As I read three articles in close succession, I found a tough pull between three really important concerns. The Financial Times on August 11,( Alan Beattie in Washington and Alan Rappeport in New York)  reported that the trade deficit has risen to its highest level in 21 months.  We are building a huge national debt by allowing foreign import sales to outnumber our exports. It can bankrupt a nation and future generations, making it hard to provide global leadership and meet our obligations at home and abroad. So maybe we only buy American?

But we have to at least maintain our social responsibility to developing nations and buy from them with an eye to fair trade, right? This way, nations can become more self-reliant and a part of the world order that prospers when nations are economically stable. We need to support fair trade as a model for how democracies work and responsible business is conducted. Pay fair wages and treat people decently, a basic principle of our nation. So do I buy foreign products if they are fair trade certified and hope they don’t tip the debt over the edge?

But trucking oranges from South Africa, even given that they are fair trade certified and promoted by Nobel Laureate Desmund Tutu, seems problematic. It goes against the third challenge offered by Fiona Harvey, in the Financial Times today. Her article, Research says climate change undeniable, brings new strong evidence to the fore of climate change impacts are increasingly validated. And carbon is the key. It suggests to me that I buy local so the truck miles do not make my orange, or sofa, an irresponsible choice.

A few assumptions need to be challenges to deal with this triadic dilemma. First, fair trade is not a sufficient standard to pursue to help social stability in a community or nation. In Beyond Corporate Responsibility, I advocate a much higher standard for business responsibility. Businesses need to focus on creating vital and viable businesses for their suppliers, thorugh education and even venture capital support, coupled with ensuring development economies in the community are fostered. Paying one company a fair share of the profits and working to ensure reasonable benefits and working conditions are met is the minimum. But to really be responsible, the challenge is to know the community and the business intimately and to foster its health, just as we would with a friend. That is the only way that the economic stability is ensured and the intention of fair trade is achieved. If businesses take on this highter standard, now we have a reason for making an exception and buying from abroad. We are support longer term healthy of a community; not just avoiding bad practices.

Challenge two is that local does not mean sustainable or even fair trade. Much of what it takes to grow local crops, including seeds, fuel for equipment and packing or preservation materials are not local, including the labor who may have no defense against unfair labor practices. So to see local as a better option than fair trade, we have to know it is helping deal with the challenges of climate change and labor practices. As Ryan Mickle of Triple Pundit points out, local has to be a lot more than grown within a hundred miles. We need to have local be about building local communities who care for one another and can know we are making less a different for the planet, the farmer and farm workers when we buy.

Local can be less sustainable if it is not grown organically, biodynamically or with permaculture practices. It can contribute to negative climate change by too many food or product miles to reach its destination and to bad practices in keeping healthy soil in the name of efficiency. So the principles here is we need to know more to know if local is making a difference in our ecosystem and social systems.

If businesses are to be truly responsible, they have to mean more by local. They need to make soils healthier, understanding the watershed and its working in the place they grow, so they bio region is increasingly vital. Businesses, large and small, cannot just reduce the harm they do, but need to become educated about creating healthy ecosystems WHILE the grow food and make local products.

If businesses want to go Beyond Corporate Responsibility as we know it, promoting a healthy financial system, a healthy ecology and a truly responsible relationship with suppliers, businesses need a more systemic look at their choices. Are they sourcing in a way that fosters healthy local communities in developing economies, especially when they will be effect the national debt? Are they doing what they can locally to foster a healthy improvement in the production cycle of soil, air and water in each place—working with nature to make it all work to regenerate the living systems. And are we as consumers insisting on knowing where things come from, how the communities, watersheds and economies are made healthy? Are we connected to the products we buy by knowing more about the people who make them and the processes they use. Without this, it is a crap shoot for a business or a consumer on whether I am optimizing my corporate responsibility.