Why Fair Trade?
You benefit from Dionise:
"The women have to come back into the
greenhouses immediately after the flowers
are sprayed with pesticides. Some of them
get dizzy or have trouble with their blood pressure,
and some of their children have been born with lung
problems."
- Dionise Trujillo, ex-flower worker, Colombia
"Before you've finished your breakfast this
morning,
you'll have relied on half the world"
-
Martin Luther King Jr.
"We do not receive the minimum salary set by the law.
If we take leave they cut our salary, if we are sick they
cut our salary, they cut it even when a needle breaks.
--Worker in Cambodia.
"I haven't
received any wages for months and I
don't know what to do. I don't have any other skills."
- Shima, a
garment worker in Bangladesh
Chris Martin, on a make trade fair campaign.
"Rice producers want a better life. We work hard for it.
But when we get to market we are bombarded with an
invasion of cheap imported rice, so we have to sell at
any price that a buyer is
prepared to give us."
- Inodil Fils,
rice farmer, Artibonite Valley, Haiti
You benefit from Ana:
"During the packing seasons we work about 12-14 hours a day.
We have to stand up for the whole shift. In some vineyards there
is not even a toilet, or water to drink. We have been seeing
cases of birth defects. We think this is
because of the use of pesticides."
- Ana
Olmedo Aliste, fruit industry worker, Chile
"Though we have tried to do our best,
we have very little support. There is nothing
from our own government or from those responsible
for the coffee business in my own country,"
"How am I going to respond to my children?"
--Luz Marina, coffee farmer, Columbia.
"The coffee price is getting worse and worse,
I used to buy coffee at 14 birr a kilo and sell it at 20.
Now I am buying it for under 10 birr a kilo and
I sell it for 12. This is not enough to cover the costs of my
expenses and transport to Dire Dawa. The big merchants
have undermined the coffee market and if this continues
I will stop buying coffee altogether and just buy and sell chat"
–Ethiopian coffee farmer Djibro.
Many coffee farmers are now ripping up their failing crop to sow more lucrative, but illegal, produce - coca, marijuana, poppy and chat.
– Oxfam
What would you farm?
In Peru, the Junta Nacional del Café has proposed a
$30m fund to help guarantee coffee as a sustainable
crop, to stop farmers moving into coca (cocaine plant).
However, coffee remains at around 50 cents per pound,
while coca is around $3 a pound and a litre of opium latex up to $1000.
"We don't have even the minimum
resources for food, schooling and health."
–Joaquín, farmer, El Salvador.