Fair Trade News

Published Oct 8, 2005

Why Fair Trade should be your buy
It's a simple way to do the right thing when making your spending choices
By Mary Ethridge, Beacon Journal business writer

If you ask me to be a socially responsible consumer, I'll tell you I have enough trouble being a full-fledged adult. Sure, I recycle. I avoid retailers known as bad employers and support companies that work to do the right thing. However, tracing the origins and production methods of everything I buy is just not in the realm of possibility in my current world.

So lash me with a sprouted grain noodle.

But buying Fair Trade products is a pretty simple way to do the right thing. Fair Trade means that the farmers who grow the products -- mainly coffee, cocoa, sugar and fruit -- have been paid a fair price for the crop, negotiated democratically and directly among the farmers and buyers minus the middlemen.

For a product to be certified as Fair Trade in the United States, it must undergo a rigorous examination that makes certain the farmers who grow the crop are indeed getting the agreed-on price in the negotiated manner.

The official third party certifying group in the United States is TransFair USA, this country's arm of the Fair Labeling

Organizations group

based in Germany.

All consumers need to do is look for the Fair Trade logo from TransFair USA when buying products. You will probably pay a bit more for Fair Trade goods, but that price difference will erode if demand for the products rises.

I wanted to make sure Fair Trade wasn't just a yuppie feel-good sort of program with little impact on the people it was designed to help.

So on Friday, I went to the Mustard Seed Market in Montrose to meet Jovanny Coronel, an Ecuadorian banana farmer who is part of a fair trade cooperative of farmers in his country. He explained how fair trade has allowed his people to keep their children in school and adopt environmentally friendly farming methods.

Without Fair Trade, the farmers were caught in a cycle of poverty and debt. With little or no income between harvest months, farmers were often forced to sell their next crop in advance to middlemen who paid far below the harvest's value. The middlemen would then sell to the large corporations and pocket the profits.

Coronel's bananas are a fairly new Fair Trade product in the United States. It is when buying coffee, the world's most valuable traded commodity after oil, that area consumers are most likely to come across Fair Trade products.

You can now find at least one type of Fair Trade coffee in most mainstream retailers, including Akron's Acme Fresh Markets, Sam's Club and Starbucks.

(Keep in mind that a retailer or company may have one or two types of Fair Trade products, but that doesn't mean all its products are certified Fair Trade.)

A decade-long supply glut of coffee lowered the price of the bean so dramatically that until about 2003, it impoverished millions of small farmers.

Although the price has risen some since then, it hasn't been enough to change things.

The volatile market led to an increase in child labor, stalled construction of infrastructure, a weakened educational system and environmental problems

Four companies -- Kraft, Cincinnati's Procter & Gamble, Sara Lee and Nestle -- buy about half the world's beans.

As the price dropped and the income of farmers fell, the company coffee profits held fast.

Strict capitalists will say the coffee glut and its attending problems are best treated by letting the laws of supply and demand rule on their own. But history has shown the strict interpretation rarely works when it comes to the notoriously volatile agricultural markets. Just ask all the subsidized grain farmers out there.

Currently, only a small percentage of products are Fair Trade. But it represents the fastest-growing segment of the specialty coffee industry in the United States. If you want to get into the act, just ask for Fair Trade products at your favorite retailers and coffee shops.

Mary Ethridge can be reached at 330-996-3545 or methridge@thebeaconjournal.com