How Wales could become world's first Fairtrade country

Feb 27 2008 by Our Correspondent, Western Mail

It’s Fairtrade Fortnight this week and next. Jessica Gibbs reports on what it means for producers and consumers, and on the campaign to make Wales the world’s first Fairtrade country

FAIRTRADE guarantees producers in the developing world a fair and stable price for their goods.

And a range of Fairtrade products is available in supermarkets and shops around Wales from fresh fruit to flowers.

Cardiff is the first Fairtrade capital city. Claire Owen, the Sustainability Officer at Cardiff Council, said, “Having Fairtrade status as a city recognises the efforts and commitment of Cardiff’s citizens to Fairtrade, whether as retailers or consumers.”

The capital now boasts 150 shops selling Fairtrade goods. Since Cardiff achieved Fairtrade status in 2004, some 70 towns around Wales have followed suit.

Fairtrade Wales is now campaigning to make Wales the first Fairtrade country in the world.

Mark Richardson, leader of the Fairtrade Wales campaign, said, “This would make a real statement about Wales’ intentions for the future, and it is really about committing to Fairtrade over the long term. The campaign shows a commitment from the government and the people of Wales to make fair trade central to our purchasing.”

Out of the 22 counties in Wales, 14 now have Fairtrade status and the others are working towards it.

Mr Richardson said, “So far we have achieved all the targets we’ve been set. The next stage now is to get together the evidence, and prove these targets have been met. I hope we will be a Fairtrade country in the next few months.”

Jan Tucker has been involved in Fairtrade since the 1970s and now runs a Fairtrade shop in Cardiff. She said that an important benefit of Fairtrade is that the price paid for goods is unaffected by changes in global prices.

She said, “Natural disasters, for example, can have a huge effect on producer’s welfare as it disrupts their production of goods. But with Fairtrade, the producers are guaranteed long-term stability.”

Another aspect of Fairtrade is the 10% social premium paid for products.

Jan said, “The 10% social premium is given to the whole community where the product is produced. There is a democratic system in place whereby the community decides what to do with the money and have used it on things such as digging wells and building health clinics.”

In this way Fairtrade benefits the whole community where it is based and not only the individual producers.

But not everyone believes that buying Fairtrade is the most important consumer priority. Top chef Mary Ann Gilchrist, winner of a Michelin star, said her restaurant in Llanwrtyd Wells doesn’t buy all its goods from Fairtrade producers abroad.

She said, “My first preference is to support local businesses, and my second is to buy Fairtrade.”

“I think fair trade is important as it helps people who have been exploited for a long time, and I do buy Fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate and bananas. But this is because they can’t be grown in this country, and my first priority is always to support local and seasonal goods.

“In rural areas like this the farmers are an important part of the community. We use local honey that comes from hives about 20 miles away. If one doesn’t support these local farmers, the heart will be knocked out of the community.”

Graham Tinsley, manager of the Welsh National Culinary Team, also uses Fairtrade only for items that can’t be sourced locally.

He said, “We buy things like bananas, pineapples and mangoes Fairtrade, as much as we can. But nearly all our produce is locally sourced, we like to buy things as local as possible, the Welsh produce is excellent. Because it’s my business to promote Wales, I want to use as much Welsh produce as possible.”

David Wainwright runs Tropical Forest Products in Aberystwyth, which sells honey around the country. In 1983 he went to Zambia to train indigenous beekeepers.

He said, “I was sent there to teach the farmers some modern farming methods, but I found that the traditional ways they were farming honey were already really effective and profitable. It’s a method using bark hives and they didn’t need to buy in any modern equipment or materials because they had everything they needed right in the forest.”

On returning to the UK in 1990 Mr Wainwright found that there was little market for imported honey.

“I wanted to sell their honey, I had a lot of faith in it, and while I was there I ate it every day.”

To create a market for Zambian honey Mr Wainwright set up his business, Tropical Forest Products which is still a firm supporter of Zambian honey and fair trade.

“You have to realise that selling their honey is the only source of income they get. Anything they need to buy with cash they buy with money from selling honey. Items like soap and salt, clothes and school uniforms so their children can go to school,” he said.

Mr Wainwright said that this Fairtrade honey also has benefits for the environment, “The way the honey is made in Africa is much more natural than the way it is made in Wales. The honey is shipped from Africa, not flown, and it takes less carbon to produce than Welsh honey. This is because Welsh honey involves a much more intensive rearing of the bees,” he said.

But Mr Wainwright doesn’t believe imported Fairtrade products are in competition with locally produced products.

“I’m a beekeeper myself so I don’t think you should have one or the other. The honey we produce here has a very different taste than that produced in Africa. The taste of the honey depends on the plants and trees where it is made, and there are many different varieties,” he said.

There are now about 3,000 traditional bark hive beekeepers in Zambia, and most of their produce is sent to Tropical Forest, which sells the honey in supermarkets around the UK.

And food is not the only thing produced in accordance to Fairtrade standards.

Jenny Howell runs an ethical clothing store in Cardiff.

“So much of the clothing on the high street is produced in an unethical way under very poor working conditions,” she said. “We sell clothes that are made from hemp or bamboo, as well as organic clothes. Ethical trade clothes like these are made without chemicals that are damaging for the people who grow it.

“Ethical trading ensures that the producers are given fair wages and that health and safety is ensured. Companies that push the price of their clothing down also push the wages and living standards down for the people who produce them.”

She believes that it is important to raise the profile of Fairtrade in Wales.

“It’s important to continue trying to increase the number of people who are providing Fairtrade products across the country,” she said.

