Introduction
The dairy industry is in crisis. That statement is true in the United States, 1 in Europe, in India 2 and in Australia 3 . Rising industrialization in the sector coupled with corporate consolidation is harming small-scale farmers. Indeed, low milk prices and control over regional processing benefits processors and brands, who gain profits even as farmers and farmworkers suffer.
Around the globe, various farmer-led initiatives have endeavoured to address the issues facing dairy production through a Fair Trade lens. This article briefly surveys these initiatives and then examines in-depth a new ‘Fair Trade dairy’ label recently released by Fair Trade USA that has been developed and piloted with Chobani and Dairy Farmers of America. This new label takes a different approach. Many of the applications of Fair Trade principles to ‘atypical products’ have focused on ‘forming and strengthening small-producer organizations, and creating new supply chains connecting into an international trading system that lacks recognition of those labouring across and within the supply chain’. 4 Instead of developing new supply chains, this new Fair Trade dairy programme is deeply embedded within conventional trading models. And instead of strengthening small producers, the focus is on workers.
This article will focus predominantly on the US dairy industry to contextualize this ‘Fair Trade dairy’ label and interrogate whether the principles of Fair Trade are even applicable to industrial scale animal agriculture.
The Crises in the Dairy Industry
The perception of the dairy industry is of small-scale family farms, rolling pastures and a few cows. But that is a far cry from twenty-first-century reality. Between 1970 and 2018, the number of dairy farms in the United States dropped 93 per cent, from approximately 640,000 to around 40,000. 5 Yet the number of cows per farm and the amount of milk produced per farm both continued to rise. In 2020, farmers in the US produced more than 223 billion pounds of milk, a record high for the eleventh consecutive year. 6 Yet this massive increase of milk production has not been driven by consumer demand. Instead, it is resulting in an oversupply of milk, driving down prices well below the cost of production. While low prices make it hard for small-scale farmers to make ends meet, dairy processors are doing well, taking advantage of cheap milk to gain profits and buy up competitors, becoming both increasingly consolidated and vertically integrated.
All these factors combine so that it is far more likely that milk (and dairy products such as yoghurt and cheese) come from large-scale industrial dairy operations instead of small-scale farmer farms. A small farm might milk 50–75 cows using just the labour of their own family or a few hired workers. But over half of all milk sold in the US in 2017 came from dairy operations with more than 1,000 cows, and one third of all milk from dairies milking over 2,500 cows. 7 These operations are sometimes referred to as mega-dairies or factory farms, the definition of which is a dairy operation housing over 1,000 animals in confinement – hence the term Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). 8
The industrialization of the dairy industry is not an accident. Instead, it is the consequence of a series of deliberate policy decisions taken over the last half century. And the resulting crisis is not just hitting small-scale farmers.
The dairy industry has a documented history of rampant worker abuses. A report, ‘Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farmers in New York State’, surveyed working conditions in New York state dairy farms. The findings were grim. Working conditions in the 24-hour milking parlours are ‘semi-automated, fast-paced, stressful, and exhausting’. 9 Two-thirds of dairy farmworkers surveyed experienced one or more injuries while on the job, many of them serious enough to need medical attention. An estimated 93 per cent of dairy farmworkers surveyed for the ‘Milked’ report were without proper immigration documents. Across the United States, more than 50 per cent of farmworkers lack legal immigration status, leaving them extra vulnerable to exploitation. Finally, farmworkers in the US are exempt from key workers’ rights protections, including protections for unionizing, some minimum wage laws, and requirements for overtime pay.
These factors, plus the relentless push to cut corners and survive in a market where milk prices are below the cost of production, means that dairy workers make consistently low wages for their 12–14-hour work days and often live in substandard on-farm housing.
Workers are not the only ones who suffer this push for over-production of cheap milk. Cows are subjected to ‘Repeated reimpregnation, short calving intervals, overproduction of milk, restrictive housing systems, poor nutrition, and physical disorders’, as documented in a report from the Humane Society of the United States. 10 This shortens their lives substantially – the average lifespan of a dairy cow is less than five years, although cows naturally live to twenty years. While instances of animal abuse are what grabs headlines, this systematic cruelty is an everyday occurrence.
