What is Fairtrade?

Fairtrade is about creating a positive relationship between producers and buyers. It is especially focused around small producers and developing countries. Fairtrade ensures basic rights as a given for small producers, who are often struggling in developing countries to make a decent living, and aims to help improve living standards wherever it can.

Origins of Fairtrade

Fairtrade started as a grassroots movement about 40 years ago but has now become an international movement recognised by national and international standards and organisations. Fairtrade insists on paying fair prices to producers which reflect the true cost of production, supporting social and environmental projects and promoting pay equality, equal working conditions, stability and security however it can.

Shopping For Fairtrade Products: Fairtrade Mark

Fairtrade is a concept and also an organisation and also a collection of organisations. The concept and the groups who are involved in the Fairtrade Movement have become entwined around the Fairtrade Mark.

Fairtrade is now synonymous with the Fairtrade Foundation and Fairtrade Coalition which awards an independent consumer guarantee – the Fairtrade Mark – to individual products which pass the criteria for Fairtrade certification.

What Is The Fairtrade Foundation?

The Fairtrade Foundation is the independent non-profit organisation that licenses use of the Fairtrade Mark on products in the UK in accordance with internationally agreed Fairtrade standards. The Fairtrade Foundation was established in 1992 by a coalition of charities, religious and ethical groups including Oxfam, Christian Aid, People and Planet and the United Reformed Church all sharing the same ambition to create a better life for traders in developing countries.

The Fairtrade Foundation is a registered charity. It is also a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales.

The Fairtrade Foundation is the UK member of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO), which unites 21 labelling initiatives across Europe, Japan, North America, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand as well as networks of producer organisations from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Fairtrade A Better Alternative

Fairtrade is a strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The purpose is to create opportunities for producers and workers who have been economically disadvantaged or marginalised by the conventional trading system. If fair access to markets under better trade conditions can help such producers to overcome barriers to development, they can join Fairtrade.

Fairtrade Terms of Trading

What are the Fairtrade standards?

Fairtrade standards are not simply a set of minimum standards for socially responsible production and trade. The Fairtrade standards go further in seeking to support development for disadvantaged and marginalised small-scale workers in developing countries.

The key standards are:

• Ensure guaranteed Fairtrade minimum price agreed with producers.
• Provide additional Fairtrade premium which can be invested in projects enhancing social, economic and environmental development.
• Enable pre-financing for producers.
• Emphasise idea of partnership between trade partners.
• Facilitate mutually beneficial long-term trading relationships.
• Set clear minimum, progressive criteria to ensure conditions for production and trade are socially and economically fair and environmentally responsible.

Fairtrade Food

Presently there are ten food categories where internationally agreed Fairtrade criteria operate. The Fairtrade mark appears on over 130 products, including chocolate, coffee, honey, tea, sugar. Certified Fairtrade products are a growth movement. Many organic providers are looking to achieve Fairtrade certification for their products.

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ives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.

Famous Co-ops

The world’s largest consumer co-operative business is the Co-operative Group in the UK, which offers a variety of retail services – its corner shops and supermarkets – and financial and funeral services: the Co-operative Bank and Co-operative Funeral Parlours

John Lewis, leading UK department store chain, is employee owned although not officially a co-op.

Other famous UK co-operatives include Suma Foods, the UK’s largest workers co-operative.

There are many other successful large scale co-ops in other countries.