Fair trade. Make a stand!!

from moon beam - Tuesday, February 08, 2005
accessed 1293 times

A good article I found.

http://www.loudwire.net/users/meaney/9959.html




Also cick for free and help, it costs you nothing.
http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites

The three richest people in the world control more wealth than all 600 million in the world's poorest countries.
2.8 billion people - nearly half the world’s population - live on less than $2 per day.
Unfair Trade Rules - Unfair trade rules deny poor countries $700 billion every year.
Imbalance - At the last full meeting of the WTO the EU had 500 negotiators and Haiti had none.”
(Source: http://www.speak.org.uk/TheBigDress/WorldTrade)

“Of $3.6 trillion of all goods exchanged globally, fair trade accounts for only .01%.
Fair trade businesses return 1/3 to 1/4 of profits back to producers in developing countries.
According to the National Labour Committee, a Haitian sewing clothing for the U.S. market may earn less than 1% of the retail price.”
(Source: http://www.fairtradefederation.com/ab_facts.html)

The 48 least developed counties of the world make up 10% of the worlds population. Their share of world exports have dropped to 0.4% over the last 20 years. However, the EU and US (which together roughly accounts for 10% of the worlds population) own nearly 50% of the worlds exports.

However, the good news is that sales of Fair Trade goods in the UK have grown by 40 per cent during the past year. With CafeDirect being ranked the 6th coffee brand in the UK, and TeaDirect the 8th.

There has been a fair amount of discussion about fair trade and ending global poverty within the mainstream media. Therefore, I decided to look at some of the issues surrounding fair trade for myself.

Coffee

Coffee is the second most valuable traded commodity globally … first is oil. However, the countries producing coffee are amongst the poorest in the world.

This is due mainly to the amount of money earned by the coffee producers and the amount of profit western companies are making. The price of coffee has fallen by almost 50 per cent in the past three years to a 30-year low.

The coffee producers depend on their income to ensure that their families have adequate health care, food and education for their children. Sadly, many producers simply can not afford these basic human rights.

The big four coffee roasters, Kraft (Maxwell House, Carte Noire, Kenco, Kaffee HAG, Yuban, Gevalia), Procter & Gamble (Folgers, Millstone), Sara Lee (Douwe Egberts ) and Nestlé each have coffee brands worth US$1bn or more in annual sales. Along with German giant Tchibo, they buy almost half the world's coffee beans each year. Profit margins are high - Nestlé has made an estimated 26 per cent profit margin on instant coffee. Sara Lee's coffee profits are estimated to be nearly 17 per cent - a very high figure compared with other food and drink brands.

Today's standardised coffee blends may be a mix of coffees from as many as 20 different coffee types. Sophisticated risk management and hedging allows the companies, at the click of a computer mouse, to buy from the lowest-cost producer to mix these blends.

In the case of coffee, fairly traded coffee is usually organic and shade grown, which results in a higher quality coffee.

Milk

The European dairy industry is swimming in a sea of subsidies. Each cow, be it Friesian or Jersey, receives $2 a day, just to chew grass.

However, the EU gets a subsidy for exporting milk to other countries. Milk from places such as Northern Ireland and France, export their powdered milk to West Africa, where it can be found in their shops. In 2001, 21,000 tonnes of powered milk was imported to Western Africa, most of it coming from France.

Mali (the largest country in West Africa) has 6.5 million cattle alone. But powdered milk continues to be imported in! The outcome of this is the African farmers falling more and more into poverty. The EU is not going to decide on the future of milk subsidies until 2007. This may well be too late for some struggling African dairy farmers.

Cotton

Texas is the cotton capital of the United States. Some 25,000 cotton farmers produce a quarter of all world exports by using the latest technology on farms averaging more than 12,000 acres. These cotton farmers are earning a great wage, but this is keeping those in other countries poor.

The EU and US had promised to eradicate the subsides placed on agricultural exports in the future, but as these negotiations have moved further forward, they are beginning to go against what they had originally promised. The EU and US can basically make up the rules to suit them. So, even though it sounds good that subsidies will be phased out, the WTO are still allowing “WTO friendly” ones, which will support the US and EU economy. Over half of the $1bn a day now spent subsidising intensive agriculture at home and export dumping would be left untouched

Again, it seems to be a case of keeping the poor poor. US cotton farmers get roughly $160,000 per head in government support (a share of almost $4 billion in government support) which enables them to stay clear of the deepest depression in world prices since the 1930s. These subsidies have indeed helped this depression of world prices, resulting in the devastation of livelihoods of West Africa’s 11 million cotton farmers.

Sugar

There is a EU arrangement which means that sugar from non-UK countries are not allowed in the European markets. Therefore the British sugar industry is booming with a profit of £175 million last year.

The money made on British sugar goes straight to the shareholders, such as the Westons, the second richest family in Canada, with a net worth of $7 billion.

This in turn means that we pay more for our sugar! Not because we have to pay tax on the subsidies, but also that there is no competition in this market which would force prices to come down. In addition, this isn’t helping African farmers pull themselves out of poverty.


With fair trade “workers earn a greater return on their labour, and profits are distributed more equitably and often reinvested in community projects such as health clinics, child care, education, and literacy training. Workers learn important leadership and organizing skills, enabling self-reliant grassroots-driven development.” (source: http://www.maketradefair.com)

So what can be done?

Buying fair trade goods is a good step forward. I was surprised to hear that Starbucks have a fair trade coffee! There are more and more fair trade products coming on to the market today, mainly due to consumer power. So it up to us to show our support and tell those with the influence and power what we want.

However, buying fair trade products alone are not going to solve the problem, especially when there are restrictions placed on trading and subsides still going to the west. Therefore, it is up to those in government, with the political power to make changes, but I believe that these changes will only come across if we, the consumer, kick up enough fuss about it.

There are many organisations supporting and promoting the use of fair trade. It doesn’t take much time to find them online and then learn the different ways to take action, from buying fair trade, organising fair trade awareness in the workplace to emailing politicians for change.

It’s up to us to make the change.

Useful links and sources:

http://www.maketradefair.com

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk

http://www.fairtradefederation.com/