Fair-trade

Fair-trade isn’t just about coffee and chocolate. More fair-trade products are being introduced all the time, from household products such as clothes and soap to food staples such as rice, bananas & aduki beans! Fair-trade fortnight is celebrated every year in spring to get more people involved in the fair-trade movement as a campaigner and a consumer.

The co-operative movement has been at the forefront in promoting a fair trading system, as an alternative to the mainstream exploitative economy. In 1981, the Federation of Southern Wholefood Co-ops began looking at the possibility of trading directly with producer collectives in the Third World. It quickly became apparent that was too ambitious an aim. However, the growth of fair trade organisations such as Traidcraft and the co-op Equal Exchange ensured that, as the 80s went on, a growing range of fair trade products became available. This process continues today. Within Arjuna, fair trade is a principle which is strongly held when selecting new products to stock.

Fair trade products aim at self-help for the producers and their communities, generating income for development in the Third World, rather than promoting dependency on foreign aid. This generative income helps to improve the quality of life and the economic independence of whole communities. Co-operatives of producers are formed within communities, and non-governmental organizations, and these can then link with fair trading partners in the industrialized countries. The system is based on free choice remaining in the hands of Third World partners for the kinds of products and the kind of development they want to see. Trade controlled by the West sees Third World countries producing one mineral or crop to export, giving no diversified range of products that would allow independence in economic For free choice to be in the hands of Third World producers, the means are required for establishing technology which really meets the needs of the people, rather than the technology that happens to be that developed in the Western industrial countries. Because the economy of the "advanced" industrialized countries is based on the exploitation of the Third World, many obstacles are created to sabotage attempts to trade fairly. The rich countries protect their own produce with subsidies, impose tariffs and squeeze the lowest prices for raw materials, which produces unfair competition Debt is the economic context in which the rich countries keep the poor countries on their knees, and which makes the concept of aid farcical. The amount paid off as interest by poor countries has already exceeded the original sums of money borrowed, yet they are still in debt. In 1993, for every dollar given in aid, rich nations took back three in debt repayments. If producers were paid fair prices they would not need aid in the first place.

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