Ghent a Fairtrade Town?

A Fairtrade Town is a community in which local government and organizations cooperate to heighten people’s awareness of the problems concerning trade in/with developing countries and to make them realize they can help. In other words, the concept is a marketing tool to increase the sales of Fairtrade certified goods.
The idea originates from Garstang, England: in 2000 this little town declared itself the ‘the Worlds first Fairtrade Town’ in order to promote Fairtrade products. The initiative gained a lot of attention and soon the FLO International launched five criteria that must be met by communities that want to be awarded this status. So far more than 600 towns have followed Garstangs example, one of them being Ghent. As if we weren’t proud enough of our university town!

Anesa Selimovic

The other side of the coin

When buying Fairtrade certified goods, people believe to be supporting small farmers because they trust the organization. Critics question Fairtrades method and achievements and make some serious objections.

For example: the minimum prices that Fairtrade guarantees, encourage market oversupply and thereby lead to even lower global prices. This increases the farmers’ dependence on the organization and makes unprotected farmers even poorer.
Another issue is the defective transfer of wealth between the west and the developing countries: the farmers only receive about 5% of Fairtrades earnings.

No one says that Fairtrade should disappear, but above mentioned problems (and many more) should be looked at in order to make it a really fair organization that accomplishes the things it promises.

Anesa Selimovic

Kit Kat helps Ivory Coast

Subsequent to Eveliens blog, I can inform you that Kit Kat bars in Ireland and the U.K. will undoubtedly carry a Fairtrade mark from next month. This commitment will mean a major breakthrough for cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire.

The farmers’ organizations will receive a fair price (or market price if higher) for their cocoa as well as a premium payment, meant for investments in business or social development projects.

As the amounts of cocoa needed to produce a Kit Kat bar are significant and with Kit Kat being the UK’s best-selling chocolate biscuit bar, the fair trade Kit Kat will have a great impact on many lives.

Anesa Selimovic

Source: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/press_office/press_releases_and_statements/december_2009/kit_kat_gives_cocoa_farmers_in_cte_divoire_a_break.aspx

Max Havelaar

In nearly every shop in Belgium you can find Max Havelaar-products, but what does this mean?

Max Havelaar is an independent organization behind the Fair Trade Mark which works in 58 countries in 3 different countries and it has an lot of succes in the North. It distributes 10.000 products from more than 800 registered traders. M.H. gives businesses in the Netherlands the M-H-certification and companies are willing to recieve it because all the companies who have already recieved this label saw their turnover rising increasingly.

Pieter-Jan Smet

Source:www.maxhavelaar.nl

The body shop

The body shop is well known for his ethical standarts and cruelty-free tested cosmetic products. In November they started a campaign with the first fair-trade perfume in the world: LOVE ETC...

Every ingredient, from perfume oils to alcohol is fair-traded. The famous perfumer Dominique Popion created this exclusive sense with white musk and the warmth of vanilla notes.
This perfume appeals to women for whom justice and fairness are the most important things in the world. The alcohol used in this perfume is made in the foothills of the Andes and the bottle is 100% recyclable. Maybe a nice idea for under yout Christmas-tree?

Pieter-Jan Smet

Source: www.styletoday.nl

Fair trade in tourism South Africa

Imagine a kind of tourism which is in harmony with the ethical standards for people and planet...

Fair Trade in Tourism is about ensuring people whose land is used for this activity, actually benefit from tourism and get a right price for their labor.

The FFTSA-label is already given to 26 companies in South-Africa with this green profile. The local government started this label in 1994 and since then, the country is the largest exporter of Fair Trade Products in the world. But more important, the value of tourism has been rising significantly with 150% in the GDP. Every company can get certified if they obey on 2 qualifications: to respect human rights and give them a coherent payment.

Pieter-Jan Smet
Source: www.fairtourismsa.org.za

Fair trade versus the banana price war

The FLO (fair trade labelling organization) is raising the fair trade minimum price for bananas by 21.2%. The FLO says that this is necessary, because they want to protect their producers.
The banana producers have to struggle against the rising cost of production and the banana price war. The current banana price war is pushing the farmers into deeper poverty by selling bananas below production cost. In October, a UK discounter even cut the banana prices to £0.38/kg!
The fair trade standards don’t only make the farmers better, they also guarantee the quality of the product.
With this price increase, FLO is asking the governments to undertake steps to end the price war, so the farmers can live a better life.

