A PASSING glance at the own-label coffee brands of the bigget supermarkets is enough to confirm the mainstream presence and everyday acceptance of Fairtrade products. A movement that began as a response to the collapse of global coffee prices in the 1990s is now the most recognised and trusted ethical mark in the UK.
The UK sells the highest volumes globally of Fairtrade bananas, sugar, tea, wine, vegetables, and processed fruit juices; and the second highest volumes of Fairtrade cocoa, coffee, flowers, and gold — giving much for the Fairtrade Foundation to celebrate on its 30th anniversary in 2024.
Twenty years ago, a minority interest had become “a cool option”, and its strong growth rate was “the envy of others,” its director, Harriet Lamb, told the Church Times in 2003. She warned, however: “The trick for us now is to make sure it’s about real commitment — not just jumping on the bandwagon.”
The fall in coffee prices at that time had exposed the vulnerability of smallholder coffee farmers who were being paid below the costs of production, and were thus forced to choose between feeding their families or investing in their farms, with no assurance of the price they would receive for future harvests.
Since about one-third of the world’s food is produced by 570 million small-scale family farms, many of them in the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the world, the situation was devastating. Producers typically receive a tiny proportion of the cost that the consumer pays for the product: cocoa farmers, for example, earn an average of just six per cent of the final value of a bar of chocolate. In Côte d’Ivoire, a living income is calculated at about £1.86 per day, yet the typical cocoa farmer earns under 0.75p.
Faced with fluctuating costs and global commodity prices, and the unequal distribution of power across supply chains, producers have no choice but to sell below the cost of production. Fairtrade’s anniversary report points out that poverty drives many to consider negative coping strategies such as deforestation: Ghana, for one, lost ten per cent of its tree cover between 2001-2014, one quarter of it linked to the chocolate industry.
SUCH injustice is not new, and, in 1994, concerned organisations came together to create the Fairtrade Foundation. They included Oxfam, Christian Aid, the Women’s Institute, Traidcraft, and CAFOD. Together, they campaigned for an approach to trade that established basic economic, environmental, and social standards. It would not only benefit producers, but also help UK companies to trade sustainably and consumers to ensure that their shopping was part of the solution and not the problem.
Churches were already strong advocates, many through Traidcraft stalls. Robert Cleave, who cycled 18,000 miles around the world in 2019 (News, 18 January 2019) in support of Traidcraft Exchange (the company’s charitable arm, now Transform Trade), was a rep as early as 1981, fired by its presence at the Greenbelt Festival and its slogan, “Trade not aid”.
He had his first public stall, with hand-made publicity plastered over his car, at a festival on Victoria Embankment, Nottingham. Evidence suggests that fairtrade in churches has generally been driven by small numbers of dedicated individuals. Like many of his early Traidcraft counterparts, Mr Cleave has become deeply involved in A Rocha’s Eco Church vision, which incorporates fairtrade, and he is now the diocesan environment officer for the diocese of Southwell & Nottingham.
Chris TerryCOCLA coffee co-operative
Traidcraft’s trading arm no longer exists, partly a victim of its own success in getting fairly traded products into the main food chains, and partly because its business model became unsustainable in an increasingly globalised and post-credit-crunch world.
The vision of those early organisations for a future where trade worked better for both people and the planet was a powerful one, the current CEO of the Fairtrade Foundation, Michael Gidney, says. “We believe that trade really can fight exploitation, reduce human-rights abuses, and tackle the climate crisis. But only if trade is managed fairly for the benefit of all, in lasting partnership.”
The founding principle from the start, the Fairtrade oundation emphasises, has been to tackle the causes of poverty and exploitation and not just the symptoms. Long global supply chains, child labour, gender-based exploitation, and deforestation are exacerbated by poverty and uneven negotiating power. A fair price enables families to support themselves, but also helps communities to build schools and health facilities, and farmers to invest in stronger businesses and a better product.
The Fairtrade minimum price defines the lowest possible price that a buyer must pay, which ensures that producers receive the money due for their labour, skill, and experience. The Fairtrade Premium is an additional sum of money that buyers pay into a communal fund to be used to improve the social, economic, and environmental conditions of both businesses and their localities.
A producer’s own priorities determine where the Premium money goes, with a bias towards longer term sustainability. The report emphasises the importance of the fair distribution of bargaining power, too — the Foundation is co-owned by farmers and workers themselves, who are now represented at every level of governance, from a local co-operative meeting to a 50-per-cent share of the votes in Fairtrade’s general assembly.
KEY milestones in the 30-year journey include the first Fairtrade-certified product — Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate, made in 1994 with cocoa from Belize; 400,000 producers worked with Fairtrade that year. Café Direct coffee and Clipper tea (from the Co-op, who were Fairtrade pioneers) followed, and later, bananas. The first “Fairtrade Fortnight” campaign in 1997 brought together campaigners, businesses, and producers to raise awareness of trade justice.
