Cadbury, the British chocolate maker, has announced that it will pursue fairtrade certification for Dairy Milk, its best-selling chocolate bar. Cadbury and the Fairtrade Foundation, the British arm of the the global fairtrade movement announced yesterday that the certification will be achieved by the Summer of 2009.
Make it a Fair Trade Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is around the corner and it’s the day (though by no means the only one) to buy chocolate and flowers for your sweetie. How about making it a fair trade Valentine’s Day. It’s easy and you know that you will be supporting farmers who have organized to escape the relentless onslaught of the “free” market.
Transfair USA, the fair trade certifier for the U.S., has created a handy website that provides links to places where you can order fair trade chocolate, fair trade flowers and fair trade wine.
Global Exchange, the education and action resource center for an alternative globalization, goes a bit farther. They have organized the National Valentine’s Day of Action to reach out to educators so that they can introduce their students to the concept of fair trade. There’s even a lesson plan for k-6th grade teachers. But if you just want to get some fair trade chocolate, they also offer a variety of fair trade chocolates including my favorite, Divine.
Finally, there are the friends at Equal Exchange who distribute fair trade chocolate as well.
But in the interest of shopping local, why not got to your local store and ask them to stock fair trade items. That way, you save postage and have your fix nearby. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Fair Trade Counters Poverty
As my contribution to Blog Action Day 2008, I’d like to advocate for fair trade as an effective anti-poverty strategy. Not only does fair trade provide a price floor for farmers and workers who produce the raw materials for many products we consume, it also, and that makes it different from any other certification scheme, provide a social premium that is invested in community projects that benefit all members of the communities.
The concept of a floor price is important because it protects farmers from the worst aspects of a down turn in commodity prices. The contracts that fair trade cooperatives negotiate with fair trade manufacturers and distributors lock are guaranteed not to fall below that floor price. For cocoa that price is $1,600 per ton. For most of the past two decades, that price protected the minimum income of farmers when world cocoa prices dropped as low as $1,000 per ton.
But what happens if the world market price is higher than $1,600 per ton? Farmers will, of course, receive that higher world market price. But this is where the second feature of fair trade comes into play–the social premium of $150 per ton.
Take the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa cooperative in Ghana for example. If they sell 1,000 tons of fair trade cocoa, the cooperative will receive $150,000 in social premium. Those funds are then turned over to the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers Trust which will distribute the monies to individual village societies for projects that benefit the society as a whole. Such projects have included water pumps, privies, and schools. They directly improve the lives of farmers.
So if you want to fight poverty in the cocoa sector, buy fair trade chocolate and cocoa. It’s easy and it tastes good.
Reverse Trick-or-Treat Campaign starts again
For the second year in a row, a number of organizations concerned about the fate of children in the cocoa sector around the world are pooling their resources for a reverse trick-or-treat campaign on Halloween. The campaign is indented to educate consumers about the labor conditions in the cocoa sector and the fair trade alternatives available to them.
Continue reading “Reverse Trick-or-Treat Campaign starts again”
My Anti Anti-Fairtrade Rant
Today, Sameh El-Shahat (I assume a columnist at the UK’s Telegraph) published a rant against fairtrade. I guess, the paper tries to make hay by attacking “holy cows.” Below is the reply I posted in the paper’s comment section. Continue reading “My Anti Anti-Fairtrade Rant”
