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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
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...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
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"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
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"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
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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
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“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
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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
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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
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"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
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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
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"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
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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 |
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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
