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FAIR TRADE

 

The Fair Trade movement is growing as people realize that they can help alleviate poverty and protect the environment by choosing Fair Trade products.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* ...Any definition of a culture of peace must address the problem of achieving justice for communities and individuals who do not have the means to compete or cope without structured assistance and compassionate help.
-- Mahnaz Afkhami

"Fair Trade supports some of the most bio-diverse farming systems in the world. When you visit a Fair Trade coffee grower's fields, with the forest canopy overhead and the sound of migratory songbirds in the air, it feels like you're standing in the rainforest."
-- Professor Miguel Altieri, Leading expert and author on agroecology

NAFTA and GATT have about as much to do with free trade as the Patriot Act has to do with liberty.
-- Michael Badnarik, Libertarian Presidential candidate

* "It hit me very early on that something was terribly wrong, that I would see silos full of food and supermarkets full of food, and kids starving. ... In Fair Trade, we see ourselves as this infinitesimal part of the world economy. But somebody's got to come up with an alternative model that says children eating is No. 1."
-- Medea Benjamin, co-founder, Global Exchange, and former U.N. nutritionist

There is hardly a study in the entire literature which fails to demonstrate that satisfaction in work is enhanced or that other generally acknowledged beneficial consequences accrue from a genuine increase in workers' decision-making power. Such consistency of findings, I admit is rare in social research
-- Paul Blumberg

"It is very important for you to know that fair trade leads to better roads, better health and better lives for farmers not just in Nicaragua, but around the world."
-- Rosario Castellon, former director of PRODECOOP

"When people become economically empowered, they gain political and social power. Many of the groups that we work with do more than just produce crafts; they're involved in community development, health and education. For the women we work with, the effe ct is even greater. As they gain employment, they become able to leave abusive situations, to seek legal assistance, to acquire education, to become independent. Their work allows them to be economically significant in the family and gives them leverage to be considered an equal ."
-- Bob Chase, executive director, SERRV International

"The fair price is a solution. It has given us the chance to pay a good price to our farmers. Those who are not in Fair Trade want to participate. For us it is a great opportunity. It gives us hope."
-- Benjamin Cholotío

The low prices paid to small producers on the national market mean that the best Mexican products are exported. Fair Trade makes it possible for small producers to also receive dignifid prices in the national market and to not depend exclusively on export
-- Comercio Justo Me´xico

"The needs of small farmers, whether they grow coffee [in the South] or produce [in the North], may be quite similar. Both groups need better access to and more control over the market. That can only happen if consumers use their market power to vote for fair prices to the grower, better access to financing for small farmers, and more environmentally sustainable production."
-- Rink Dickinson, Co-Director, Equal Exchange

The Equal Exchange warehouse houses organic coffee from peasant farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico. It houses watermelons from disadvantaged, black farmers from Georgia, South Carolina, and other parts of the south. Both the watermelon and the coffee farmers have created co-ops to arrange marketing and give them a chance against larger growers and processors. The implications of this convergence between the work of the watermelon farmers, peach farmers, tea growers, and coffee farmers is immense.
-- Rink Dickinson, Co-Director, Equal Exchange

* “The failure so far of the governments of so many of the worlds most powerful countries in the face of such egregious unfairness ... to make the slightest progress on the issue of fair trade is hard to explain."
-- Colin Firth

* When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week's wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours, because they see so little of the profits. Oxfam's fair trade campaign helps right this wrong.
-- Colin Firth

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
-- Benjamin Harrison

"Fair trade. Would it not be more logical to label unfair products?"
-- Loesje

"A bite of fair Trade chocolate means a lot to farmers in the South. It opens the doors to development and gives children access to healthcare, education, and a decent standard of living."
-- K. Ohemeng-Tinyase, Managing Director of Kuapa Kokoo cocoa cooperative, Ghana

"Fair Trade is part of a larger movement about corporate social responsibility, influenced by the public's desire to deal with companies that are (committed) to workplace quality, the environment and employee well-being."
--Mac McCoy, president, dZi--The Tibet Collection

* "Fair Trade is a market-based, entrepreneurial response to business as usual: it helps third-word farmers developing direct market access as well as the organizational and management capacity to add value to their products and take them directly to the global market. Direct trade, a fair price, access to capital and local capacity-building, which are the core strategies of this model, have been successfully building farmers' incomes and self-reliance for more than 50 years."
~ Paul Rice

* No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level --I mean the wages of decent living.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"In our country there was no tradition of fermenting cocoa. With Fair trade income we were able to implement a fermentation program to improve the quality of our cocoa and to convert our production to certified organic. This improved our position in the export market. The Fair Trade market is a very important market for the survival of our associates."
-- Isidoro de la Rosa, Executive Director of CONACADO cocoa cooperative, Dominican Republic

"We're not here at Equal Exchange just to be tools of farmers, but to explore what it means to be of service. Business in our society has lost the notion--if it ever had it--that it should do more than create wealth and move goods back and forth, that it should be of service to greater society. ... We learn from the farmers about life's basic priorities, about getting by with less, about living in harmony with the earth. They learn from us about international business, the marketplace, promotion and fina nce. Our customers hold the web together. As more take part, the web grows stronger and we all gain hope from our exchanges. That's alternative trade."
-- Jonathan Rosenthal, executive director, Equal Exchange

We want to begin in working-class neighborhoods. We want to test the concept there, because our idea is that fair trade should not just be for the elites, but for everyone, for the majority, for the poor people. Quality food for poor people. Why just quality for the rich? And at an equal price
-- Victor Sua´rez, Exective Director, the National Association of Peasant Marketing Enterprises

* When you buy Fairtrade products you can guarantee that the farmers who have worked hard to grow them get a minimum price. Fairtrade is a way of giving regular support – and enjoying delicious high quality foods at the same time.
-- Emma Thompson

If Free Trade has been so good to our standard of living, then WHY has our largest employer gone from high union wage paying and benefits GM to low wage paying benefits skirting Wal-Mart???
-- Barbara Toncheff

Fair trade benefit many. From farmers in producer countries to students in a U.S. school studying the environment, the concept and practice of fair trade connects producers and consumers in new and powerful ways. It is the nexus for: meeting both environmental and economic considerations of indigenous peoples; re-balancing the trading relationship between North and South; building a link between U.S. policy and publics to a larger world community that is knocking at the door
-- TransFair USA, 2002

"Thanks to the Fair Trade market, our standard of living has substantially increased. With your support, we look forward to a more promising future."
-- Miguel Trigoso, Marketing Manager, APARM coffee cooperative, Peru

"Thanks to Fair trade, we will not die of hunger. We will not lose our land. Our children can attend school. I want to send thanks to all of the churches that purchase our coffee. Thanks to you, we have a seed of hope in our lives."
-- Jose Luis Castillo Vasquez, member of the Equal Exchange-supported Las Colinas cooperative, El Salvador, and father of six

"With Fair Trade we have an incentive to invest in social programs that benefit producers and the community. We also receive higher incomes to sustain ourselves. If it weren't for Fair Trade, we wouldn't exist as banana producers since the amount we receive for a box of conventional bananas does not cover our expenses."
- Edinson Cabana Zapata, co-op member, ASOPROBAN banana cooperative, Colombia

 

Fair Trade Day - 2nd Sat in May


Workers Day - May 1
End Poverty Day - October 17
Buy Nothing Day - 4th Fri in November

 

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