Evelien Rooman
source: www.fairtrade.net

Nestlé considers a fair-trade KitKat

Nowadays, Swiss food giant 'Nestlé' is considering to launch a fair-trade KitKat in the UK.
The chocolate bar ‘KitKat’ has a lot of success. Therefore, if the negotiations are successful, KitKat will become the biggest brand in the UK with a fair-trade certification.
It’s not the first time Nestlé pays attention to fair-trade. The food giant is already involved in sustainability initiatives and last month, the company launched a cocoa plan.
With this plan, Nestlé supports cocoa famers by the supply of disease-resistant plantlets and they give these farmers training to work better and more efficient. The fair-trade certification of Kitkat is very important, because it will raise the awareness of the importance of fair-trade products a lot.


Evelien Rooman
Source: food and drink europe

Reverse Trick-or-Treating

Especially on Halloween, Americans spend a lot of money on chocolate bars.
The children go trick-or-treating and ask for candy.
But a lot of the chocolate comes from plantations that use child slave labour.
Children aged between 11 and 16 work 12 hours a day, without a remuneration.
The farmers have to live in poverty. They can't pay those children because they don't get enough money for their chocolate.
In order to bring awareness about this problem to the American people, the Equal Exchange cooperative started ‘reverse trick-or-treating’ on Halloween.

How does it work? Fair Trade chocolate bars are attached to a card that explains what Fair Trade is.
When the child goes trick-or-treating, he or she can return a favor by giving this flyer and the chocolate bar to the adult. Also adults can raise awareness about this problem by giving these chocolate bars and flyers to a trick-or-treater instead of other candy.
This year, the action had a lot of success, more than 250,000 chocolate bars and flyers have been distributed to trick-or-treaters.
So, next Halloween: go reverse trick-or-treating!

Evelien Rooman
Source: the river reporter

How fair is Fair trade?

Nowadays Fair Trade products can be bought everywhere. But while the shoppers are buying the Fair trade products having this pleasant feeling that they are helping some poor farmer in Africa, other people question the effectivity of helping the third world in such a way.

What the Fair trade organization wants is to pay honest wages to Third World farmers. If any company is interested in receiving the Fair trade Label they should pay the farmers of the third world countries higher than their own market prices, so the farmers can invest that money in education for their children and all the kind of social need available in their country.

But not everyone is fund of the Fair trade system. Because the main goal of Fair trade is to give fair wages to the poor farmers, but in the meantime they forget that there is no evolution in the industrial sector or in the mechanization. If they would pay more attention to these two factors it would be possible to help a developing country on a much higher scale.
So how fair is this fair trade system? Does the organization only want that ‘some’ of these poor farmers can have a good life and can they just ignore the other millions of helpless citizens?

Jaskiran Singh

www.fairtrade/bbc.com

Fair trade original celebrates it’s 50th birthday

Fair trade original exists 50 years this year. The Dutch organization has the honor to celebrate the fact that they have been busy with the sustainable and ethical commerce for already a half a century. Their concept of honest commerce is nowadays used by several other organizations and big industries. Today the director of the Fair trade original in Belgium has established many contracts with business partners in Vietnam, Thailand and Tanzania.

This year the main reason of their celebration is that they have established active lobbies and several campaigns for better working circumstances and against child labour.

Fair trade original also invented a systematic strategy for monitoring and making the business partners in the third world countries stronger than they were before. Due to this strategy the organization has given these business partners the opportunity to enter into the main international business network.

Jaskiran Singh

http://www.fairtrade.be/135/Nieuws/

Fair trade untouched by the global crisis

Despite the financial crisis people continue to buy fair trade products.
In the Fair trade Foundation’s annual Commercial Conference every business and industrial leader got to find out how the Fair trade consumer stayed loyal to the Fair trade products despite the current recession.

TNS ( = latest awareness figures) shows that in September 2009 the people buying Fair trade products really recognize Fair trade as an individual mark, while in April 2009 only 68% of the buyers saw Fair trade as a mark. TNS also shows that consumers spend more money on Fair trade products over the past couple of months. The price of the products bought by the usual every day consumer increased by 5.5%.

To conclude we could say that Fair Trade products are generally becoming more and more popular and that leads to better sale figures which allows the Fair trade organization to pay higher wages to the farmers in the third world countries.

Jaskiran Singh

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/press_office/press_releases_and_statements/september_2009/public_continues_to_buy_fairtrade_despite_the_recession.aspx