Finally, the problems and harms of industrial dairy go far beyond the barn. While pasture-raised cows graze and return their waste directly to the soil, cows fed grain and living in confined feeding operations produce enormous amounts of waste. These industrial mega-dairies have massive negative environmental impacts from greenhouse gas emissions to air and water pollution and overconsumption of water. According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s report ‘Milking the Planet: How Big Dairy Is Heating Up the Planet and Hollowing Out Rural Communities’, ‘Thirteen of the world’s largest dairy corporations combined to emit more greenhouse gases (GHGs) in 2017 than major polluters such as BHP, the Australia-based mining, oil and gas giant, or ConocoPhillips, the United States-based oil company’. 11 And these emissions are rising at an alarming rate, increasing 11 per cent in just two years. 12 The dairy industry is in crisis – and industrial dairy is helping to drive a larger crisis for all of us.
What Would Fair Trade Look Like for the Dairy Industry?
From human rights to animal welfare, from economic to environmental issues, the dairy industry is rife with exploitation. Over the years, various projects have introduced elements of Fair Trade principles or language to dairy production, either as farmer-controlled brands or through certification and labelling initiatives. While so-called North–South trade has often been a feature of Fair Trade initiatives, many of these have focused on North–-North trade and domestic production. For this article, we will confine our focus to those that have included a product labelling component and are situated in the United States and Europe, although some Fair Trade milk initiatives also exist in West Africa
In one of the historically key dairy-producing regions of the US, Wisconsin-based Family Farm Defenders called for Fair Trade for small-scale dairy farmers over a decade ago. They developed a label to sell ‘Fair Trade’ cheese within their regional market, focusing on fair prices to farmers while aligning themselves with struggles for workers’ rights, food sovereignty and global justice. 13 That cheese is no longer on the market, but Family Farm Defenders continues to organize against the root causes pushing the small-scale farmers they work with off their farms: agricultural policy, corporate consolidation and free trade deals.
Originating with farmers in Belgium, the ‘Fairebel’ brand and associated Fair Milk brands set up by the European Milk Board focus on fair prices for farmers. The initiative recognizes the vertical integration and consolidated control of large milk processors as key obstacles to farmers’ livelihoods. At the brand level, the focus remains on a fair price for producers, however through the European Milk Board, the focus is broader, aimed at a ‘reversal of the balance of power between dairy processors and dairy farmers, re-appropriation of the means of dairy production by the farmers, and modification of the dairy sector’s economic and trade rules’. 14
In Europe, German-based Naturland has developed a standard that extends its stringent organic requirements to include a social component for their Naturland Fair label. Developed by small-scale farmer organizations, the standard touches on fair pricing and human rights, and contains some animal welfare and environmental components as well. 15 EcoCert’s Fair for Life label has guidelines to include livestock operations within its scope. Their standards are also used by the French BioPartenaire label. The Fair for Life standards include requirements to align with Fair Trade values and human rights, as well as some animal welfare and environmental criteria. They also include requirements to disallow the participation of companies with recent, unremediated human and land rights violations and emphasize support for small- and mid-sized farmers.
In each of these cases, the emphasis has been on supporting small-scale farmers working towards some vision of economic justice and as an alternative to the mainstream market. The European labels Naturland and BioPartenaire go further and include requirements for organic production.
Yet the application of ‘Fair Trade’ to dairy is not uncontroversial. The UK-based Fairtrade Foundation has responded to calls for engagement with the UK’s own dairy crisis to say that Fairtrade is not the right organization to develop and implement such a standard as it ‘would also need to deliver against sustainable agricultural practices and high animal welfare standards too’. 16 Instead, their statement points to a need for policy solutions and ‘the imbalance of power in agricultural supply chains’. 17
While differences of opinion exist between the international Fair Trade labelling schemes as to whether Fair Trade labels are the right fit for dairy farming, it seems fair to conclude that there is a broad-based consensus over the past fifteen years that the application of Fair Trade language and labelling to dairy production should support small-scale farm production and those operating with higher standards of sustainability and animal welfare than the majority of the industry.
Fair Trade USA’s ‘Fair Trade Dairy’ Label Opposed by Workers
While most of the application (or strategic non-application) of Fair Trade labels to date have focused on small-scale farms and alternatives to industrial agriculture, in the United States a new ‘Fair Trade dairy’ label is taking a different approach. Fair Trade USA’s new dairy label works with some of the very biggest players in the dairy industry and focuses its standards on one aspect of fair trade: workers.