Garstang, in Lancashire, took pride in 2001 in being the first of what were to become 650 Fairtrade towns and communities; four years later, with 680,000 producers now part of Fairtrade, products were served at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, in Scotland. Royal Assent for the Companies Act in 2006 made company directors personally accountable for the social and environmental performance of their businesses, which helped to embed the principles of fair trade.
The statistics over 30 years are encouraging: Fairtrade has worked with more than 10,000 local groups and institutions in the UK, including more than 2500 Fairtrade schools and almost 7000 Fairtrade places of worship. It now works with more than two million farmers and workers around the world. Between 1994 and 2022, farmers and producers have shared an estimated 1.7 billion in Fairtrade Premium payments.
Chris TerryA banana worker in Magdalena, Colombia
“Now we need to go further,” Mr Gidney says. “We need to move away from a short-term focus on economic liberalisation as the main driver in trade policy, which held sway for many years, and broaden the remit to embrace fairer, more equitable, and more resilient trading relationships.
“Harnessing the positive benefits of trade for people and planet would require a joined-up approach to trade development and climate policy. The Government should deliver stronger regulation to reduce the threat associated with irresponsible business practices and to create an environment in which ethical businesses can flourish.
“We’re also asking [the Government] to move forward with deforestation legislation, while ensuring that the burdens of complying with this legislation are not pushed down to the bottom of the supply chain.”
The Fairtrade Foundation’s head of campaigns, Sarah Brazier, reflects that the success of getting businesses to take up fair trade in the early days was down to its message that simple things could make a difference; that concentrating on one thing and doing it wholeheartedly made it achievable.
“I don’t think we could have got anywhere without the grass-roots movement,” she says. ‘We were born out of that original work that churches and other organisations were doing.”
Two things helped to get the supermarkets on board, she suggests: the first, “a viable solution where you can show impact. The way Fairtrade is set up, the way we work with farmers and producers, and our networks in the northern global market and the global South mean they can actually see the human part of the sourcing choices that they make. We can say: ‘This is what you invest in: tangible, meaningful change that you can actually see.’”
A survey for the anniversary found that 54 per cent of UK adults understood that buying fairtrade products had a positive impact on the lives of farmers and workers. “Businesses are led by what consumers demand, and the reality is that consumers want businesses to be ethical. That’s something that has grown over time,” Ms Brazier says. “The public expectations of businesses will often drive the decisions that businesses make.”
No minimum price is set without consulting the producers, but, 30 years later, “we also need producers, farmers, and workers to be sitting around the tables with governments who are deciding on what climate solutions look like, or deforestation, or supply chains.”
Fairtrade Fortnight is about having high visibility on the shelves, to enable consumers to make the right choice. “People have a very small amount of time, and if you’re walking around the supermarkets with three small children in tow, taking the time to stand and make that choice is hard,” she says. “That’s why we need to continue to push the fairtrade message, because the job isn’t done.”
OF ALL the challenges that Fairtrade is facing, climate crisis tops the list. “The climate has changed the way businesses work and the way consumers consume,” Ms Brazier says, “and so the special model has to change as well. We’re keeping on top of that innovation and trying to understand what consumers want — what businesses and producers want that’s right for everyone.
“We really need governments and world leaders to do more; so, in Fairtrade Fortnight, we’re launching a pledge which we’re asking our supporters to get behind and asking business to support. It’s also aimed at the new UK Government.
“It’s about global trade strategies, but it’s also about addressing climate change, and human-rights violations, and supply chains differently: changing what it all might look like to the people we rely on on the other side of the world.”
There is a lot going on in the world at the moment, she acknowledges: Palestine, repercussions of the pandemic, food security, the cost-of-living crisis: “People feel they have a lot of things to worry about, and asking people to care about another issue is unrealistic.
Philip LickleyA Fairtrade 30th anniversary celebration outside Bradford Cathedral with Revd Canon Ned Lunn, Elaine and Mike de Villiers, and some young members of the Bradford Cathedral congregation
“So, what we have to do is show that this one thing has impact if you care about food security, if you care about human rights, if you care about the climate. If you’re making choices around what you consume, it makes a huge difference.
“It’s easier for people to give to charity and care about an issue that they may feel personally impacted by. But we really have to do the job of showing people how connected we are, and how reliant we are on our global food system, and how impacted we are by the choices we make as consumers.
“Over the next decade, we really want to see that the intervention model that we set up 30 years ago is still doing a really important job. It has a huge impact on farmers and workers, but it is still a very small amount of the market.
“We want businesses to increase their commitments and work together with us, and then we need the Government’s global trade strategies to encourage responsible businesses, and we need churches to continue to hold businesses and governments accountable — to continue to call them out on what is needed.”
Fairtrade Fortnight is 9-22 September.