Making Fair Trade Fair for all
My recent visit to South Africa provided me with a number of opportunities to meet those involved and those wishing to become involved in the South African fair trade movement. Whilst in Johannesburg and Cape Town the Shared Interest Foundation ran a number of training days giving those interested in learning more about fair trade the opportunity to do so. Working in partnership with Fetola Mmoho, a corporate social investment organisation, we ran two day long workshops with audiences of around forty each day. These workshops covered the basics of fair trade through to details of where to go next. We had representatives from FLO – Fairtrade Labelling Organisation, FTSA (Fair Trade South Africa, the Fairtrade Foundation’s equivalent in South Africa), SAFN – Southern Africa Fairtrade Network and representatives from existing fair trade organisations, Bean There and the African Toy Shop as well as ourselves from Shared Interest.
Hearing from all these groups I learnt a great deal about the awareness of fair trade and the challenges faced by these groups when operating from a distance. We heard about the FLO standards and the difficulties of these being ‘controlled’ by the FLO base in Germany. A group in Ghana had applied for fair trade certification and were told they had to have exit signs on their walls in order to comply with these. The inspector visited their site, which comprised of an open space with a roof covering their work area held up with pillars. When asked where their exit signs were the group exclaimed that they had no walls to put the signs on so how were they to meet this standard?! Although such stories have a humorous edge it shows the challenges faced by the FLO officials on the ground trying to mediate between the producers and the management.
However, there were more positive stories told. The representative from SAFN was visiting Germany the very next day to propose FLO standards be made for twelve new products from Southern Africa including Marula Fruits, Lemon Concentrate and Pomegranates. We heard stories of the entrepreneurial use of the social premium paid to producers on top of their fair price for their goods. One group bought a truck with their premium and they now offer a transport service, for a fee, to the neighbouring processing organisation and are able to generate further income from this. We heard of Agnes, a coffee producer with 50 trees, who had two children but she could only afford to send one of them to school. When we reach for our pocket to pay the fees for the other child to go to school and return the following year Agnes asks ‘So how will you be paying for the school fees this year? Cheque? Bank Transfer would be good for me’, this creates a dependency. Instead we say Agnes you produce fantastic coffee we want to help you and your community and support you by paying a fair price for your coffee. By buying her fair-trade coffee we can help Agnes pay for her other child to attend school.
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