Developed by the largest Fair Trade certifier in the US, this label deserves careful examination. Since the standard development process was first announced, the label has been denounced by workers’ rights and human rights organizations – including several organizing with dairy workers on farms selling to Chobani, the brand with whom the standard was piloted. 18 The standard pilot was announced while there was an active worker-led campaign in progress calling on Chobani to negotiate with workers. The standards were launched as part of Chobani’s ‘Milk Matters’ corporate social responsibility platform, with Fair Trade USA’s certification to uphold the ‘Worker Wellbeing’ pillar. 19
While the Fairtrade Foundation has elected not to engage in efforts to certify dairy as ‘Fair Trade’ because of questions around animal welfare and sustainable agriculture, Fair Trade USA omitted these issues from the standard. Their Agricultural Production Standard (APS), published in July 2021 to incorporate dairy specific guidance, notes that Module 4, which covers ‘Biodiversity, Ecosystem Function, and Sustainable Production’, is not applicable to dairies. 20 The standard itself makes no mention of animal welfare. In promotion of the seal, Fair Trade USA has pointed to the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM programme), a industry programme that sets guidelines currently adhered to by 98 per cent of the industry, as their answer to animal welfare. 21 This certification has been dubbed ‘humanewashing’ by a leading watchdog of animal welfare labelling. 22
Fair Trade advocates have long spoken of a holistic vision of trade and business that includes both human and environmental considerations. While Fair Trade USA’s standard has elected to focus on ‘Worker Wellbeing’, advocates, including the author of this article, have criticized the standard for the ways that it does, and does not, address the central human and labour rights issues at stake for workers.
As discussed in the first section, US labour law includes multiple exceptions for farmworkers, including exemptions from union organizing protections. Small farms are also exempt from some minimum wage provisions, overtime pay requirements, as well as regulation and inspections by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the government body that regulates and enforces workplace safety. 23 Unlike most countries in the world, most workers in the US are subject to so-called ‘at-will employment status’, that is, employers can fire workers for no cause, something that has been highlighted by labour advocates as an obstacle to workers’ organizing.
While the regulatory gap is wide, Fair Trade USA’s standard does little to close that gap, instead modifying the international standard to match US labour law. 24 One critical example of that is that the updated APS for the United States adjusts both the standard work week and the guidelines on overtime pay. For hired labour in all other countries, the standard is a 48-hour work week, in line with the International Labor Organization guidance, with limits on overtime work. In the version of the APS for the United States, the standard is for a 60-hour regular work week, with reduced limits to overtime work. 25
Another example is a clarification written into Fair Trade USA’s APS to clarify that the standard does not constitute an exception to workers’ at-will employment status. 26 This clause takes on significance as, in the previously mentioned ‘Milked’ report, which interviewed workers in the same supply chain where the Fair Trade USA standard was piloted, fear of employer retaliation is cited repeatedly as an obstacle for dairy workers to speak up about unsafe practices and conditions, getting medical attention or organizing for better conditions. 27 Further, many critical workplace protections that are ostensibly included in the standard are merely noted as a ‘Best Practice’ for farms with fewer than six workers. 28
Finally, as of this writing, workers on farms that are participating in Fair Trade USA’s ‘Fair Trade dairy’ programme remain unaware of the programme, or the rights, benefits or training it claims to provide. If workers are unaware of their rights, there is no path for them to exercise them. 29
Much of this analysis has focused on the labour aspects of Fair Trade USA’s dairy label as that is who the stated intended beneficiaries are. It is, however, worth noting that while other applications of Fair Trade principles to dairy have focused on small-scale farmers and sustainable production (however variously defined), Fair Trade USA’s programme works with some of the very biggest players in the conventional dairy industry in the US. The cooperative listed as the certified entity for dairy is Dairy Farmers of America, the largest milk processor in the world with approximately 3.4 per cent market share of global milk production. 30 While the term ‘cooperative’ has strong democratic associations for many in the Fair Trade movement, Dairy Farmers of America has been repeatedly sued by its farmer members for undemocratic practices, as well as price-fixing. 31 Indeed, while the dairy industry is in crisis, many point to the hyper consolidation and business practices of this mega-cooperative as one of the sources of that crisis. 32
While ‘Fair Trade’ is traditionally associated with small-scale farmers who are at a market disadvantage compared to their larger counterparts, the farmers known to be participating in Fair Trade USA’s dairy programme at this point are large, with several milking upwards of 2,000 cows, well above what is defined as a factory farm. 33
While Fair Trade has traditionally positioned itself as an alternative to the status quo, Fair Trade USA’s dairy programme has instead allied itself with some of the biggest players in the dairy industry – biggest not just within the US market, but within the world.
Real Solutions – What Should a Fair Trade Dairy Look Like?
