Fair Trade: What we Aussies Call a 'Fair Go'
The global environmental movement is challenging us all to think about our impact on our planet. Fair trade goes a step further. When you buy Fairtrade Certified products, you can be confident that you are doing something positive for people and the planet.
Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach to alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries.
– Wikipedia.
The Fairtrade Label is your guarantee that Third World producers have received:
1. A price for their goods that covers the cost of subsistence living.
2. A Fairtrade premium that goes directly back to the producer’s community, creating funds for education and medical infrastructure.
3. Long-term contracts that allow producers long-term planning and environmental production practices.
In the last ten years Fairtrade standards have helped over six million people to escape trade-related poverty, building sustainable communities across Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The movement has been supported by community groups and consumers across the globe.
A Comparison of international Coffee Certification Systems
Fair Trade History
The fair trade organizations have been active since the 1950s. The Fairtrade Certification, however, did not start until the 1980s during the global coffee crisis when bean prices dropped over 50 percent leaving coffee farms throughout African, Asia, Mexico and Latin America unable to cover production costs.When Mexican farmers in the high altitude Oaxaca area stopped production, Netherlands Coffee manufacturer Max Havelaar offered Mexican coffee farmers aid, so they could continue to grow Havelaars signature high altitude Arabica bean. The farmers refused the aid and instead the Mexican farmers demanded a price that would cover the cost of sustainable production and provide a living wage. Together Havelaar and the farmers set-up Fairtrade standards and launched the first Fairtrade consumer guarantee label.
Fairtrade trading standards stipulate that the trader must; pay a price to producers that covers the cost of sustainable production and living; pay a premium that producers can invest in development; agree to contracts that allow producers long-term planning and environmental production practices.
Producer standards specify that: workers receive a fair wage; minimum health, safety and environmental standards are complied with; no child or forced labour can occur, and investment of the Fairtrade premium is determined by a democratic community organisation.
Today the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO) coordinates Fairtrade Labelling in 20 countries including Australia.
Fairtrade labelling was introduced to Australia in 2003, with 6 companies licensed to apply the Fairtrade Label to their Fairtrade certified products. The retail value of Fairtrade sales in 2003 amounted to a retail value of $146,000, with 75 percent of this being coffee and the remainder including tea and chocolate. By 2007 the number of Fairtrade licensees has increased to 68, and annual retail sales have reached in excess of $6.5million.
Find out more about Fairtrade products and how to get involved online at www.fairtrade.com.au