able to kick in, which is a dire need right now. The fact is, look, all of us are in it together, and we are searching for solutions, for answers; that in itself is an important pillar [of solidarity.]
Tomy Mathew Vadakkancheril is the Founder of Elements & Fair Trade Alliance Kerala (FTAK), a visionary group of small-scale farmers in Kerala, India. Tomy earlier served as the Chair of the Association of Indian Fairtrade Producers (AIFP), and Founder Chair of the International Nut Producers Cooperative.
Interview with Phyllis (Felicia) Robinson, Citizen-Consumer Member & former Equal Exchange Campaign and Education Coordinator
