Fair Trade Phil is a guest blogger and the views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of Shared Interest Society. If you would like to be a guest blogger, please contact us with your interest.

When we sit in the shade of a tall tree, we should be grateful to someone who planted the seeds of something they were unlikely to see reach maturity. The seeds of hope are planted with fair trade – will we see them sprout, grow tall and bear fruit? We do not know, but we plant them nonetheless, we tend them and hope they will grow fast and strong.

Fair Trade has been with us now for at least 30 years (Happy Birthday Traidcraft), and it is amazing to look at the work of the pioneers. The original concept and the development to where we are today is simply staggering.

In my view, you can always tell when something new is starting to succeed because that’s when people start to knock it. Given that big business will in general have a big budget for PR, I am somewhat cynical when I see media stories decrying Fair Trade or complaining it is not effective enough. To me, that suggests big business is worried about the competition and what Fair Trade may do to their margins and returns to shareholders! In reality, they should worry little at present, but they should pay more than lip service to trading ethically – it may just turn out to be the major consumer trend of the 21^st century. Continue reading →

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