With an ever increasing variety of food and other goods on the market in Wales, we are well on our way to becoming the world’s first Fairtrade country. But the campaign doesn’t stop there.

Mark Richardson of Fairtrade Wales said, “Becoming a Fairtrade country is about promising to carry on committing to Fairtrade. We must carry on to help people get out of absolute poverty”.

To find out about Fairtrade Fortnight events in your area visit www.fairtradewales.com

Fairtrade vs food miles
What do you do? Buy the fair trade strawberries from Kenya or the asparagus tips from Pembrokeshire?

It’s a dilemma more and more of us will face. We all want to do our bit to help make poverty history and protect the environment from climate change, but what happens when our concern for people appears to clash with our concern for the planet?

Put more simply, should we avoid fair trade goods from the developing world to help cut down on food miles?

For some, the initial answer is obvious: surely opting for food transported halfway across the globe is “worse” than buying produce grown locally? Isn’t importing produce from different continents just adding to climate change?

Well, actually no.Firstly, the technical bit: food miles is only a measure of the amount of carbon emitted by taking food from one place to another – the distance it’s travelled from where it is grown or raised to where it is consumed. What it doesn’t measure is the before and after. Strawberries grown in the shadow of the Preseli mountains: low food miles? Maybe. But what about how the crop was fed and watered? And what about electricity-guzzling lights in the heated greenhouses?

So, food miles don’t take into account the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated in production. Substituting tropical production of fruit, veg or flowers with local growing of similar products to reduce food miles may result in a greater volume of emissions because of the energy requirements needed to maintain artificial conditions necessary. We need to start thinking from plough to plate.

Secondly, let’s think about the impact food miles could have on the developing world. More than 70% of people living in poor countries depend on agriculture to make a living. In Africa an estimated 1.5 million people depend on agricultural exports to the UK for a living. For poor people producing and farming the crops that fill our fridges, these livelihoods, some of them founded on fair trade agreements, are the gateway to self-sufficiency, long term sustainable development and ultimately a way to work out of poverty.

Switching away from fair trade and other goods produced in the developing world to cut food miles would be harming those who are least responsible for global warming.

As consumers, were are increasingly understanding the consequences of our purchasing decisions but as Oxfam points out the power of the pound needs to be channelled in the right direction.

And fair trade’s a deeper investment than business. Buying a bag of Fairtrade rice will also support social and economic development projects like schools, clinics, clean water supply and proper sanitation.

So consider this while you’re doing your next weekly shop – food transportation at present contributes relatively little to carbon dioxide emissions. If you and everyone in the UK, switched one 100W light bulb to a low energy equivalent, we would over the course of a year, reduce CO² emissions by 4.7 times the amount which would result from a boycott of fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa.

Fairtrade schools
The Fairtrade Schools Scheme was launched in September 2007 to raise awareness of Fairtrade in children.

Danielle Johnson, school co-ordinator for Fairtrade in Wales, said, “Before the scheme was launched there were lots of schools interested in Fairtrade, so it was welcomed. The schools now have a structure to follow, which is good because there are so many schools in Wales doing fair trade work.

“There are 10 schools in Wales that have been given Fairtrade status so far, and 300 schools are registered as working towards Fairtrade status.”

There are five criteria to becoming a Fairtrade school, which include teaching the children about Fairtrade, and promoting fair trade at all school events.

Danielle Johnson said, “I have been so surprised by the great response I get from children; they are keen to support Fairtrade. Kids just seem to really care about people, whereas adults can tend to switch off. They get really excited about the Fairtrade scheme, because it provides them with a tangible solution to big problems.”

Trelawnyd Primary School, in Clwyd, was one of the first schools in Wales to be given Fairtrade status. Head teacher Jane Borthwick said, “We involve the children in thinking about global issues and try to encourage them to urge their parents to buy Fairtrade goods.”

The children also help to spread the Fairtrade message. “Before Christmas we sent the children around posting hand-made invites to a Fairtrade tea party, it was a great way to get the whole community involved,” she said.

Fairtrade producers

Adriano is a tea plucker who has worked for Kibena Tea in southern Tanzania for 11 years.

Kibena Tea is Fairtrade certified and the fair wage Adriano earns means he has been able to build a three-bedroom house for his growing family.

“I have built my house using money from tea plucking. It is made from mud bricks. The Kibena Tea Fair Trade Fund have given me iron sheets to roof my house,” he said.

Working for a Fairtrade company means Adriano can pay for his 10-year-old daughter Adela to go to school, and help with the cost of schooling two orphaned relatives.

Thanks to the premium Kibena earns from its teas they have built and equipped primary schools and village dispensaries, paid for a maternity ward for the local hospital, and supplied new water pumps.

Adriano moves from field to field by bicycle, helping him to reach his target of six baskets of tea a day. Adriano’s journey home has been made much safer by a local cycle track paid for with the Fairtrade social premium. Adriano said: “Please continue buying tea from Kibena to help us to improve our life conditions.”

Narmaben Manji

Narmaben works as a cotton farmer in India, and sells organic cotton to Agrocel, one of Traidcraft’s suppliers.

Narmaben knows what it’s like to struggle to bring up a child alone.

“My son was six months old when my husband died,” she said, “it was a very difficult time.”

Thanks to the support of her husband’s family, Narmaben coped and she now lives on the family farm with her husband’s brothers and their families. She farms an area of land with her son and has been growing cotton for 10 years.

Cotton is one of the few crops the semi-arid climate of western India will support. The cotton she produces is used in Fairtrade Traidcraft T-shirts.