Buying fair trade is just one way to make sure farmers in poor countries get a better deal.
Christian Aid has been campaigning for fair trade for years.
However, when it comes to making trade work for poor people around the world, shopping is only the start.
The first steps
It can be a pretty effective start, mind you.
Fairly-traded bananas, tea, chocolate, coffee have made a big difference to the lives of millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America – farmers, farm workers and their families.
Divine chocolate bars are a perfect example. Divine is a company which Christian Aid helped found. It’s co-owned by a group of farmers in Ghana, so not only do the farmers get a fair price for their cocoa, they also share in the company’s profit.
Doing the right thing
Fair-trade’s rise has come at a time when the discerning shopper is no longer just looking at the price tag. Now we have questions.
How much are growers paid? What about their employees? And what kind of working conditions do they have? Are their rights respected?
We also want assurances that the materials used are ethically sourced, and will not mess up the environment - or, in the case of organic food, our own bodies.
And it doesn’t stop with food. Online retailer Adili (which is Swahili for ‘just’) offers fair-trade and organic lines of clothing, which prove that dressing ethically doesn’t have to mean socks with open-toed sandals.
Pressure supermarkets
As we said, Christian Aid’s been campaigning for fair trade since 1992. That’s when we helped establish the Fairtrade Foundation and began pestering supermarkets to stock products that promise their growers a decent deal.
And it has worked. One in five bananas we eat in the UK is fairly traded. We drink more than 8 million fair-trade hot drinks a day.
In 2007 we spent more than £400 million on products carrying the Fairtrade logo. This amount has doubled every two years.
It works. No wonder we want some more. And we need your help to do that.
Does your local shop stock fair-trade products? If not, ask the manager to stock them. You could strengthen your case by convincing friends and family to buy fair trade, too.
Perhaps there’s a something specific that isn’t on your shop’s shelves yet. Ubuntu Fairtrade cola , for instance, is one fizzy alternative, made from fair-trade sugar from Malawi and Zambia. It tastes great – but have you seen it at your local supermarket?
A little something extra
Clearly fair trade = a good thing. Why aren’t we aren’t satisfied, then?
Fair trade is proof of trade’s potential for tackling poverty. It should be remembered that fair trade is an economic agreement not a type of product.
Slumps in commodity prices like cotton and coffee can plunge farmers back into poverty quicker than you can say beanpickers’ cooperative. Fairtrade products only offers some insurance against this - at least for farmers lucky enough to benefit from a Fairtrade scheme.
Our campaign for trade justice, however, is about making sure the benefits of fair trade are shared equitably by all people in developing countries.
It doesn’t just rely on consumer choice to deliver justice to producers in developing countries.
Instead, it recognises that political change is needed, and that international trade rules must promote poor countries' development rather than hindering it.
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