About fair trade
What is fair trade?
The West is awash with products from around the world. Many of these items could be produced locally, particularly fruits and vegetables. If we are concerned about the environment, we will endeavour to buy locally produced food and other goods.
There are some things, however, that will not grow easily this climate, such as coffee, tea, cocoa, bananas, oranges and other tropical fruits, and fibre plants such as cotton and ramie, and however committed we are to buying local produce, many of us are loath to give up the tea and coffee that are part of our daily lives, the exotic fruits we have become used to finding in the shops, or comfortable cotton clothing.
The downside to this market in freely traded items is that the producers are often not paid a fair price for their goods, and those who suffer most are the workers in the fields, plantations and factories, and their families and communities. This is where the fair trade organisations have stepped in. Seeing the injustice in the trading arena, development agencies began to build up relationships that benefited the producers as well as the consumers. They did this by purchasing goods direct from the producers, at a fair price, and making them available to consumers in the West through their catalogues and shops.
Oxfam and Traidcraft are two such organisations. Together with the Fairtrade Foundation they have agreed this common definition of fair trade:
The FAIRTRADE Mark
The FAIRTRADE Mark is the UK version of
FLO’s international certification label. Distinctive and colourful, it is easy to pick out on grocery shelves. The Mark may be used
only in direct relation to products that are certified in accordance with Fairtrade standards.
Look out for products with the FAIRTRADE Mark in St Austell’s shops, pubs and cafés.
Choosing fair trade
As information about fair trade spreads, more and more people choose to support producers in the developing world by purchasing goods with the FAIRTRADE Mark. More than 1,500 Fairtrade products are now available in the UK. You can play your part by asking for Fairtrade products wherever you shop. Help us to make St Austell a Fairtrade Town!