What would a truly fair dairy industry look like to you? On the ‘For a Better World’ podcast which I co-host, we ask that question of all our guests. And from worker organizers, farmer advocates, anti-trust and trade policy experts there is a clear consensus. Ultimately, there is no way to consider industrial animal agriculture as ‘fair’ without substantial, transformative changes. Corporate consolidation has led to fewer processors and fewer market opportunities. That and volatile prices have driven many farmers off their farms. Low prices and pressure from much larger players push farmers to cut corners on safety and wages, which harms workers. Dairy cows are subject to conditions that are systematically exploitative, as well as the instances of animal abuse that get news coverage.
Finally, the push for more and cheaper milk is driven not by consumer demand, but by processors and profit. That glut of cheap milk drives down prices, perpetuating the cycle of squeezing farmers and workers alike, and subjecting cows to inhumane conditions. At every step, the industrial dairy system is a far cry from fair.
In the bigger picture, industrial animal agriculture is fuelling the climate crisis. And there is a bigger irony as that climate crisis is disproportionately harming the very people who built the Fair Trade movement: small-scale farmers and workers in the so-called Global South. There is precedent for considering the global and historical relations of a crop and its cultivation as part of the determination of what is ‘fair’, for example in the current discussion of cannabis cultivation. 34
Real solutions for the dairy industry are ones that actively tackle the root causes of the intersecting crises. The European Fair Milk initiatives provide examples of farmer leadership to address industry consolidation and low prices. Labelling initiatives including Naturland and BioPartenaire focus on highlighting the products of small-scale producers coupling organic production and economic justice as an alternative to mainstream markets.
Since Fair Trade USA’s label has focused the discussion on dairy worker labour protections, it is worth comparing that label with a worker-led solution called Milk with Dignity. Born from the organizing of farmworkers in Vermont and their organization Migrant Justice, this programme focuses on addressing human rights and working and housing conditions for dairy farmworkers through binding, worker-enforced contracts with corporate buyers such as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It is a model that is scaled and suited to taking on some of the biggest companies in the food system as its building blocks are similar to the Bangladesh Accord for garment manufacturing and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program. 35 These worker-driven social responsibility programmes recognize that large brands bear responsibility for conditions in their supply chains and harness that market power, as well as the higher profits that accrue at that end of the supply chain, to change working conditions. Through binding contracts enforced by frontline workers, these models are making substantial strides in changing conditions – and gaining recognition from human rights advocates for addressing some of the market issues and power dynamics at the root of worker exploitation. 36
As the language of Fair Trade is applied to ‘atypical’ products, there is a healthy debate as to what the common features of a Fair Trade initiative might be. As the examples cited here suggest, North–South trade is not the sole defining factor of what is being called ‘Fair Trade’ in practice, especially in the dairy industry. Within the dairy industry, we see the continued evolution of one of the tensions within fair trade certification over the last decade: can a Fair Trade label be applied to any product, regardless of whether it is from a small-scale farmer or large plantation structure? Industrial animal agriculture is a further extension of the large-scale, hired labour operation, and with the new Fair Trade dairy label from Fair Trade USA, we see a new challenge to the definition of Fair Trade. Can there be Fair Trade without the prioritization of democratic small-scale farmer organizations, as has often been considered a central principle of Fair Trade? Can there be Fair Trade when the workers who are supposed to benefit from the programme are actively decrying it and calling for recognition of their own organizing, a voice and a vote in their workplaces? 37 And can there be Fair Trade without tackling the larger questions of animal welfare and environmental impacts of industrial scale dairy production? While ‘greenwashing’ is common across many industries, the dairy industry seems particularly susceptible to false solutions getting rebranded as ‘green’, ‘fair’, or ‘humane’.
While Fair Trade as a movement has largely embraced a ‘big tent’ approach, it is worth considering whether some initiatives are outside the scope of what can meaningfully be called ‘Fair Trade’. This is especially true as consensus grows outside of the movement around the exploitative nature of industrial animal agriculture. Within the US, there are calls for dairy supply management and proposals for more fair pricing regimes to better support small-scale farmers. 38 Calls are growing for moratoriums on new Confined Animal Feeding Operations, as well as anti-trust policy to address consolidation within the food and agriculture system. 39 And policy proposals for immigration reform and to grant organizing protections to farmworkers under US labour law would all materially improve the conditions for working people.
This is by no means a comprehensive overview of the changes needed to the status quo of the dairy industry in the US, nor does it touch on the unique features of the industry in other countries. Instead, it serves as a suggestion of the kind of transformation that would be needed before the dairy industry could even start to ask a question of whether fairness had been achieved.