Father Frans van der Hoff obituary

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Dutch missionary who co-founded the Fairtrade movement through guaranteeing prices for coffee farmers in Mexico

By Oliver Balch for THE GUARDIAN 

Mon 15 Apr 2024 05.56 EDT

The Dutch-born Catholic missionary Frans van der Hoff, who has died aged 84, was a co-founder of the global Fairtrade movement. Through guaranteeing price levels for their produce that benefit their communities, it has improved the livelihoods of millions of cooperative farmers.

His initiative started in 1988, by helping the coffee farmers of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, with whom he lived and worked for the bulk of his adult life, to gain fair prices by selling directly to consumers via a certification mark. Drawing on contacts in the Christian-influenced social justice movement of his homeland, Van der Hoff arranged for organically produced, cooperatively managed coffee beans from Oaxaca to be exported to the Netherlands and sold through a network of anti-poverty retail stores, known then as “world shops”.

Branded under the label Max Havelaar, the title of a classic 19th-century Dutch novel about the colonial-era exploitation of coffee producers in Java, Indonesia, the initiative immediately captured the imagination of consumers, who saw it as a means to express practical solidarity with low-income farmers in the global south.

Frans van der Hoff, right, with Nico Roozen of the Solidaridad organisation in the Netherlands. Photograph: Solidaridad

In cooperation with the Dutch social justice charity Solidaridad, run by Nico Roozen and Jeroen Douglas, Van der Hoff saw his idea of engaging consumers in “trade not aid” quickly spread to Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, and Germany. In 1994, after expanding into the English-speaking markets of the UK and North America, it formally adopted the “Fairtrade” label.

The legacy of Van der Hoff’s vision of a peaceful means of asserting the rights of smallholder farmers in an increasingly globalised marketplace was profound. Through Fairtrade International, an umbrella body representing more than 25 national Fairtrade organisations and three regional producer groups, consumers can today buy Fairtrade products in more that 130 countries, benefiting more than 2 million farmers directly.

True to principles ironed out by Van der Hoff and his fellow pioneers, these farmers gain protection from fluctuations in global commodity markets through a base price for their products. Similarly, the Fairtrade system provides a premium over and above the market price that cooperatives can reinvest in their communities as they see fit.

Despite receiving a number of awards, including the Légion d’Honneur in France (2005), Van der Hoff was always reticent about becoming the public face of the Fairtrade movement, preferring instead to empower worker leaders so they could make their own case.

Frans van der Hoff being appointed to the Légion d’Honneur by President Jacques Chirac, 2005. Photograph: Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images

That strategy was welcomed by farmer cooperatives, but led to occasional friction with some of Fairtrade’s partners in the global north, particularly around the movement’s efforts to expand into the mainstream. Van der Hoff shared the deep suspicions of Latin American workers towards foreign multinational corporations, associating them with historic government crackdowns against worker groups in the region. As a result, he could never quite reconcile himself with global brands such as Nestlé carrying the Fairtrade label.

Viewed as keeper of the Fairtrade movement’s conscience, he displayed consistent support for Fairtrade to be farmer-led, and this brought important changes in governance. Under reforms in 2012, most notably, Fairtrade International’s three regional producer networks were granted half of the organisation’s voting rights.

Van der Hoff’s influence over the movement was enhanced by his personal integrity. In his adopted home of Barranca Colorada, a rural settlement in south-western Oaxaca, he lived alongside its poor residents for decades; his ownership of a cow and a small garden allotment enabled him to remain largely self-sufficient. The only funds he ever requested were for international travel, which he undertook purely to promote the cause of fair trade.

The sixth of 16 children from two marriages, Frans was born into a poor Catholic family in the village of De Rips, North Brabant, in the southern Netherlands. Educated in various seminaries, he went on to Radboud University Nijmegen, where he studied under the Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen and the pro-liberation Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx. He graduated with two doctorates: one in political economy, and another in theology.

He entered the priesthood in 1968, a few years after the Second Vatican council. Inspired by the council’s pro-poor message, the young Dutchman briefly spent time working at a drug users’ shelter in Ottawa, Canada, before transferring in 1970 to Santiago, Chile, where he worked as a community priest. After the coup d’etat against Salvador Allende in 1973, he moved to the slums of Mexico City to undertake a similar pastoral role.

At the invitation of the progressive bishop of Tehuantepec, he moved to Oaxaca, where he remained for the rest of his life. An advocate of the idea of “Organizar la Esparanza” (Organise the Hope), he believed strongly in the power of social organisation to advance the collective interests of poor farmers.

Frans van der Hoff, back row, second right, with a delegation from the UCIRI cooperative visiting Solidaridad in the Netherlands. Photograph: Solidaridad

To that end, in 1982 he encouraged the Indigenous coffee farmers in his coastal region of Oaxaca to create their own cooperative. The original pilot for the Fairtrade experiment, the UCIRI cooperative today numbers more than 2,600 workers in 56 coffee-growing communities and comprises one of over 1,000 Fairtrade-certified organisations across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Van der Hoff’s hand on the Fairtrade movement can be seen in its mix of fierce pragmatism coupled with a twinge of mysticism, the latter a testament to his deep respect for Indigenous spirituality. The movement also carries his rejection of political ideology (he eschewed Marxism, for instance) and his commitment to non-violent means of change.

Late in life, “Padre Francisco” suffered from a metabolic-related condition that eventually resulted in the amputation of a leg. Fairtrade colleagues in Latin America marked his death by recalling one of his most abiding beliefs: “A world with more solidarity is possible.”

• Frans Petrus van der Hoff Boersma, priest and Fairtrade activist, born 13 July 1939; died 13 February 2024